London Bridge is falling down . . .
An 8-day trip to London before we go back to HK on next Wed:
5/17
3pm To Buffalo airport
5pm Fly to Detroit and dinner
9:20pm Fly to London (Gatwick) airport
5/18
10am Arrived. Queued up and waited almost an hour before we could step out the airport. (Express) Train to Victoria Station . . . originally bought a SLOW train but accidentally got on an express! So, had to pay more ~__~ this kind of accident happened again when we got on the subway. Wrong directions/lines several time before we really arrived Harrow-on-the-Hill station. walking up the HILL...sweating! (but actually we are stupid! we bought the one-day pass, we actually could take the BUS!!! why didn’t dominic tell us before!!!)
2pm walking around the High Street. Bought 2 packs super-bad-sandwiches and 1 pack of 6 2L bottles Evian water. resting and waiting for dominic’s call.
Evening. watching dominic practising piano. we had dinner in one nearby restaurant. then watch dominic’s 1st time rehearsal with the orchestra. many funny things noticed.
5/19
Morning, breakfast (free) @ hotel . . . resting in the room, walked down the hill to buy fruit around noon. Climbing up the hill to see dominic’s dress rehearsal. Of course, I did my job to record the video and photo taking.
Evening, dinner in the same restaurant we had in the previous night (it is because on-the-hill, you don’t have many choices).
Concerto performance time, 8 different concerto movements played by 6 Chinese (Hong Kong) and 2 British students. Dominic’s playing of Chopin Piano Concerto No. 2, 1st movement was great! Then wwy was asked whether D is her brother or not while I was asked whether D is my SON or not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i.e. wwy is my daugther?!
Definitely, we are proud of Dominic ^_^
5/20
Breakfast @ hotel again. Then we 3 went to London China Town to “Drink Tea”. Sigh! why did they open so late? such that we walked into a black shop!!! The skin of the dumpling was un-bite-able; beef bass could almost rebounce like a tennis ball; BBQ pork chop bun’s “bread” was wet; Chicken feet-fingers were 80s style, the boss was rude to foreigners (i.e. non-Chinese speakers), etc...
Where to go then? Oxford street (window) shopping! We bought some Chocolate-products @ M&S! Then we went back to Harrow for dinner....Thai restaurant. Only us there but the food was not bad thou. Pineapple fried rice, green curry beef and grilled salmon.
Concert time at night: Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. We definitely didn’t have time in HK to watch this opera even thou this time was a small scale production. I can’t imagine that a secondary school will hire a group to perform in the school theatre (similar to a mini-size of APA theatre).
5/21
Sleeping almost near noon ~___~ really a relax trip O_o
Breakfast/Lunch @ a coffee shop, the latte was really good! You definitely can’t taste it in US company -- Starbucks!
Oxford street again! Then walking to the British Museum. Nothing was great. All valuable things are stolen from other countries during war time (just our opinion thou much portion of it is REAL fact in the case of Chinese collection). You definitely can feel it when you see how they treat the collection: people are allowed to use flash in taking photos, bags can be carried in, video taking is allowed, etc... which are not the standard practice in US and Paris’ major Museums!!!!! That means, they don’t treasure the collection well because it seems effortless to get them to be here!
Subway to RCM to meet wwy’s classmate. RCM visit. Dinner in a famous Roast Duck restaurant. Pretty good taste thou the duck was not warm/hot.
5/22
Subway to RAM to watch Debra’s MMus graudate recital. It seems like an open jury exam.
Afternoon time, went back to Harrow to pick dominic for lunch. Chinese restaurant @ Harrow. A very good indeed, really much much better than the China town fake restaurants.
DC was not functioning well. Please don’t die before I have enough $$$ to buy EOS 5D!!! That made my emotion become quite bad for awhile.
London Eye! Don’t have money to run a 15-min loop. Taking photos and video instead. The Big-Ben-Clock, the Parliament, Westminster Abbey, etc...
Then, dinner time again! Strongly suggested by Wong Hiu Lam, “May Flowers” ‘ s Ginger and Spring Onion “Kuk” Meat-Crab over the noodle. Yes, very nice one. Although it was a bit salty, the crab had a lot of “Ko” and the crab is really can’t be found in HK restaurant.
Pineapple Bun and Chicken-Tail Bun are 70p each, i.e. HK$ 11.2 each ~___~ which were not good taste at all!!!!
5/23
Original plan of the day was traveling to Cambridge University and playing the boat too. Finally we realized that it would need almost 100 GBP for the transportation, needless to say the food.....so we decided to window shopping and went to London Tower. Then dinner at the Roast Duck Specialist Restaurant @ China Town. but the quality was not as good as the one we had on Monday night with Wong Hiu Lam.
5/24
Last activity day. But we didn’t have much $ left. Then we walked around the hill. Coming back to hotel and waiting for Dominic for lunch. “Drink Tea” in the Harrow Chinese again restaurant; shopping in the supermarket; coffee and cakes (The Banoffee pie is very nice). Walked up the hill to watch his piano playing in an ensemble rehearsal which would be performed during the speech day for the coming Saturday (if i were the headmaster, i will definitely fire that music teacher simply because he would lose school’s face in front of the guests when lots of money was spent to rent the score but poorly played).
French dinner! Grilled Dover Sole, Fillet Steak in Red Wine Sauce (Rossini???), Lasagne and dessert. Food were all very nice that means the cost as well.......next time will read carefully for all details about salad/dessert ~___~ (why they are not included in the main course)
5/25
Breakfast with Dominic in hotel
Final packing, photo-ing around and waiting for the mini-cab to Gatwick Airport.
Dominic arrived on time to make a goodbye kiss to wwy before we were on the way to the airport.
Stupid British government, why one person one bag only?! US/UK are on the same boat . . . (or it is just my stupidity not to ask the airline for a special tag for my photo bag O_o)
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Photos? click the above linkS
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Saturday, May 26, 2007
