First full day in London...and a Sunday roast! (#20)

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Well, our first full day in London happened to be a Sunday, so you know what we had to have for lunch!!  Before we left Walnut Creek, Gary had made a Sunday roast reservation at a pub in London called the Lion & Unicorn.  It had great reviews from some gluten free blogger (and they even make GF Yorkshire pudding).  Once here in London, we looked at how to get from our apartment to the pub (we use the Rome2Rio app for this, and it is so helpful in giving all the different methods to get between any 2 points with directions, time, price all listed).  It looked like it would be a 40 minute Tube ride each way...and there was not much else near the pub that we wanted to see or do.  Somehow this just seemed like a crazy idea, so Gary went back to the gluten free Celiac community and found another pub, The Elgin, listed near Notting Hill.  This seemed a bit smarter so we headed off to discover Notting Hill and then have lunch.  I loved the Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts movie called Notting Hill so this sounded like a great idea.  The Tube got us there quickly and as soon as we got off the train we were caught in a sea of humanity wandering down Portobello Road...following signs to "Portobello Market".

SO MANY people!!! I had read about "Portobello Market" as being "a thing"...I didn't realize it was this kind of thing!!  I was expecting food stalls, not cheap trinkets and 5 million people wandering!!

We stumbled upon this shop was was the book store operated by Hugh Grant in the movie.  All the shops on the long street looked like this...tacky trinkets, vintage clothes and questionable  "antiques"...no thanks to all that!

There were some very pretty little side streets and this one had people lined up with tripods taking photos like crazy! It was very "Instagram Influencer" looking!

We got off that Portobello Road and continued on to our pub...here is The Elgin pub which looked quite nice outside...

the interior was kind of classic pub interior looking...and it was packed.

We both ordered the roast beef for our Sunday roast and, despite it's very good online reviews, we were quite disappointed.  The one little carrot and parsnip were totally overcooked, the beef was very thinly sliced and shall we say "well cooked", and the gravy was not particularly rich and flavorful.  The "roasties" were nice a crispy on the outside, (and cooked in duck fat!)...but I will say the Yorkshire pudding was the star!  (Sadly Gary couldn't have any). So far, the Eight Bells in Chipping Campden is winning the title of "Best Sunday roast"!

As it turned out there was a gluten free bakery a short walk away so off we headed...we got there about 20 minutes before closing time and the girls gave Gary a bunch of free extras (croissants and cinnamon rolls), so that improved our day!  We stopped a few doors up for tea (of course!) and then boarded a bus to take us home.  We opted to sit on the top deck so we could see the sights as the route of the bus would go by Hyde Park, Marble Arch, and other sights.  Once seated, we realized why these 2 great seats were vacant...the 2 guys sitting behind were having a 3 way phone conversation with someone on speaker phone in some middle-eastern language at such a loud volume!  Yikes!  We tried to ignore it, figuring the phone conversation would eventually end...but after about 1/2 hour of them shouting right behind our heads we realized it was never going to end so we got off the bus and hopped on the Tube, just to preserve our hearing and our sanity!

After our large lunch we didn't need to go out to dinner so opted to stay in, relax,  and just have some cheese and cracker and fresh fruit that we had picked up previously.  And then the great fire alarm debacle occurred!!  This was not our best day! But tomorrow is another day and we are headed to Windsor Castle and I just know it will be fabulous!


Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 19, 2026 at 7:04 AM

    There seems to be always some days during traveling that are better than others. We had an issue with a rental car that we had to return and the 1 we received in exchange also had a problem.. We lost half a day of sightseeing in the process. Fortunately, car #3 has been fine and we will be returning it this morning, as we travel back to the airport. -lmk

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