I have given you all two weeks of explaining why and how I decided to return to the United Kingdom this past June, and enough of the suspense, already, you must be thinking.

Let’s get this show on the road!

 “Andiamo,” as the Italians say.  Let’s go.

We (my travel buddy Marystephanie and I), arrived in Heathrow determined not to just take any old way into London.  We got into a black cab and gave the cabbie the address of the Ampersand Hotel on 10 Harrington Road in South Kensington.  Now, according to legend, London cab drivers actually have bigger brains than normal humans because they need to memorize all the crazy byways in London.  Our cabbie may not have been at the top of his class.  He got us to South Kensington but then started driving us down Harrington Gardens Street as the meter fluttered wildly.  We were paying good money to be driven on a semi-wild goose chase.

Marystephanie politely mentioned—several times, I might add—that we were looking for Harrington ROAD.  Finally, the driver heeded her hint and got us to the hotel. In his defense, he was truly lost and he did stop the meter for that last quarter mile. At any rate, we eventually arrived at the Ampersand (&) Hotel.

Then we were off to the Victoria & Albert Museum to see the Elsa Schiaparelli (1890-1973) exhibit. Schiaparelli, dismissed by Coco Chanel as “that Italian artist who makes clothes,” was a designer who loved surrealistic designs.  At a costume ball in Paris Schiaparelli came dressed as a tree and Chanel pushed her into a candelabra setting her on fire.  That’s what I call a true rivalry.

Yet it was correct that Schiaparelli did love art and artists and her clothing is fantastic and fantastical. Coco’s taunt was true, and I’m sure that Elsa took it as a compliment.  We wandered through the exhibit, enjoying her many creations.

One of her designs was the Hall of Mirrors jacket (1939) designed for Elsie de Wolfe, which featured rococo hand mirrors as buttons. De Wolfe lived on the grounds of Versailles. The mirrors, in Elsa’s surrealist vision, were seen as “portals to the soul.”

Another piece entitled Home Grown was created in 1941 and featured vegetables as a nod to the work of women growing food during the Second World War.  Elsa moved to New York City in May 1941, returning to France after the German occupation ended.

We loved the exhibit but began to notice that it was quite warm inside the museum.  We had arrived in London just in time for a record-breaking heat wave, with temperatures reaching about 96 degrees.  We walked back to our beautifully air-conditioned hotel and got ready to have dinner at Pravaas, our favorite Indian restaurant in South Kensington.

We were able to order one of our favorite appetizers - pani puri shots, which are wheat puffs filled up with chickpeas, served with 3 different varieties of water: coriander – cumin and tamarind water, strawberry- mint and chili water, and passionfruit, black salt, dates, and chili jam water. Oh my, are they good!

We hurried back to our rooms and got ready for our train journey tomorrow to Derbyshire where our hikes to great houses would begin. I had to begin my always inept attempts at packing.