Mayfair

Yesterday I was strolling around Mayfair. I needed fresh air in a very lazy Sunday. It was due to a very lively Saturday when I attended two Birthday parties until very late ... too much for my age!.

Mayfair emerged in the eighteenth century as one of London’s first real residential suburbs. Soon it started to attract aristocratic London and set the westward trend for middle-class migration and you can see now the touch of luxury and elegancy in every corner. The borders remain among the prime shopping streets (Piccadilly, Regent Street, Bond Street). Too many things to see during one afternoon so I decided just to address the less popular streets, and I walked down from house along Park Lane until Picadilly street, but once I headed this street, after two intersections I turn on the left to get to “Shepherd Market”. A little warren of alleyways and passages now occupied by swanky shops and restaurants, plus a couple of Victorian pubs that I presume are extremely popular during the summer. Even yesterday there were plenty of people at their surrounds having beer and it reminded me somehow the atmosphere of people having the aperitif in the Barrio de Salamanca. It was too formal to be close to “La Latina”. Anyway this area is very charming and I recommend going there and I’m sure I’ll come back but next time with company to have a good Belgian beer. I’ve read that Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis spent a cool 17,000 pounds on a meal. Unfortunately my budget is not so high for a dinner but still I think I’ll be able to manage a good company.

Afterwards I headed Old Bond Street and after passing by the most expensive and well presented shops I’ve ever been so far in London, being home to all the leading multinational designer clothes outlets like Prada, Versace, Donna Karan, Chanel and so on I got the Royal Arcade an example of the traditional and elegant English shopping mall. Close by, are the auction house “Sotheby’s”, 34-35 Old New Bond St, where I stopped to admire the oldest outdoor sculpture in London (it dates from 1600 BC) and nearby a popular double statue of Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt. American bonds continue in Grosvenor Square where I went afterwards and where you can find the ugly US Embassy and a big statue stands in memorial again of Roosevelt. From there, I reached Oxford Street that led me again to my apartment at Kendal Street. I found out why that name, Oxford Street was the old Roman road that linked Londonium with Oxford.

In the end it was a nice walk, a little step to keep knowing this great City of London.

The Spanish connection

I’ve been enjoying a long Easter vacations: 6 days travelling around the south of Spain, and 4 days in my hometown… So let me tell you about my last interesting day in London: visiting Marylebone.

The outlying village of St Mary-by-the-Bourne was swallowed up in the eighteen century to become a mesh of Georgian streets and houses much of which survives today.

I usually visit this neighbourhood twice a week when I go to the Gym, it is just the one besides Paddington in the east, and I was curious to know what I could find there.

Last Sunday before Easter I decided to walk around it and it was worth it. I started at “the Wallace Collection” that is a national museum in an historic London town house. There are 25 galleries with French 18th century painting, furniture and porcelain with superb Old Master paintings and a world class armoury. In the middle there is the typical dinning room to have the English tea, really nice. I stopped to see “woman with a fan by Velazquez” in the great gallery, the largest room in the house. It was interesting to read about the identity of the woman, who was decided to be French rather than Spanish by experts, due to her neckline. Spanish women haven been always more traditional! The “treasure of the month” was a Bohemian Welcoming Glass dated 1609. ‘Lift me up, drink me up, set me down, fill me again and bring me a good brother again’ was written on its surface. It seems that the tradition of making toast is not new.

But the most special interesting moment in the afternoon was my visit to St Jame’s Church, the “Spanish place”. A Catholic chapel was built in 1791 thanks to the efforts of the chaplain at the Spanish embassy and It become a neo-Gothic church designed in a mixture of English and French Gothic. Inside you can see the Spanish Royal features and thre are even two seats reserved for the royals, denoted by built-in gilt crowns high above the choir stalls. That’s the first Spanish connection with London that I’ve discovered here.

Afterwards, I was walking down Marylebone High Street, much nicer than Oxford Street to see shops although the offer is of course much smaller and I found a very interesting place, a lovely library specialized in travel books, with a galleried hall at the back and a stained glass roof. Even if you had not the intention of buying something, you’ll do because of its super nice atmosphere.

And tomorrow, back to office, I’m really lazy to come back to work, but at least I’ve practiced a little tonight English. Let’s see if I haven’t forgotten to speak tomorrow!.

London, a quiet place

Since the last week I have the feeling that I’ve lived in a small town. This sounds very strange living in London, isn’t? Before moving here I had London in my mind as a very stressful city. But the reality has been very different. I might not be very objective because I live in a very central location and it might not representative of how London in general is, but the thing is that I feel more relaxed here than in Madrid since I moved here in July. Why? That’s because London is very much spread. There parks in everywhere, the buildings normally don’t have more than three or four floors that result in a lot of open spaces so in the end you never have the feeling that you are shut in, on the contrary, sometimes when you are walking down the streets it seems like you are not in a big city at all. Traffic is not so high except on the main roads like Oxford Street or Bayswater road. There is a little church besides my apartment that play its bells every hour the same as if I was in my parents house!

As I promised myself, I didn’t go out at night either last Friday or Saturday. I think it was a good disposal. In the end it was so calm that I almost didn’t leave my neighbour. Saturday in the morning I took the bus to go to a farmer market at Orange Square, corner of Pimlico Road and Ebury Street, SW1. http://www.lfm.org.uk/ I was talking with the farmers about cheese, meat, fish…I was queuing for fresh fish and I started to talk with two women about recipes, at some moment the grocer tells us “check in internet”. The funny thing is that she is telling this not only to me but also to the two women that are 50-something. Here, new technologies are quite popular! If you see the square, it could be a typical scene of a small town.

In the afternoon I was walking across Hyde Park. I’m drawn to come to this place almost every weekend. I was surprised because of the high number of people riding horses. Coming back to home, I cross Hyde Park Garden Mews, with the horses in the streets, and it seems like if I was in a small village. Looking at the entrance of the houses and at the little gardens I could appreciate the first flowers of the spring.

On Sunday, I organized a lunch at my apartment with an American girl, a New Zealander girl, a Spaniard and I. Very nice conversation and as usually when people don’t each other very well, we started to speak about trivial things like work, renting expenses, our countries but we end up talking about relationships. We hadn’t seen each other since beginning of December and all of us had something interesting to tell so that’s why after two bottles of wine nobody wanted to go home and the chat was still very lively.

Today I’ve had more social life in my neighbourhood. In Spain, social life at work is done at lunch time. In England is after work. “Do you fancy going to the pub? Already, it is only 5.30! Come on, let’s go to Victoria!” Victoria is a pub located only 200 m from my house so I couldn’t say “no”. “One of the best pubs in London” they told me very excited-. In addition, some English people came so it was a good chance to exchange opinions and views about our cultures. My colleagues were right, Victoria Pub has the typical warm atmosphere of the best English pub. They were speaking about the passion that English people have for team sports but they admitted that although they made up a lot of them like football, others have learnt to practice them better! “Dam it; it is incredible that we are not going to play the Eurocup!” “I have to admit the Cesc Fabregas and Torres are ones of the best of the Premier League!” After two pints of Leffe, Belgian beer that I’m getting used to having, I decided to go home, a little drunk to be honest. Instead my colleagues drunk at least 3 pints and they were fresher, how can they make it?

My neighbourhood is very nice but I’m thinking of making last weekend up by going out a little next weekend… !