Dickens and London On A Saturday

Hello all! So as I mentioned in my last post, Brit Boy and I headed to London on this past Saturday, despite not going ahead to see “Sister Act”. We had a good time and it was good to have a day out.

We took the train into Paddington Station. Since we were arriving a bit before lunch-ish, we headed for the tube so we could make our way to Sophie’s, which is one of our favorite places to eat nowadays :-) We had a wonderful waiter. We got seated and served very quickly since we beat the rush. We got a prime spot up front and when I looked out of the window over Brit Boy’s shoulder, I caught sight of this blue plaque.


All around London there are these blue plaques which mark different locations of interest where certain well known people lived or worked or where something occurred. This one marks the building that housed the offices of Charles Dickens’ magazine “All The Year Round” and his private apartments from 1859 to 1870. The magazine was a weekly publication and featured essays, poetry, serialized fiction, and other writings. I just happened to notice the plaque after I noticed that there was a coffee house there that was using his name. Who knew? :-)

We’ve eaten at Sophie’s before, but we are usually there after dark when we’ve gone in the past and everything is so busy, so it’s easy to miss things. That’s why I really loved getting a chance to sit there in the daylight and take a look around. So as a lover of literature, I was truly excited to be around where Dickens once walked. By the way, the light bulbs that you see in the photo are inside the restaurant, but I thought it would be fun for you to see the plaque the way I first saw it.

And here’s a better view of the plaque from outside and a view of the building from down the street…



After we had lunch, we took a walk around Covent Garden. I love strolling around the market there and doing some people watching. Here are a few photos of the sights…



Check out the tasty looking cupcakes above, all lined up and ready to be sold. I wanted to taste all of them ;-)

Below is the entryway of a lovely shop called, Benjamin Pollock’s Toyshop. I thought that this display looked so inviting for a child of any age from 5 to 105. To the right of this display there were stairs that led up to the shop. It seemed all beautifully Willy Wonka-esque to me and I loved it! :-)



We walked along to another section of the market and I told Brit Boy that I wanted to check and see if the palm reader was there that I visited a couple of years ago. The palm reader was very intriguing and it was all in fun, but some things that he said did resonated, so who knows??? :-) Sadly though, he wasn’t there anymore. We did see someone else we remembered from before though. There was an artist that we met before and we bought a print from him. It made me happy to see that he was still there using his creativity and doing great work :-)

After our walk around Covent Garden, we decided to head to a museum. We decided upon the Science Museum. I’m usually one more for the art-filled museums, but this was a very interesting place. It was a good change of pace. There were loads and loads of exhibits. There was a lot about NASA and a bit about everything and I mean everything that has ever been created. I came away with one main thought about the whole experience. Humankind has created so much and it boggles my mind to think of what it must’ve been like to create things that had never existed before. It's something special to have the faith to see it through in bringing new things to the world.

There were day to day items and big things to see, but what also stuck with me was that it made me see our place in the passing of time. One day, some of the things that we use in our homes everyday may be in a display case for others to see. And feeling that connection to the thread of history, even as an everyday person, made me feel a bit in awe. What a glorious feeling that was.

It’s hard to really share representative photos since there was so much, but here are a very few.

Above: Ford Model T - 1916



Above: Panhard & Levassor car - 1895. This is an example of the type of car that won the world's first motor race in France in 1895.

Above: a Royal Mail coach

Above: Apollo 10 Command Module - 1969

As our Saturday in London drew to a close, we strolled back along the edge of Hyde Park and the leafy surroundings. The light was beautiful as the sun was retreating. Take a look…





Below are our feet, you have a Dori foot and a couple of Brit Boy feet ;-) This is a photo I took while we were taking a breather and sitting in Hyde Park.


It was a wonderfully varied day and I enjoyed our trip to London as I always do. We made our way back to Paddington Station and caught our train back to Wiltshire. I hope you enjoyed coming along with us! :-)

It's All About the Journey

Just wanted to share a sunny picture. Hope you enjoy it!

I had a pretty great weekend :-) Brit Boy and I didn’t go anywhere special or doing anything out of the ordinary, but it was a good quiet weekend and I had a chance to reflect on something I just accomplished. So all weekend, I was basking in the glow :-)

For those of you who are new readers or those who may have forgotten since I didn’t bring it up much ;-) , I was taking a freelance and features writing course over the past several months, well it was actually a year and a half. I didn’t bring it up a lot because there wasn’t much to tell from day to day and also I’ll admit, it was a bit of a struggle sometimes :-) But here’s the absolutely beautiful thing that is bursting out of me right now as I write these words…it was difficult, but I did it! And I don’t say that to say “hey look at me”, I say that because I am just so darned proud of what it means for me as a person…something that I needed to prove to myself…that I can see a difficult task through until the end.

I don’t know if I would have been so candid with you all when I began my course eighteen months ago, but it is SO SO TRUE…the truth does indeed set you free! :-)

See, I know me and I don’t have a great track record with things like this. Oh yeah, I’ve gotten through life fine, but I’ve never really made it through the tape at the finish line in this way for a long, long time. So this milestone lets me know that I still have drive within…something that I thought that I’d left in my wake too long ago. But the beauty is that “she” is still in there…the authentic me that I forgot in the flurry of moving across the water and becoming a wife. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t regret my journey over here at all, but some days it has seemed like my determination dropped off somewhere over the Atlantic. Well, with the completion of my course, I feel that I went diving deep and found my drive again. Hallelujah! :-)

I turned in my final lesson on Friday and I immediately began to smile on the outside, the inside, and everywhere possible :-) I know that this may seem a modest milestone to the wide world, but in essence it is EVERYTHING, because today I join countless people all over this planet who are celebrating something amazing in their lives…whether it is large or small. We all wake up every day and are bombarded with terrible news and so I think that this makes it even more important to celebrate those joyous moments in our lives that make our hearts sing! :-)

I haven’t found out my final grade and of course I’m intrigued to find out the result. However, I mean this with the truest honest heart…I have already made the grade. I took the journey…so the destination is just the icing on the cake. I’m truly grateful in this moment and I just wanted to share my joy with you all.

Have a great day everybody!