LADY DATE SUMMER 2018
We started our day with ominous clouds at Notting Hill. We had a walk around with the tourists while looking at the colourful houses and along the market at Portobello Road. It started raining around this time and we made the walk back and into Kensington.
It stopped raining as we made our way past all the elegantly large embassies and into Kensington Gardens. We walked past Kensington Palace and around the large pond. Then up towards the gold statue of Albert by The Royal Albert Hall.
The rain started again with massive raindrops as we made our way towards Chelsea. It was a typical English Summer day and within only a few minutes we were again putting away umbrellas to make way for sunglasses. We stopped to eat once we made it to Kings Road.
I didn’t want anything too big and quite fancied some fries so we thought the American place The Big Easywas our best bet. Unfortunately it was disappointing. DesPite there being empty tables and the hostess offering us where we wanted to sit, she did not seem to want us to be there. To the point where I felt so guilty about just ordering fries even thought that was all I wanted, so ordered chicken as well. I’m glad I did because despite this place being American, there were no fries on the menu. There were only big chips, which I am not such a fan of. The chicken was nice though. We just didn’t feel very welcome. We didn’t stay very long. Rebecca had a mac and cheese, she said it was OK but that it was very difficult to really mess up a mac and cheese. The BBQ sauce tasted like pure alcohol, which was a shame.
So we left to go to our booking at The Bletchley. We descended a staircase into a basement with 1940s music and very little light. We were sat at the bar and given army jackets to wear and a radio and enigma machine to use. They give you an option of three different scenarios. Some have better stories, some have more interesting flavours for cocktails and others are harder. We went for the one with the most interesting flavours. The tasks were not too hard, a lot of punching into the enigma machine and trying to work out what the coded messages could mean. The welcome cocktail was a lovely fruit punch affair, probably my favourite out of the three. The second was determined by the first task, which was based on a menu. The food you ordered on the menu for an imagined dinner party determined what flavours were in your cocktail. Mine had a bit of fizz and a little kick but I have no idea what was in it. The next task to determine flavours involved smelling things in bottles and spraying tastes on your tongue. You had to choose where you were going on an imagined mission. I chose Italy and received an Amarettococktail. We were finished a little early but as we’d finished our cocktails quite quickly decided to leave to get a drink somewhere else. I think this experience runs a lot smoother with only two people. I think it would be a little tedious with a big group, especially when there are so many things to decide for each person. I did hear some bad reviews before I booked about people being left for too long or forgotten about but we didn’t have this problem at all. We did have a little problem with our enigma machine giving us the wrong letters for a while but a member of staff told us we had a problem and we started again rather than spending ages trying to decode a wrong message.
We were going to head to Bartsnext but quickly realized this would be an impossible place to get into without a booking so we headed to Mr Foggs. This is a little out of the way place behind the main street in Mayfair. We hadn’t booked but managed to get a space at the bar. They hand you a kind of spinning menu of cocktails as you head in but don’t be fooled, because these are only some of the cocktails on offer. There is actually a whole book of cocktails, almost like reading a novel, which is always one of the things I love most about a good cocktail bar. I, as usual, went for a vodka-based cocktail, something fruity but a little different. The barman was a true artist. He amazingly knew the recipes for both drinks we ordered off the top of his head. He mixed with flair and decorated with the skill and care of an artisan. The cocktails were lovely. My main flavor was of raspberry puree until I reached the bottom which unfortunately was all ginger beer, so it started off better than it ended. If I wasn’t left with pure ginger at the end it probably would have been my favourite cocktail.
And then, after seeming to walk all day, we headed home.
Here are links to some of the places we visited:
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