to London

You travel, you suffer the inconvenience, you see beautiful things, you go home and it's done. If you traveled well, you will have stimulated your senses deeply. The show you bought tickets for, whether a classical performance or Taylor Swift, moved you to tears, the museum opened your eyes to new art forms, the meal you ate was like no other. You're ready to do all this again: a new place, with the potential for new impressions, new beautiful parks, new tasty foods, here we go! And again! It's like me to live like this. Soaking in what I see, whom I meet, what I eat. But every once in a while, I demand more of myself. 

On this trip, I demanded more. 

Poland required of me that extra charge. I needed more stamina, for one thing! Social perseverance. You have to remember that I am a quiet person who rarely these days steps out of her home orbit. I see friends. Occasionally. Certainly not every day for periods of 6, 7, 8 hours at a time, nine days in a row. That intensity works beautifully for those friends who are almost family, but otherwise -- it's work!

Sissinghurst -- it asked that I focus with care, with an open mind and heart. It asked that I bring back thoughts and images I've had that lay dormant for decades now. It very much set forth the stage for my future conduct -- in the farmette flower fields and beyond. In other words, I needed to get ready for it, and I needed to take away more than just a stack of flower notes and photos and the occasional souvenir. 

All this has been exhausting and as a result, I've consistently slept poorly. (The more mentally tired I am, the worst the night promises to be.) It hasn't helped that I seem to have shot my unreplaced knee early on and the pain from that is irritating, especially at 3 o'clock in the morning. I took a selfie yesterday in the gardens and looking at it, I thought -- my, but I suddenly look ancient! It may have been the lighting. I don't think it was the lighting.

But this last night, my next to last night in Europe and final night at Sissinghurst -- I slept beautifully. The magic of Sissinghurst? Maybe. More likely, the contentment that follows when you truly believe that you did the best you could and did not shy away from the challenges. (And nothing fell apart and you didn't get sick and the weather was like a gift!)

I wake up smiling. Good morning, Sissinghurst!

It's going to be a beautiful day!

I go down to breakfast early. So that I can sit by the window. Mmmm, wonderful breakfast options once again.

 

And once again I go on to a second course, this time just porridge. 

It's just after 9 when I am done and packed and ready to go. Richard will be driving me to the station in Staplehurst, but not for another hour.

I go for a walk. Toward the Estate buildings first. Closed of course, but still, it gives me a few minutes to just stand outside and look. And reinforce all that I have taken away from here. 

It also gives me a chance to see a family member walk over to the private wing. Who are you? In age, you could be the son of the grandson. [Adam is the grandson of Vita and Harold. He has five children -- three sons by a first wife, two daughters by his second wife who is the very well known and well regarded author and gardener, Sarah Raven. But Adam and Sarah rarely come down to Sissinghurst. Rumor has it that they have a fraught relationship with the National Trust. Something to do with the mini series that was made about Sissinghurst and the Trust and Adam and Sarah's plan to do organic farming and grow fruits and vegetables here. There were issues. You can watch some of it on YouTube.]

(I think this cottage too is used by the family)

I walk on. To the vegetable garden, because the walk there passes the stretch of countryside that I find so beautiful...

And because the vegetable garden remains open 24/7. And, of course, there's beauty in all that grows here.

As I study the layout, admire the berries, the pea pods, the sunflowers, my thoughts go back to the Estate itself: it attracts visitors from all over the world, but it's not as if it's ever packed. Right now, in August, there are no buses dropping off tired groups of seniors (though there are plenty of seniors! Gardens always attract an older crowd). It is no Giverny. It's tame here. You dont have to come in the last hour before closing to feel you have the place to yourself. [I'm sure it gets more crowded in spring. Understandable. August is a slow month in the gardens. Vita wrote this about August: "dull time, heavy time, when everything has lost its youth and is overgrown and mature." Still, Monet's garden attracts 500 000 visitors each year. Sissinghurst -- more like 100 000.]

And I wonder -- the people who come for the gardens, are they the live and let live type, without the judgemental horror that I think would belong to those who find unusual relational behavior to be reprehensible? Can you even separate Sissinghurst, the gardens, from Sissinghurst, the estate once owned and managed by Vita and Harold? Should you?

 

 

 

It's a good ending to my visit here.

 

On the drive to the station, we talk about Sissinghurst. Who lives there now, their relationship to the National Trust, the future of all these mansions in Britain, given that even the wealthy here are often cash poor and cannot pay the required taxes on their inheritance, let alone maintain the properties to a "proper standard."

Though many of these estates wind up being donated to the National Trust, Sissinghurst is different, in that a handful of visitors can actually stay on the premises (me, for example).  Richard tells me there's no other National Trust property quite like it. So I ask him how is it that he and Anna became "owners for a decade." Perhaps predictably, it's complicated. Richard was the vicar in the village. He and Anna befriended the previous "owners" and when their time was up, he was ready for the challenge. Anna, who has a background in hospitality, was less certain about plunging forth. But plunge they did and put in a bid, and then it was down to a dozen finalists, and then down to six, and finally theirs won. And now day in and day out, she is baking cakes for tea and overseeing the kitchen in the mornings and corresponding with silly people like me who want to know about the local restaurants and whether a certain room is bright and sunny, while he is attending to the finances and acting as a taxi service to those (again, like me) who come here without a car.

Perhaps the only good thing about this kind of work is that it shuts down for three winter months.

You mean you're open in March already? Good to know!

(Train ride to London)

And now I am back in my hotel, the Knightsbridge, a lovely place in a godawful (from my perspective) part of town. Or is it that all of London just seems this way to me? Crowded noisy and dirty? (Think: rubbish on the streets, heaping trash bags waiting at the curb for who knows how long for pick up... like New York! Which is one reason why I do not like New York.)

I would have tried another neighborhood of the city, a quieter one, with a more neighborhoody feel to it, but I was tied to this one because of my missing suitcase. Which did eventually show up here. But, not to fuss. I do like the hotel -- it's small and charming and once again they upgraded me to a giant room for who knows what reason. Maybe I joined some kind of loyalty program when booking. I tend to do that sort of thing.

One more impediment to my arrival in London: somewhere between Sissinghurst and London I blew out my lower back. Maybe I lifted a heavy bag too quickly. The fault is always with a sudden movement or a sudden heave, so now I am without a functional back and without a functional knee. This gives me an excuse not to do much this afternoon. You've got your view of the Parliament Buildings and Big Ben from the train, what else could you possibly want from this city!

Still, I do want my coffee, preferably with a pastry, so with great difficulty I get myself up and moving to venture out onto Brompton Road in search of a coffee shop. I'll give you one pretty sight of a side street:

And then the great monster road itself,  Brompton, though I've spared you the sidewalk with the piled trash. I have my standards!

Oh, and of my "lunch." I consider myself a bit of an expert on blueberry tarts, having sampled (and documented here on Ocean such samplings) at least a dozen this year alone, from France to Poland and now England, and I will say, this one in London is one heck of a good blueberry tart. They tell me it has elderflower something or other in it. I couldn't hear what exactly because older people cannot distinguish words easily when there is a din of music and loud talking in the dining area.

Toward evening I set out once again. I made a reservation in a restaurant that sounded just too good to pass by, even though google told me it's a 37 minute walk from my hotel and with my back and knee issues, I knew I needed to double that. 

I walked through Hyde Park. It was green. It was loud. It had many bicycles. People seemed happy.

(And I found an expanse that actually had few people or cyclists in it. It was not easy.)

 

(I also found a guy wearing a t-shirt which, if seen by my grandkids, would cause them to exclaim to me "hey, you say that all the time!" True. I do.)

And then back into the city. Having some time to kill, I side step onto nearby Oxford Street. 

 

 

I already know that I'm not a fan of it. I've always disliked it because it's so packed with so many irrelevant stores, but I'm near Selfridges, yet another department store (I've already checked Harvey Nichols earlier today) and I still haven't found anything for the kids. Clothes they can use in early fall.  

Nope. Not here either. These stores are for foreigners who have a few oil fields among their holdings, or Brits who talk in hushed voices lest someone recognize that they are toff. (I learned that word today! One of the restaurant people explained -- posh. It means posh.)

The restaurant, by the way, is called Apricity. 

 

 

 I had to look that word up -- it's a new one for me. It means the light and warmth of the sun. That sounds kind of new agey and it definitely is not what drew me here. What did pull me in was the write up (and of course the reviews). It's not cheap, but then nothing in this city is cheap. My tart and coffee eaten in humble surroundings had cost me $21.56. (I just looked at my credit card notice.) And honestly -- the dinner total was not that far away from yesterday's at the Milk House! Pretty remarkable considering I am in London.

About the restaurant and what drew me to it: Apricity uses (in their words) hyper-seasonal sustainable produce from small-scale farmers and locally foraged ingredients, with a low-waste approach to cooking. They get not a Michelin rosette, but a Michelin green star. I read about British vegetables here, and regeneratively farmed meat, and sustainably caught fish of the British Isles. And they pay a fair wage to their staff. This is a big deal to me, having worked in a restaurant for several years and having seen what happens when cooks, dish washers and waitstaff rely on discretionary tipping to get by. Here, the chef-owner is a woman and in London there are very few women chefs in good restaurants.

 

Yes, but how is the food???

It is very, very good. I'm going to say it because it's true: it was probably the best dinner I've ever had in any of my trips to London. 

It started with a fabulous Negroni drink: they collect leftover red wine and make vermouths out of them. This they add to their Negronis. For the meal, I ordered the stuffed zucchini flower with zucchini pieces and cucumber slices on the side. Pickled cucumber slices (they called it "smacked cucumber"). The British are very prone to adding pickled stuff to a cold dish.  

For the second course I ordered the mushrooms. 

 

 

 

Black pearl and oyster, over Flanders wheat. Hearing about where they were grown (in the city of London) and what was used to stimulate their growth was scary (this is London: anything grown here to me is suspect), but the combination of crispy and creamy was totally wonderful. 

And I ordered dessert. I had to! I asked for the strawberry dish which also had a basil granita and I believe cashew cream. It also had something crispy and sticky in it, which added a pleasant crunch, but the most memorable things was the combination of all these flavors. Outstanding! 

Are the British ready for this gem of a restaurant??

The walk home was... long. I considered hailing a cab, but the thought of that was somewhat terrifying as the traffic in the city remains dense, despite the fees imposed on drivers within the center. When I had asked about that on the long and congested ride from the airport the cabbie laughed and said -- the fees changed nothing. Everyone just pays them. And by the way, it's unfair! You own a car, you shouldn't have to pay to drive it. He told me!

 

 

So I walked. And I thought about how strange that I had bumped into a Taylor Swift concert in Scotland, I had bumped into the tail end of one in Warsaw, and now again -- Taylor Swift is here, in London. For you Swifties out there, let me reassure you, I am not just secretly here to attend her show!

And that was London for me. Tomorrow morning, I leave. To return home.

with love...