Day 21 9 June 2019 Belgravia, Knightsbridge and some Tennis.

Simple plans for the day, have a look around Knightsbridge/Belgravia, French Open Men’s Final and get ready for tomorrow, the start of our road trip of Britain.
Lucky for us, I decided we needed an early start, so I got up at 4:00am. I discovered it’s light here at that time. I don’t know what time sunrise starts here (and I don’t want to experience it), but it was well underway. Somehow I managed to wake Deb, ? , so we both got an early start.

We caught up with our washing and got our suitcases organised for the road. We are going to try and live out of one suitcase, it just makes it easier with our short stays, stairs and much smaller rooms coming up.
Anyway, we got away from the flat at around 10am, and walked through Hyde Park to Belgravia. The London Pride Run was on this morning and the finish line was close to where we crossed through Hyde Park. Lots of people making big finishes, and some not so much!
We got to Belgravia in no time, Deb had a few swish hotels she wanted to look at/in. First up was The Berkeley, it has a single front door closely “guarded” by doormen, so we didn’t even try to go in. As we walked on, we came upon a church, St Paul’s, its bells were calling the faithful. As we passed we could see a man near the front doors ringing the tower bells. We walked passed a beautiful small park/garden, the gate was locked and the sign above it said “Access for registered keyholders only” and “No ball games, bicycles or other noisy activities”, they forgot “No Fun!”. There seems to be many private community gardens in this area. We passed another, and it was open for the public, sort of. It was part of an Open Garden Square weekend, 15 pound a ticket.
We admired the garden from over the fence and kept walking. We found the Belmond Cadogan Hotel, which had a great looking bar, but was too early for a drink, and then made our way to Motcomb St to see Ottolenghi’s Belgravia store. Deb loves his cooking.
Then we walked across to Harrods. We got there at about 11:15am, it didn’t open until 11:30 and there was a small crowd gathering around the doors already. 11:30am came, the doors were opened and we all went in. Then there was an announcement that this was browsing time, and that you couldn’t actually buy anything until 12 noon! We had never experienced “Browsing Time” before, a strange concept. Have all your staff standing around not taking customers money for 30 minutes! We had a look around and left with a lot of others about 5 mins before noon. We wanted to buy some things but didn’t want to wait, so we got them elsewhere. I am sure that applied to many others.
We walked back home via Ottolenghi’s, where we picked up a few things for lunch. A magificent piece of focaccia and an almond croissant. Both were delicious.
We did a bit more washing and watched the Tennis Final. It was an amazing game Nadal winning in 4 sets.
Tomorrow we head to Canterbury. It is the beginning of our 3 week drive of the south coast of England.