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Welcome back to Wandering Wednesdays on Bewildered Bug! Every few Wednesdays, as I explore my surroundings, I’m going to post something about the area that I find awesome, inspiring, funny …. something to help me appreciate my surroundings more and something to show you what beauty there is all around you and to introduce you to the beauty in other parts of the world wherever you may be!
During my last Wandering Wednesday post, we explored the hallways of the Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin. Today I’m going to tell you about my London-based Christmas adventure called the Curry’s Christmas Walk, which I took part in over the Christmas holidays in 2014. Yes, I’m still in Christmas mode, at least for the time being as I’m catching up on overdue posts due to my computer mishap over the holidays! I was invited to take a walk with London Walks to test out some awesome Withings gear courtesy of Curry’s and to see some of the oldest and most prestigious stores in London. These stores happened to be some of the favourites of the royal family and of historic characters like Winston Churchill! I actually remembered to take photos, so hopefully this will encourage you to explore the area if/when you are in London!
It was all very exciting – a group of us gathered just outside of Green Park station and were all given Withings step counters – I personally was one of the lucky few who received a Pulse Ox and I’ve been testing it out ever since. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see that I’ve been testing it out A LOT – including my recent walking trip to Paris where I hit my all-time high of approx. 22 000 steps in one day (as a sedentary worker in front of a computer all the time, my average is 4000 steps a day…the “healthy minimum” goal is about 10 000 steps a day FYI). On the Curry’s Christmas Walk I believe I walked just over 8000? – I cannot quite remember and you know me – I forgot to take a photo. Trust me I went beyond the “healthy minimum per day” goal because the next morning my thighs were gloriously sore (you will hardly hear me say that) and were asking me when I got into exercise again and why I had not warned them in advance. Anyway, after most of us figured out how to get our wearable gadgets sorted, we set off in two groups.
The first stop was Charbonnel et Walker. Yes I’m still in England and speak the (mostly) Queen’s English. You may know this store – in fact you may be extremely jealous because Charbonnel et Walker is the royal chocolate shop and sell the most amazing champagne truffles. We were told to try the violet creams – being one of the most famous of their flavours and one of the royal family’s favourites – but I did not because I was secretly told it tastes like perfume – plus there was a lot of dairy in it and I had a whole day of walking with a group ahead of me so I decided to be nice to myself and them and skip that particular morsel. Several others enjoyed it though, while I took photos of their beautiful little pink and gold boxes of champagne truffles that I promised myself to try on a “I don’t care if I have allergies – this is so worth it!!” day……
The second stop was Hatchards, book sellers since the 18th century and one of the oldest book stores in the world AND another favourite store of the royal family! [Private note: @NonMom don’t you wish you came to London AFTER I found all of this out?!} Now, I don’t talk about it much on the blog, but I come from a family of bookaholics. When I was a little girl, my Mom used to take my sister and I on Saturday mornings to the library to listen to someone reading to us. After that we’d head down the high street to the local bookstore and get to choose a book per day. The love of reading was instilled in us from very early on and it remains – to the point where if you want to do something with our family other than sit in a bookstore all day, you may want to keep us away from said bookstore. They gave us 15 minutes in Hatchards, after which I left with three novels and a strong desire to spend more time in the store (dragged out kicking and screaming I swear! Okay maybe not so much). Those three novels, including one called SERENA that I bought just cause it’s my name (I actually have not even read the back cover yet!), have joined my line of books on my shelf to read – am currently finishing my kindle list off first! I must say it was refreshing to browse a book store after being surrounded by treats that I should could not eat due to my allergies and even more refreshing to be back to reading for pleasure rather than duty (I’m so not a student anymore!!).
We then headed to James J. Fox Havana Cigars … I say headed to because my little group got a little disoriented for a bit, but like troopers we found it! Winston Churchill is rumoured to have smoked approximately 10 cigars a day and James J. Fox was his go-to cigar shop. It even included (includes?), to this day, a private indoor smoking lounge! We were all trying to figure out how they managed to by-pass the indoor smoking laws, but we figured that perhaps because of its historical significance they were allowed to. We were not allowed to see the lounge, however….being the third set of bloggers invading their store and taking photos I think the proprietor was a little miffed at not making sales. Or perhaps she was trying to prevent her private smokers from being harassed. I wonder if there was anyone famous up there at the time? Anyway, I still enjoyed it. As much as I don’t smoke, the smell of a humidor is always nice – and the entire shop smelt like a humidor. The entire shop also made their connection to Winston Churchill very, very obvious by selling Churchill paraphernalia and displaying a letter from him and his favourite smoking chair.
The Curry’s Christmas Walk was well thought out and by that time, we needed a bit of down time, so we took a bit of a break at The Red Lion pub and sipped some spectacular mulled wine. It’s the tiniest little pub I’ve ever been to and in my head I kept ticking off code violations, but kept remembering that this was a historic building and there’s no way they could expand the staircase, for example. It was quite quaint and warm and was a nice little bit of down time to get to know my fellow walkers a little better. You may or may not remember this photo from my Instagram feed – and no…I’m not drunk – it’s just how I happened to look that day. I must say by this time I was having a great time!
We reluctantly left the cosiness of the pub and went onto our next stops. The first being Berry Bros & Rudd – another royal favourite.
This spectacular liquor shop (because in the end, that’s what it is) was one of the shops to stock the Titanic on its doomed Atlantic crossing – in fact, they even have an apology note from the Titanic company apologising for losing so much of their alcoholic stock. A little surreal and weird considering how many people lost their lives, but it’s business I guess, right? If you don’t believe me, go take a look for yourself – the letter is on display in the store!
The store was once even used as a trading post in non-alcoholic goods way back then, and contains historic ledgers of their customer’s weights, as well as a display showing the ancient scales. Why this would be necessary I’m not sure – but I’m also sure that stores like these do not keep a record of your weight anymore because I’d be sending the Luv Luv constantly to get me goodies so that my weight stays private-ish (more in an upcoming blog).
Anyway, we got to sample the most amazing ginger brandy called King’s Ginger – and we got a really detailed little talk on the history of the shop and its alcohol. The King’s Ginger definitely warmed us up. I’m not a brandy fan, but I would buy that. I know some people take brandy when they’re ill….or ginger…or ginger tea….well if you just take one spoon of this it will have you up and running. An explosion of ginger perfectly complimented by the sweetness of the brandy.
This is not something to drink a lot of but a shot or two once in a blue moon will keep your gears going – I guarantee it!…and yes I think they were trying to keep us bloggers a little happy-drunk at this point!
Words you never say to fashion bloggers “we’re running late so we shall just skip the millinery store okay?”. No. Not okay. I must say it was not just the fashion bloggers who protested. I *may* have been the first to run into the store amidst “but our timing is….” just so that I could see what Lock & Co. Hatters held.
We all completely ignored the traditional men’s ground floor and headed directly for the fashionista floor on the 1st floor. I was fascinated by the history of the store and on the way to fashion heaven, happened to notice Lord Nelson’s hats – (I am not sh*tting you (yes Mom, that was necessary))! That was sooooo cool. Whoever thought I’d be so fascinated by history when I hated it in high school? Perhaps living history is different from reading it in a book and being forced to learn dates?
Anyways I’m really glad I went in and that we spent a few minutes browsing – the first thing I saw reminded me of my good friend from Toronto, @AerynLynne – because she’d rock the gorgeous white hat that caught my eye.
I also saw some adorable feather pins that reminded me of my Aja (Granddad) because he used to wear similar feathers in his hat. And he always wore his hat. I should have bought one because they reminded me of him….plus they were the only things I could afford on my limited budget in that store! But I decided to be good and I took a photo instead!
Happily fashioned up and chatting we kept walking along and did not go into Trufitt and Hill. We are women – why would we want to go into a men’s barber shop, right? Okay, fine, probably cause they have the most awesome gifts for those special gentlemen in your lives!
I know of this brand way back from when I was in Toronto. There’s a Trufitt and Hill under BCE place in the PATH in Toronto I believe (or is it in the Scotia Tower? I may be wrong). I know quite a few gentle- *cough* -men who have gone there either because they work in the financial district and think it is “posh” or because they’ve been gifted a shave and facial etc. The entire store is the true gentleman’s pampering heaven. I know cause I once got the Luv Luv a gift certificate and he claimed he sat next to the Mayor of Toronto (back then, prior to Rob Ford) while he got pampered and that his face never felt so smooth (even after I’ve dragged him for facials etc). I did not realize that they were originally a British company (although I’m not surprised) that has as much respect or more as the one in Toronto. Either way – if you want to pamper your man for one reason or another, a gift certificate to Trufitt and Hill (and you forcing him to go in some cases) will end up being very well appreciated. Who knows, he may even make friends with a royal or parliament member and you’ll get invited to some high society events
We were then swamped by the Santa Claus Walk (SantaCon I believe it’s called) when thousands of santas found themselves clashing head on with our little group. At one point we sorta huddled at a street corner and stared at the variety of santas.
We had a chat with Hannukah Man (I didn’t get it on video, but there are videos of it floating around the web somewhere….) and got slightly scared by the santa upon whom Christmas seemed to throw up its revenge.
We struggled our way through and survived to emerge (temporarily) into Floris perfumes where we hunted (and smelt) the personal favourites from Marilyn Monroe (Floris Rose Geranium), Winston Churchill (No. 89) and Sir Ian Fleming (No. 127) -um….I may have mixed up the latter two numbers but the numbers are correct anyways.
Other than the fact that I was walking around with their pot of coffee beans and shoving it under other bloggers noses when they complained of having too much perfume shock (perfume stores, after all do smell quite strongly), I managed to find the three scents and have determined that, based on scent alone, I would not hang out with Marilyn Monroe or Churchill for any extended period of time, but would spend evenings quite happily listening to Sir Ian Fleming chat aimlessly about James Bond while I surreptitiously basked in the scent his cologne.
The Marilyn Monroe one seriously smelt like mosquito repellent and the Churchill one smelt very musky – which I suppose is not a surprise considering it IS Churchill we’re talking about – but Ian Fleming’s smelt quite fresh which is sorta nice.
I guess the next stop was to bring our senses back to earth, because it did not smell anything remotely like a perfume shop!! We left the highly perfumed er…perfume shop and went straight to a cheese shop….what a bit of an attack on the senses eh?!
We ended at Piccadilly Square after that, but I went off on my own for a bit and headed back towards Green Park station, taking in all the Christmas lights and popping into Fortnum and Mason, another famous historic London store. It had been pointed out to us, but we had not gone in, and I’ve wanted to go in for ages. I managed to get into the door, squeeze a few feet through the crowds, find a mixed mince pie box for my workmates, clamber over people to pay and get out alive. That was my first Fortnum and Mason experience. I will be going back on a non-holiday to make myself feel a bit better (as you know I have crowd anxiety) about it and to sample their famous gluten free tea! I then stopped in Itsu for a gluten and dairy free snack and realized that I’d come full circle back to Old Bond Street (where Charbonnel & Walker is hint hint). The difference was that it was now dark out, and all the cool lights were now lit up and amazing.
I even stood up and took a bit of a video (please let me know if it does not work!) and posted it on Instagram. London at Christmas time is indeed beautiful, especially when you are walking around with great company.
After a hectic but satisfying day, I finally made it home and happily set my Withings Ox to track my sleep (yeah it does that too!)…in fact I’ve been using my Withings since then and mainly track my weight journey (again, another upcoming blog) and the number of steps I take. I am in the process of figuring out how to increase my step counts per day, though…because as much as the Curry’s Christmas Walk and as much as my work lunch in Paris got me moving, 4000 steps a day is just embarrassing. I am thinking a short walk every lunchtime? Do you count steps? How do you ensure you get your 10 000 steps per day in? Where would you walk if you could walk anywhere in the world (regardless of time, budget or energy)?
- ...just trying to navigate through this obstacle course called life...
