Souvenir of London from Starbucks, London

We went into Starbucks for coffee.

Toilets
Good ground floor large toilet big enough for wheelchair. Unisex. Free?

Free - so? We failed to find a free toilet in another coffee bar. They claimed their toilet was out of order. So we didn't go there for coffee.

The public toilets in the nearby area were in pairs. They take a twenty pence coin. Or two ten pence coins. This confused one foreigner. He put in one ten pence coin. We all throughout the system was malfunctioning.

We stood in line twice. The first time I refused to go in. I'd read about a woman who died. She was electrocuted in a metal toilet. Vandals had broken a light bulb. So the electric part was exposed and touched the walls which ran down to the metal toilet which was filled with water and as soon as she touched it, the whole place was live and she was electrocuted.

Other people came out alive. And I was desperate after wine and coffee. After use the toilet is self-cleaning so you wait while it cleans. No proper maps or signs to the toilets. No sign saying how far away they are. You don't know whether the public toilets are 20 yards away, 500 yards, or a mile.

No toilets inside the Rioja festival. I had a long skirt and was starting to look for a drain!

Souvenir Cups To Buy
So I was well disposed to Starbucks for providing the toilet. Then I spotted this pair of espresso cups. I could not resist a little cup with William Shakespeare and scenes of London. We had just visited the Rioja wine fair next to Tower Bridge.

What's good about these cups? Under £10, price of two cups of coffee, for a couple of souvenir cups.
What would I have liked different? White inside. You have to hold them under the light and up to a window to be sure they are really clean inside.

I would also have liked matching saucers. Eventually going through my stock of saucers I found two roughly the right size. Reasonable match in colour. Not so big that the cup slides about. Not so tiny that it doesn't fit at all and scrapes.

The saucers look too big. Unless you like a small cup made more important by a huge saucer.

The cup showing Tower Bridge and Big Ben has the word London.

The cup showing Shakespeare says England.

Not ideal to have to find a saucer the right size from your stock. Ok to 'borrow' two saucers from elsewhere for just the two of you. But for a dinner of half a dozen people you might not want to be juggling saucers. Anybody else helping would not be able to work out which saucers went with the cups as they don't match.

I checked underneath the cups and the writing says the design is 2014 so they are new, which is why I have not seen them before.

I like the fact that they are different, so if one of you wants sugar or milk or decaff you know which cup is whose.

One more last good point, about the design. The handles are big enough for two or three fingers.  My favourite Rayware cups have smaller handles.

I can often buy a whole set of four espresso cups with matching saucers for that price in Oxfam. But if you fancy these two, you know where to buy them.

The View From The Shard, London, England

The Shard attracted our eyes as we left London Bridge station and walked to lively Borough Market. You pick a time slot in the day or evening and we had chosen just before sunset. Careful not to miss our time slot, we arrived early enough for a walk around Borough Market and a coffee at Monmouth Coffee Company. The Shard is an all-jumping tourist attraction with a huge indoor entrance hall with ticket windows.  

We passed through security, like an airport, where they confiscated our pen-knife and Xmas crackers (it was our double-birthday treat). Then stopped for a photo. We took only a few steps and saw our faces on a screen.

Next up in two zooming lifts and out on the lower and larger observation deck of the tower which gets smaller as you get nearer the top. The lower level has floor to ceiling glass windows on all four sides and silhouettes of what you see above head height.  The nearest and most easily identifiable feature is Tower bridge below. (London Bridge, left of it, looks very dull, but if you arrived at London Bridge underground station, it helps to orient you to where you are.)
   The most amazing thing for me was seeing the river Thames winding S shape the way it does on maps, whilst when you are on the ground walking along the banks you always see it ahead of you as a straight line.
   The height is just right. You can see well known landmarks clearly. Down below are the white topf of trains, zooming backwards and forward towards you, the way they do at the end of the classic comedy thriller film starring Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness.
   Even with timed entry it is quite crowded. You have to wait your turn to see out through each of the windows. People pose for photos. Champagne is for sale at about £8 a glass. We rushed from window to window to take sunset photos as couples posed against the sunset for a romantic photo and/or a kiss.

The staircase is beautifully designed, polished wooden steps and red walls and views of the level below.

The second level is quite different. Make sure you see it. Less crowded. Open to the air with a chill wind. Seems much higher. And much smaller. You really feel you are at the top. 

Back on the lower level, having seen the views already, we paid attention to the machines which are free and show you the scene below at different times of day, with the names of landmarks.

On the way back down to the descending lift we found ourselves on a platform with windows showing the different types of clouds and what kind of weather they predicted.

Finally, back at ground level, the shop offered us a range of goods, from pencils and pens at £2 to tee-shirts and maps of London. The gifts are suitable for children and adults, souvenirs for yourself or for tourists to take home.

The souvenir photos cost about £25 (various packages) so I opted for a pencil. A delightful double birthday celebration.

Book at lest a day in advance to save yourself five pounds per person.
Tickets about £25 in advance, just under £30 on the day.
theviewfromtheshard.com

On May 23rd the Shard was hit by lightning. Several online newspapers carried photos.

See my next blog on Borough Market.