Bustling Mayfair, London
We got off the ship and into a private car hire to take us on the fairly long journey from Tilbury to Mayfair. Hang onto your hats, kiddies, this gets complicated.
Mayfair is a neighbourhood in Westminster, which is both a city and a borough of Inner London, which is an area of Greater London, not to be confused with the City of London, which is also a city itself, but isn’t one of the 32 boroughs, although it’s a ceremonial county and still part of Greater London.
Whatevs. It’s right in the middle of everything and our hotel is right in the middle of Mayfair. It’s even called the May Fair.
The room wasn’t ready yet (of course) but we ditched the luggage at the hotel and set off to find Harrods department store. I almost didn’t recognize it with all the scaffolding out front.
If you’re not familiar with Harrods, it’s holy-crap-huge. There are six floors and over a million square feet of shopping. When we entered, we asked the security guard where to find the café. He said, “Which one? We have fifteen.” The store is laid out by category, with different floors belonging to different kinds of items. From there, each floor is separated by brand. We passed through the Chanel area and several other high-end clothing brands on the way to the escalator to the third floor, which was house/home. The Harrods Café was next to a kitchen appliance area where they sold Le Creuset cookware and fancy espresso machines. I coveted one of those until I checked the price: £1,395 ($2,400 CAD)!
Anyway, we popped into the café for a quick bite - a very British lunch of scones with clotted cream and jam, plus a pot of tea.
And how many times will you ever say “you gotta check out the escalators!” - But yeah, that’s a thing here.
There’s even a Lego shop on the fourth floor with a full-sized “Green Man” (Harrods iconic door greeter) on display.
We walked over to Harrods but decided to ride the Underground back to the hotel, which was actually pretty easy.
Back at the hotel, I chuckled at the sign by the door, which might be the most British sign I’ve ever seen.
Got checked in, then I headed back out on my own to explore the neighbourhood a bit more. The lady at the Lego shop in Harrods said they didn’t have any items specific to London or Harrods, but she thought the Lego store in Leicester Square did. I walked down to Piccadilly and headed toward Leicester Square (pronounced “Lester” for some reason). Past Piccadilly Circus and on to the Lego Store, which was easy to find. Just look for the people waiting to get in.
Oh, but wait. It’s not just those 11 people waiting to get in… once you get around the corner, the rest of the queue comes into view.
Yep. There were around 200 folks lined up waiting to get into the store. Across the street at M&M World, almost as bad. Luckily, once inside (it only took about 15 minutes to get in) the store was amazing. Right off the bat, you’ve got an almost life-sized Aston Martin from the last Bond movie.
The doors open and you can sit inside the car. The headlights work, too!
There were giant sized minifigures built of Lego bricks, each about a meter tall.
Very cute, but the show-stopper for me was the massive, intricate replica of the Tower where Big Ben lives. It was at least 10m (33 ft) tall. Pretty impressive, even for the world’s largest Lego store.
I picked up a few of the store-exclusive minifigures (named Lester, of course) and headed out.
I enjoyed looking at all the models and stuff, but the store was really, really crowded. Not that leaving the store made that any better. Outside the store was just as bad. I took a different route back to the hotel, navigating through Chinatown.
I haven’t been into central London in ages, so I don’t know if it’s always this crowded, or if it’s just extra busy because of the upcoming coronation. There were certainly enough reminders around of that event.
I eventually made my way back to the hotel and we had a really nice dinner at the hotel restaurant then crashed after a long and tiring day. Lots to see and do tomorrow, too.
More from London, the next day