Our intrepid travelers met up in London around 11am on May, 7th, which happens to be Laura's Birthday. Although Danielle's flight landed 90 minutes later than the Florida girls, she arrived at the house only 15 minutes after they did. After some hugs, and a much needed shower, we ventured out of the house and up the hill in the neighborhood we are staying in for some lunch at a local pub….. Where, of course, we encountered our first issue with our credit cards. At the pub, they wanted to open a tab to serve us. We started with Sam's card…. Rejected. Laura's card… Rejected. Danielle's card…. Rejected. Danielle ran across the street to a Barclay's ATM, and was able to withdraw cash, so the group could eat. The sun was shining on the ATM screen, so she missed the part of the Terms and Conditions where Barclay's decided to add a 5.5% "handling fee" to the ATM transaction. OUCH. That was actually more expensive than the truly awful money changers at the airport. So much for avoiding extra fees. Next time, read the fine print. Anywho, after lunch, our group was much more pleasant, we wandered to a Marks and Spencer to get some snacks for the house, and chilled a bit before heading back into London to go to Clue Quest.
Clue Quest is a group activity where you are conscripted to be secret agents for Mr. Q. He (or rather, his emissary) asks you to enter a room, solve puzzles, and essentially save mankind. No big deal. Especially for four jet-lagged, but very intelligent Americans…
I won't go into a great amount of detail about how to solve the many puzzles in the room, but I will say we were very impressed with the number of secret compartments, secret doors, secret codes, red herrings, and how well we worked together to solve the puzzle. Needless to say, we did succeed, right in the nick of time, and were given our official Clue Quest ID badges. Apparently there is only a 25% success rate, so we left rather proud of ourselves (and also super hungry.)
We happened into a small italian restaurant sort of across the Main Street from Clue Quest. There was only one other table of people sitting down, but they were loud, obnoxious, and … American! This is why people hate us the world over, I am sure of it. We could barely hear ourselves. We ordered some food, not expecting much, but it was absolutely wonderful. We shared some bruschetta with mushrooms and gorgonzola, a caprese salad, chicken risotto, mushroom pasta, and a small pizza. All were wonderful. The bruschetta was so good, Sam ordered an extra order to go!
After we ate, we took the bus back to the train station and headed home for the night, where we all slept like the dead.
Clue Quest is a group activity where you are conscripted to be secret agents for Mr. Q. He (or rather, his emissary) asks you to enter a room, solve puzzles, and essentially save mankind. No big deal. Especially for four jet-lagged, but very intelligent Americans…
I won't go into a great amount of detail about how to solve the many puzzles in the room, but I will say we were very impressed with the number of secret compartments, secret doors, secret codes, red herrings, and how well we worked together to solve the puzzle. Needless to say, we did succeed, right in the nick of time, and were given our official Clue Quest ID badges. Apparently there is only a 25% success rate, so we left rather proud of ourselves (and also super hungry.)
We happened into a small italian restaurant sort of across the Main Street from Clue Quest. There was only one other table of people sitting down, but they were loud, obnoxious, and … American! This is why people hate us the world over, I am sure of it. We could barely hear ourselves. We ordered some food, not expecting much, but it was absolutely wonderful. We shared some bruschetta with mushrooms and gorgonzola, a caprese salad, chicken risotto, mushroom pasta, and a small pizza. All were wonderful. The bruschetta was so good, Sam ordered an extra order to go!
After we ate, we took the bus back to the train station and headed home for the night, where we all slept like the dead.
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