London: the rest of our trip

The great weather continued for the rest of our London visit, so we ended up walking through parks most of the time.  The museums can wait for a rainy day.

Day 2: Laurel had a bit of work to take care of in the morning, so we didn't get moving until around 2:00.  Rented bikeshare bikes ("Boris Bikes") and rode to Regent's Park.  I started reading Mrs. Dalloway shortly before moving to Manchester, and finished it on our trip to London, so I was keen to visit all the sites mentioned therein.  We saw some beautiful and exotic waterfowl there, which we were thrilled to add to Laurel's bird list.  Then we saw more and more exciting species that we couldn't identify, until eventually it dawned on us that there was no way all these ducks could be there naturally.  Turns out it's basically a zoo for waterfowl.  Had to strike out those items in the List.

so many ducks, so exotic!

Thanks to reverse image search on google images, we learned that this is a Red-breasted goose (endangered), which breeds in arctic Siberia and winters in the Black Sea.  Not the UK.

We did see a mandarin duck later in the day, and those guys have gone feral in the UK, so maybe it counts, maybe not.  But it doesn't really matter, mandarin ducks are so beautiful you just enjoy them for what they are and don't worry about bird listing.

Mandarin duck 

Laurel here: In addition to the exotic birds, we saw delightful behavio(u)r demonstrated by a familiar local species, the humble coot. Coots were pairing up and preparing for future cootlings all over the place. One coot we saw was hiding in the reeds; when we looked closer, we saw she was sitting on a nest full of eggs! Another coot was assiduously fetching sticks for his nest-sitting mate. He'd paddle over to a clump of reeds, grab a stick with his beak, paddle it back to his mate, "beak" it to her, then she would grab it with her beak and place it onto the nest. So sweet! <3 Ok, now back over to Ed.

Coot on nest with eggs

Our only plan for the evening was dinner and a play, both in Soho.  After a few hours in the park, we walked south, making a short detour to visit a fancy tea shop we order from regularly (Postcard Teas). We didn't have time to sit and sip several steeps of tea, so we moved on quickly.  But right around the corner was a very slick boutique devoted to dates.  Yep, the dried desert fruit.
Background: I've never been wild about dates, but I've also never thought much about them or had a chance to try any that are supposed to be special.  As we all know, preconceptions about quality strongly impact our appreciation of food or drink (here's where we all invoke those studies we vaguely remember reading about where wine experts were tricked into highly rating a wine based on reported price, or thought the white wine + food coloring was red wine, or something like that).  So I was curious to see whether I would really like dates if I had a chance to pay a lot of money for them! I also love doing samplings of several types of simple foods, like cheeses, olive oils, fruits.  One of my favorite food party tricks is to give people tastes of two different single origin chocolates (like Rogue Chocolatier's Balao and Sambirano) and then reveal that each bar only has two ingredients: cocoa and sugar, and the dramatic flavor difference is due to cocoa variety alone.
Back to our story: I asked the lady behind the counter: what's the deal with this place? in my best broad, folksy, loud american accent.  "Is from Saudi" she replied in a vaguely foreign accent.  Okay! We'll take 2 each of the 8 different varieties on offer, please!  It only came to £10, so not too extravagant.
We then made a quick stop at Whole Foods and picked up some rice cakes and black sesame/tamari rice crackers that we can't find in MCR.  With our bag of eccentric groceries in hand, we had a tasty dumpling dinner at Yuatcha, then hurried to the theater for a stage adaptation of Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, with a 4 person cast.  All of the bit parts were played by just two actors, who were the real stars of the show, which essentially was a celebration of old timey slapstick stage comedy.  Very fun, completely unserious.  We tried a few of the dates when we got back to the apartment: some delicious, others kind of dry and starchy.  But the good ones were very good, and had distinct flavors.

Day 3: Cinnamon buns at Nordic Bakery in the morning.  Yum!

Walked through Hyde Park, where I spied a green woodpecker (a new bird for Laurel's list) and ended up at Kensington Palace.  Nice park, but palace not a big draw.

The name of this sculpture is "Physical Energy"

 Back east and down to Buckingham Palace, where we saw the gates open up and a fancy car drive inside (possibly conveying a Royal! gasp!) which really added to my Mrs. Dalloway tourist experience.  Tube to Borough Market for a late lunch, then crossed over the river for Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, and the Temple, which was neat to me as both the son of lawyer and someone who's read almost all of the Rumpole of the Bailey books.  Dinner at Nopi, an Ottolenghi restaurant.  Far and away our best meal in London.

Day 4: We spent most of the day at Kew Gardens, which are great.

The diagonal palm-looking tree here is a cycad that was planted at Kew in 1775!  This individual is very old, but cycads are very old in evolutionary terms, having persisted since the time of the dinosaurs.

In bird news, I saw a goldcrest which is like the UK equivalent of a kinglet.  Super cute.  We also observed some very dramatic behavior at a small island in a pond where several waterfowl were nesting.  Our attention was first attracted by a nesting swan, who we saw rearranging her eggs.  I then heard a coot start squawking as a crow landed on the island.  I thought to myself: I wonder if that crow is trying to steal an egg?  Why don't the other birds chase it off?  The coot realizes this is a threat!  And just then the crow picked up a medium egg (goose egg?) from an unguarded nest and flew off!  Daylight robbery!

 Got some sustainably harvested cod and haddock fried to order at Golden Union, then hopped on a 9:00 pm train back to Manchester.  Polished off Mrs. Dalloway, then started in on H is for Hawk.

London:  5 stars.  Would visit again.

At the Kensington Palace gardens.

Since then: got a new phone with a UK contract over the weekend, so I feel more and more like a legitimate resident here.  Officially started work at my new lab on Monday.  Laurel and I have been intensively house hunting, no luck yet.