08 September 2012

Got up fairly early this morning and headed over to the Huntingdon train station to catch the 7 am train to Kings Cross.  I guess I probably got there at 6:45; I had plenty of time to get my ticket and get a bottle of water at the little news agent there at the station.  Right up until 7:02, the board for the 7:00 train was saying "On Time"; at 7:02, it changed to "Cancelled" :-(  Apparently, a freight train broke down and nothing was getting thru south.  The trains on the hour are 8-carriage trains; on the :34, they're 4-carriage trains, which was what made it at 7:34 to pick up 3 trains-worth of passengers.  Very crowded trip to Kings Cross, but we finally did manage to get there.

I took a taxi from Kings Cross to Kitchen & Pantry, when I had a mushroom and onion omlette and a skinny latte, while I played around with the free WiFi (and managed to avoid the toast; they gave me a 'side salad' instead).  I called the Globe Theatre at 10, but they still didn't have any seats for the matinee, so I gave that up as a lost cause and headed off to do a bit of shopping and visiting.  I got some pretty cool stuff, including 2 beautiful pewter goblets, a pewter 'duck and hen' (basically a double-sided shot glass), a lovely scarf, a cool magnifying glass, some lavender oil (good for burns), a set of 12 silverplate butter/cheese/pate knives, 2 silverplate half-size covered butter dishes with the original glass inserts and a 1910 book called Legends of the Rhine, which is in excellent shape.  I also tried out a new (for me anyway) Japanese place called So, in Soho. 

My treasures from today's trip to the Portobello Road Market:

I got back to Alconbury around 6 pm.  I'll have an early night and then check out some English Heritage/National Trust properties on the way home.  It was another successful diet day--I wanted some chocolate but I managed to talk myself out of it.  Yippee!!