OMG, my first day without theatre in it!  That’s because Sunday is the “dark” day for most theatres in London.  So I decided to do a little shopping.  Another gorgeous, brisk sunny day, although once again the temps were in the low 30s with way too much wind!  I decided to walk down Regent Street, which is a very wide, busy boulevard lined with all the hoity toity stores.  I actually chose this area because I wanted to go to Liberty.  It’s one of London’s premiere department stores.  Originally famous for manufacturing fabrics with all kinds of interesting prints (think William Morris), Liberty now puts its fabrics on everything imaginable, from furniture to scarves to journal covers to wallets.  But the store also sells everything else you can imagine.  What I didn’t know until I arrived is that everything is absurdly expensive!  A scarf for 135 pounds.  A single plate for 40 pounds.  My favorite thing was a purse made out of snake skin that had been dyed a gorgeous shade of sage green.  It was 2,000 pounds!!  (Remember, one pound = about $1.60.)  The store is built in a classic Tudor design, with a huge center atrium and dark wood everywhere.  It’s four stories high, and I wandered around the place for about 90 minutes.  There was so much to oggle over!  Amazingly, I found three small gifts to buy and only spent 20 pounds total!  It took a lot of work to find three things that were cheap!  I was very proud of myself for my frugality.  Ha!

Then I continued down Regent Street and out of nowhere heard the sounds of a band.  Coming up a side street was a band composed of about 40 people, and they marched right onto the verrry trafficky Regent Street as if they owned it!  Cars just stopped and let them take over the street.  I was amazed.  All dressed in plain navy-blue suits, both men and women, playing all different kinds of horns.  Then I looked at their hats; the band around every hat said, “The Salvation Army.”  How British is that??  I wondered if this is a ritual they do every Sunday?  There were no converts following them, however!

After a while I saw a sign that had an arrow pointing down a side street and said “Carnaby Street.”  Ha!  Suddenly I was thinking the 1960s and had to go see!  I discovered that Carnaby Street is about two blocks long and designated for walking traffic only.  It was very cute and filled with shops of hip clothes for the 20-something set.  It was a fun thing to have happened upon.

I walked all the way to Picadilly Circus, which is a major plaza where a bunch of streets converge.  I popped into the London Trocadero, which my guide book says is a major hangout for teenagers with lots of amusements and video-game arcades and the like.  I lasted about 15 minutes!  It was very junky and cheesy and looked like everything needed some major repairs and a new paint job!  I took an escalator up two flights and then realized that the down escalator wasn’t working!  Did you know that escalator steps are higher than normal ones??  Not fun for a five-foot person with short legs!  I really had to concentrate to get down without falling on my face!

Back on the street, I followed the crowd of people not knowing exactly where we were going.  Lo and behold, Leicester Square opened up before me.  This seems to me to be equivalent to Times Square in NYC in terms of its centrality, although they are nothing alike.  (Picadilly Circus is actually more like Times Square; it even has two huge digital screens perched on the roofs of the surrounding buildings.  You don’t see a lot of glaring technology like that around London.  The biggest lights are mostly reserved for the theatre marquees.)  Leicester Square is in fact a park the size of a city block with lots of benches and green grass and a huge statue of my man Shakespeare in the center.  The streets that spoke off of it are crammed with restaurants and pubs of all kinds, which is why there are always lots and lots of people.  (BTW, for those struggling with how to say it, the Brits pronounce it “Lester.”)  So I took this as a good sign to head for home.  It was dusk, after all.

I approached the entrance to the Tube station and saw down a narrow little alley some inviting windows with the sign “Browns Bar and Brasserie.”  On a whim, I decided to follow Suze’s advice.  After living on apples and bagels and cheddar cheese for the last six days, I decided it was time to treat myself to dinner.  I had a prix fixe dinner, which allowed me an entree and dessert for only 13 pounds!  Woo hoo!  I knew it was time for vegetables!  I had a huge (warm) salad with lots of mixed greens, and on top were red peppers, chunks of butternut squash, cherry tomatoes, tiny white beans that tasted like garbanzos to me, pomegranate seeds, and some kind of sweet vinaigrette.  It was interesting–yes, I would definitely say good.  I had a “poached pear with chocolate sauce” for dessert and a small scoop of the best chocolate ice cream I have ever had!  There were zillions of slivers of milk chocolate in it!  Oh, and did I mention that I had two martinis??  I tried a Cosmopolitan and what they called a “Chocolate Strawberry Martini.”  Sadly, they were not very good, but they certainly made me more relaxed about eating alone!