“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford,” said Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first English dictionary, back in seventeen seventy-something.
About 250 years later, I’m here to tell you that London can be very tiring and there’s a lot there that you can’t afford.
I mean, five quid for a decent coffee? That’s close to 10 of our humble Aussie dollars. And it depends what you define as “decent” coffee in a country where many think Starbucks is the bee’s knees.
OK, there were places that were reasonably liveable but we were staying in a ridiculously expensive hotel (I wasn’t paying) near the junction of Oxford and Regent streets.
The pavements were wider than some roads in Sydney but there still wasn’t enough room to get through the shoulder-to-shoulder tourists without indulging in some nifty footwork and sidesteps, selling the occasional dummy that would have gladdened Leo Messi’s heart.
Some big stores subject you to a bag search before they let you leave if you can’t produce a receipt to prove you bought something and weren’t just shop-lifting.
Even so, London truly is a world city and there’s so much to see and do; correction – there’s too much to see and do. Just to add some context, we had travelled from Glasgow on the next leg of the hunt for Arthur Wellesley (aka the Duke of Wellington).
First orders
Breakfast at Glasgow airport was a revelation. It was barely 10 in the morning and the people at the next table in the airport café were seriously preloaded with alcohol ready for their flight to … I don’t know where. Maybe somewhere that didn’t serve alcohol, by the look of them.
For my late breakfast – call it brunch, if you must – I had the perfect conjunction of disappointing Scottish and Australian cuisine. The potato scones, a Scots delicacy, were as rigid as quartered frisbees.
And the poached egg and avocado seemed to have been prepared by someone who had previously encountered neither components of a dish beloved of snide economists.
I had forgotten one of my travel truisims – airport café food is there to make you think the inflight meals are edible.
A journey to the exalted
I must say, however, that we were going from the ridiculous to the sublime on this particular food trail. Our all-too-brief stay a couple of days later at the Mandarin Oriental in Mayfair brought us into drooling range of its sumptuous breakfasts.
The scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and a side of exotic yuzu-glazed mushrooms were works of art. A chocolate fan – fans are the chain’s signature motif – awaiting us in our suite, was almost too beautiful to eat. Almost.
As for dinner and especially the sweets – this isn’t how the other half live; the other two or three percent, maybe.
Wandering around the streets of Mayfair we happened upon the jungle-inspired entrance to Coya, a Peruvian restaurant. Having checked out its website, I might just go back there next time I’m in London, once I’ve bought a cream linen suit and Panama hat.
The food looks sensational, as does the decor – and there’s live music. The prices look like the exxy side of reasonable – until you remember they are in pounds and you have to double them to get the true picture of the bite they’ll take out of your budget.
It’s true. London is full of once-in-a-lifetime experiences of which, if you can afford them, you will never tire.
Next time: The little town in France where we first encountered croque monsieur … more than 35 years ago.
