Epilogue: We have Circumnavigated the Globe

We are home now. It has been a adventure filled 5 weeks that seems to have gone by so fast. That is the Paradox of travel. We traveled to 10 countries Chile, French Polynesia, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Qatar  Seychelles, Great Britain, Isle of Man and the United States. We have been to  15 cities Santiago, Hanga Roa, Papeete, Auckland, Melbourne, Denpasar, Doha, Anse Des Gents, Basingstoke, Thornbury, Liverpool, Douglas, London and Miami. And we have flown close to 30 000 miles. All that and we are closer than ever.  It has been a blessing and we are so lucky to be able to do this. An even greater blessing is to have each other to share it with and to share all the love.

John picked us up in his limo. As we pulled away from the airport and onto Highway 95 this double rainbow shone bright across the skyline of Miami. He drove us home where we found Veronica and little Pickles waiting for us. To take these five weeks and be able to spend all day every day with the woman that I love is the greatest gift this trip has given me! Time to book some more flights!

Lunch at the clove Club

After our late night at the theater I slept in until 10:30! This left little time to eat breakfast before it was time to eat lunch. Actually our lunch reservation was for 1:30 which was a good thing. It has been getting incrementally hotter as the days went by in London and today it was going to break into the 90s. We checked on Google and saw that the 3.4 mile ride was going to take us 35 minutes! So we call down to the concierge to get a taxi early. We hate to be late. Good thing we called for an early cab because it actually took us 50 minutes to go that far. Our driver explained that all of London is being torn up for improvements to the road. He actually reduced the cost of our taxi ride from £35 down to £20.  We were glad thatb this taxi was air-conditioned. We saw a lot of people sweating out on the streets and in other cabs.  The ride back seem to go a lot faster and the bill certainly was smaller. Fewer people were out as the heat got up into about 92 or 93.   We bounced around a little bit more on Oxford Street and had another picnics only this time in our room. We got ready to fly out the following day Wednesday. . It was a good day to be leaving, with an expected record high temperature on Thursday and a possible British Airways strike on Friday, it's the universe telling us that time for our trip to be over.

This restaurant had already named themselves the Clove Club butn organization in Scotland already had the rights that name. Things are not looking good. The restaurant invited the Scots to dinner. They gave them a seven-course dinner which convinced them that they could share the name Clove Club

Logo

Sweet and thoughtful 

Nick is new and from Toronto 

Sparkling Kambucha 

Chicken shaped serving dishes

 Smoked trout belly 

Scallops with elderberry flowers served in the Shell of a head of a crab

Buttermilk coated fried chicken with pine salt served in a bed of pine needles

The secret box containing haggis balls

Oh such lovely haggis

Melons are frozen and then graded out to make a gazpacho with ham jelly and Ash cream

Bioactive vegetable salad some cooked some raw

The kombucha was quite nice

A tasty tuna dish

A very busy kitchen indeed

Saithe fish with Indian Street Food spices

A deboned chicken foot served up fried like pork rinds inside a chicken shaped serving dish

Many levels of chicken indeed

This particular type of chicken Liz twice as long as other chickens. This gives them a much richer flavor

A bubbly emulsion

Awardsline the walls. They have two Michelin stars and have been in the top 50 restaurants for 3 years running

Sliced strawberries on top of a strawberry jelly with cream mixed with the sake sediment 

Finely chopped strawberries in a cup

The second dessert a bit of ice cream and a Bakewell pie with Black currants

The final snacks served on half of a bottle of wine

And a very happy anniversary it has been all around the world

Our Spanish friend Iris 

Some crazy street art on our way home

Peace

London architecture

All of the legs of the scaffolding we're wrapped in foam cushioning. I wonder if this is because the people staring at their phones continue to walk into them

When you drive this kind of car you can just pull up on the sidewalk in park

Interactive signs you can push them one way and get one color and the other way and get another

Selfridges and the Open Air Theatre

First thing, we had an early lunch at Roka. Sushi, some grilled meats and a tasty beer for Leslie. Then we went to Selfridges to stock up for another picnic dinner. Selfridges is an entire city block and is basically credited as being the first department store ever. Of course we found fine teas and all kinds of crazy things to look through. One of the places we found was a caviar bar. Leslie had fine champagne and we shared the "Love" flight of very tasty caviar. We also bought Ox tongue, wild boar sausage and Black Forest ham to make sandwiches . Then we went off to the Open Air Theatre which is in Regent's Park.  It is the largest theater in London. They were presenting the Midsummer's Night Dream from Shakespeare. We loved this great production. We were unable to take photos during the production but the layout was very very interesting and we enjoyed the entire thing. The costumes of the fairies was particularly strange. They were all in black, wore industrial stilts and had spikes for hair.   The walk down to the park was 1.3 miles. However the walk back was over 1.5 miles because the entry we used was closed.  We had to walk around via the road to get back. It was close to midnight when we arrived back at the residences and the doorman actually had the door locked. He had to unlock it to let us in.

Lunch spot

I am continually amazed at how many ways the toilets can be marked

These were quite modern and minimalist 

So much tea

You could request a special type or a special blend 

Tea pots

Caviar yum

Leslie has determined that the drinks she likes all have bubbles

Love the caviar 

The theme is Love

The accoutrements 

Sturgeon themed chocolates 

The site of our evening picnic in Regent's Park

Flowers in Regent's Park

The service area for wine and beer and food

I'll have a glass of wine

Finding our entrance

Waiting for the theater to open

The breeze was delightful 

Row E

E is for eye level

The seats are filling in

Looking all around

Soon to be filled with faeries sprites and spirits

It was very physical for the actors. Lots if running about and gesturing 

                  All part of the performance