Thursday on the Town

If you're in London and are craving a taste of the old Myrtle Beach pavilion, have I got a place for you. It's called the London Trocadero and it's so wonderfully tacky, you just gotta love it.
Thursday is a day Keith doesn't teach, and we have sort of fallen into a fun habit. After I finish my work on Thursday, we leave the flat with no particular destination in mind. We more or less decide on the way ... and we end up walking around a lot, just exploring London. Tonight we went to Picadilly Circus, the "Times Square of London." It's so cool to ride the Tube to Picadilly at night - when you walk up the stairs and into the street, it's a burst of color, sound and activity. And if you're on the Haymarket side of the circle, you walk right by the Trocadero.
As you walk in, you'll smell something fabulous - Cinnabon, a brand-new phenomenon in London. It's the tiniest Cinnabon you ever saw, because the goodies are actually baked on a lower floor. Moving past that, you'll pass a couple of discount ticket booths - we stopped and asked about tickets to "The 39 Steps," which is playing across the street, but the tickets weren't discounted enough for our pocketbooks.
And then you get the Trocadero in its three-story glory - souvenir shops with everything London - Union Jack hats, pencils, paperweights, knickers (that's underwear in the States), T-shirts and plates with Prince Charles's face on them.
Cheap jewelry? Check. Cookie stand? Check. Video games? Check. Knock-ff purses? Check. Planet Hollywood AND Rainforest Cafe? Check and double-check.
After a dodgy escalator ride (the thing kept lurching forward - yikes) to the third floor, we found slot machines! Now, you have to understand that I am the cheapest gambler in the world. In Las Vegas, I am a nickel slot fiend and once I won $340 playing those cheap-o slots. The idea of putting a quarter or 50 cents in a slot machine makes me shake - I cannot imagine playing a dollar slot. Here, the cheapest bet you could make was one pound. That's a lot less American cash than it was two months ago, but still way too rich for my blood.
So we kept walking, first through Chinatown and then up Charing Cross, where we ended up in a bookstore.
Finally, we went to dinner. We've latched on to a fabulous Italian restaurant on the edge of Covent Garden, and we go there at least once a week, sometimes more.
The restaurant is Da Mario and it was recommended to us by an American couple we met in another restaurant! Da Mario is tiny and very authentic. The pasta is made fresh. My favorite thing to get there is spinach ravioli stuffed with ricotta and spinach in a brown butter-sage sauce. Keith often gets something called Casarecci with Sausage and Broccoli, which is a rolled and twisted pasta tossed with olive oil, chili and garlic with bits of broccoli and sausage. It is so good; I always steal some off his plate. Tonight I branched out and got lasagna and it was excellent.
Because Da Mario is so tiny, your table is right beside someone else's. It's not hard to overhear the conversation. Tonight we met two American fellows who are in London on business. It was their first time in Da Mario's and they loved it. We ended up spending an hour chatting with them so we got home much later than we expected.
That's one of the neatest things about London - you dine here. You're expected and encouraged to linger at the table. No one rushes you out the door, and restaurants stay open late. You always to ask for your bill; apparently they consider it impolite to just throw it on the table.
One more thing: Something we like here is that when you pay for your meal with a credit card, your card never leaves your sight. The waiter comes over with something that looks like an old TI calculator, swipes your card at the table and prints the receipt in front of you. Are these in the States yet? I don't remember seeing them, but we really like it.