Easter Sunday. We slept in a bit – we’d gone to bed on the late side after after-movie cookies and ice cream. There was some yelling in the street – I was surprised that Easter Sunday morning wasn’t completely quiet. Silent as a tomb – ha! I did get a “happy zombie Jesus day” text from one of my kids when we were on the runway in Minneapolis on Monday and I finally had AT&T again.
Back in England on Sunday, we’d made plans to brunch with a U.S. ex-pat, one of our librarian friends who’s now married to a Scotsman, and lives in the suburbs outside London. She picked a place – fish!, on the Thames by Shakespeare’s Globe. It was another good meal – I had poached eggs on toast with a salad. The Brits really know how to cook an egg – they were just right – runny yolks, but not snotty in the whites at all. My fried eggs were perfect the day before, too. And, with two other tipplers in the group, I was not limited to wine by the glass, so we split a bottle of !fish white, Trebbiano.
Then we walked towards Leicester Square by way of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and we were in this courtyard at 3:00 on Easter Sunday afternoon, with bells ringing. We walked in and smelled the incense and heard a bit of Latin, too.
Pushed on to Leicester Square for the half price tkts booth, to find that Sunday is the dark night in England, not Monday like here. So we wandered through the National Gallery a bit, got to see some old friends – a whole wall full of J.M.W. Turner; the color paintings for Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode; plenty of Gainsborough. Mark liked that even when we got to the Impressionists and post-, they were different paintings than are in American collections, like the Bathers at Asnières by Seurat, instead of the Grand Jatte. I liked seeing a Monet Thames view of Parliament, and in the same room a naked man by Caillebotte, so different from his nattily dressed people under the umbrella. But it was waaay too crowded and I only stood it for about 30 minutes.
We left and walked by a vegetarian Indian restaurant our friends recommended (he’s a vegetarian; he got the vegetarian special of the day at !fish, I heard “aubergine something…” as he ordered – it looked like a kind of an eggplant parm – and mash for a side, that I tasted – creamy, buttery, yum) as a dinner possibility, then tubed back to our apartment.
We got all packed and ordered a cab to get us at 6:00 a.m., and search to find a neighborhood restaurant to eat at. We ended up at Ciao Bella, where our waiter made fun of our poor Italian pronounciations, and my house red was pure plonk – nobody to split a bottle of better with this time – but other than that, it was simple old-fashioned Italian – just good. We strolled back, and watched some TV, and tucked ourselves in for our last night in London.
I’m ready to go back, and stay longer, and NOT be a tourist any more. Maybe I could rent a storefront and do a series of harvest dinners. They’re so much more civilized across the pond.
Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day, 1877. Art Institute of Chicago.
