Ah, day 3. We’re now fully rolling and about have the place, that being London, figured out. We decided last night at everyone’s hotel that we’d buy Hop on Hop off bus tickets for today. The MALBEC crew calls these “the HoHo”. You know you love it.
While speaking with the concierge, we asked which company was the best HoHo. The concierge said it was “BigBus”. Ginny asked why. Concierge said because they are all former educators or historians and know a ton and it’s been around the longest. 70 years. “70 years???’ I questioned. Yes, he confirmed. I said, “Are you sure there were busses 70 years ago?” He laughed and then, having just discussed our ages at happy hour I said, “Wait, Ginny was alive then…Ginny, were there busses?” She laughed. The concierge looked at me. I said, “She was conceived on a bus.” It was worth it to see him blush! HA! And hey, maybe she was. I don’t know.
Anyway, again with the bowl of cucumber breakfast and the slow elevator. A walk to Tesco grocery for ice (OH MY GOSH WE MISS COLD DRINKS) and some more Amarone. And then, we start walking to the nearest spot where we can get on the HoHo. Plan is for the others to get on near their hotel and ride to us. They only go clockwise, so we just wait. In a fabulous stroke of good luck, after walking for 40 minutes or so, we find the HoHo stop which is exactly, directly, 100% in front of a pub. Hot damn. I got thirsty walking all the way over. So, we go inside, grab a table at the front window and grab drinks.
And then, we waited. There is a cool app for the HoHo, so once the gang was on their bus, I was able to actually follow their progress through the stops. That said, it took them over an hour to get on the bus because apparently 3 stations closed and no one told anyone and wouldn’t you know one of the three is the one they were waiting at. So, by the time they finally got on, it took over an hour for them to get to our stop. And we didn’t care in the least! We did some terrific people watching, kept dry from the drizzling rain, and sipped our cider.
Once we made it on the bus all together, we’d gone about 2 stops when they needed to get off to pee. Fine with us! We hopped off at the Marble Arch, which sounded magical in the narration but the problem was, I couldn’t see it. ‘So guys, excuse me for being skeptical…but does anyone see a marble arch?” Turns out it is being restored so they have it covered up with a…. Very enormously large Ralph Loren Polo advertisement. I didn’t see that coming!
Turns out the closest bathroom was in a hotel about a block away, so off we walked. And then we strolled into the magnificent Cumberland Hotel - which is the last residence of Jimmy Hendrix. In tribute, the entire lobby was incredible - all rock n’ roll, guitars, old black cabs…it was AWESOME! After everyone visited the bathroom, we decided it was too cool to leave so we hopped into the lobby bar for a cock tail.
After awhile, we realized we needed to hop back on the HoHo because we had early dinner reservations and who knew how long it would take to ride over into the Piccadilly Circus area. We managed to grab a group photo before heading back to the bus. Shout out to people kind enough to take photos for others! Also, if it isn’t too much to ask, please stop squatting to take the photo. It makes my chins look so much bigger. Please hang from the ceiling and take a photo straight down. Thank you.
Back on the HoHo, we cruised right over and hopped off in the middle of very fancy, high end shopping. If you need a 17,000 purse, let me know. I’ve got a place for you! We were an hour early for the reservation so we walked around a bit and then went into the restaurant bar for a pre dinner drink. Ginny just so happened to have family also visiting in town so the 4 of them met up with us. The food was terrific!! Unfortunately, they don’t like to split the checks here so we went round and round for a bit figuring out what everyone owed. By then, we were once again SO TIRED! We all headed out and back to our hotels for the night. We needed to rest because the next day, we had high tea!
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