A Lady in London

A tragedy has befallen my beloved Hampstead. No, Hampstead Heath hasn’t been bulldozed. More mobile phone shops haven’t opened on the high street. There’s still only one McDonalds and one Starbucks. The tragedy is far worse. The owners of one of my favorite Hampstead pubs, The Duke of Hamilton, are shuttering the almost-300-year-old establishment to turn it into luxury flats. Just what the neighborhood needs.

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One of my favorite things about London in June is that all of the best annual events takes place. There’s Royal Ascot, Wimbledon, Hard Rock Calling, and—not least among these—the foodie extravaganza that is Taste of London.

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It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since my first trip to Royal Ascot. It doesn’t seem so long ago that my boyfriend and I went to Berkshire to watch the races and I got scouted for and then won the Face of Ascot 2009 modeling competition. It feels like such a short time has gone by since last year, when my time at Royal Ascot involved press interviews, sponsorships, and passing the baton to Callie Moore, the Face of Ascot 2010.

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Continuing this week’s theme of UK travel, my boyfriend and I headed out to Oxfordshire yesterday. Last year a friend of mine had gone to Garsington Opera, an outdoor opera venue at a stately home near Oxford, and, knowing we need little convincing when it comes to adventures, she insisted we go this year.

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It’s been awhile since I took a trip in the UK. I’m really good at getting out of the country, but I’m not so good at staying in it. That trend changed over the weekend, though, when a friend’s play in Leeds gave me an excuse to head north.

Having already been to Leeds, I wanted to stay somewhere outside of the city. I had read about Harrogate, a historic Yorkshire spa town, and thought it would be a good alternative to its larger southern neighbor. It was.

We drove up to Harrogate on Saturday morning, stopping in Leicester for lunch and arriving in town in the late afternoon. My boyfriend and I immediately fell in love with our lodging, an apartment in The Lawrance’s Duchy House. We were in a gorgeous suite with beautiful decor, and every detail from the silk throw pillows to the Philippe Starck bathrooms to the bottle of milk in the fridge was exactly what we were hoping for.

My boyfriend, who was so kind as to drive us from London to Harrogate, immediately collapsed into the goose-down-and-Egyptian-cotton-goodness that was our bed and settled in for a two hour nap. Obsessed with the apartment’s gorgeous details and the beautiful light coming in through the windows, I spent awhile taking pictures of the rooms before heading into Harrogate to explore.

Duchy House was only a few minutes’ walk from the main part of Harrogate, so I had ample time to wander around the town while my boyfriend got his beauty rest. I started at the Royal Baths (now somewhat confusingly a Chinese restaurant), and made my way through the main shopping areas before coming to a stretch of green with beautiful historic buildings on all sides.

From there I passed the famous Betty’s Tea Rooms and made my way down the hill to a perfectly manicured park. I took a stroll along the tiny stream with its lush greenery and up to a fountain that was surrounded by beds of bright yellow and red flowers.

When I got back to The Lawrance, I dragged my sleeping boyfriend out of bed and we enjoyed Betty’s coffee and tea and the apartment’s free Wi-Fi until it was time to drive to Leeds.

Once in Leeds we met up with our friends, who were staying there for the night. We all headed to the West Yorkshire Playhouse to see Hay Fever, a Noel Coward play in which our friend starred as a member of a highly dysfunctional family that invites house guests over for the weekend with disastrous results. The play was great, so much so that we didn’t feel bad about missing the USA vs. England match in World Cup.

After the play we went for a surprisingly good dinner at a nearby restaurant called Aagrah. It was nice to catch up with our actor friend and the food was so good that we couldn’t stop eating until we were well past the point of satiety. After an aborted attempt to find an open pub for a post-dinner pint, we drove back up to Harrogate ready for a good night of sleep.

The next morning our friends came up on the train from Leeds and the four of us went to Betty’s Tea Rooms for a late breakfast. The tea rooms are somewhat of an institution in Harrogate, and we enjoyed a big breakfast and a side of their signature dish, the fat rascal (no, it’s not a rodent, it’s a scone with lots of fruit and other goodness in it).

After breakfast we went back to the park I had found the previous day and took another walk. As if the half-hour stroll actually burned off a single calorie of the bearnaise sauce from our eggs Benedict, we stopped at Cupcakes by Charlie for vanilla sundae and sticky toffee pudding cupcakes on the way back through town.

At last in food coma, the four of us walked back to The Lawrance and picked up our car. Waving good-bye to the beautiful apartment and the lovely historic buildings of Harrogate, we made or way down through England to London.

Despite the shortness of the trip, our weekend in Harrogate was a success. It was great to see our friend’s play, and even yesterday my boyfriend was talking about how our apartment at The Lawrance was one of our best hotel stays ever. They’re opening another property in York sometime this year, so we might just have to use that as an excuse to stay in the UK for a future trip.

It takes some searching to find the best place to watch the World Cup. When the last World Cup took place I was still living in San Francisco and still working at Goldman Sachs. One day my boss, who was South African and one of the few non-Americans in the office, somewhat un-mysteriously disappeared to find the perfect place to watch the tournament in San Francisco. The rest of us stayed chained to our desks hoping to catch a few glimpses when the TV screens above the trading floor flipped to the games.

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I have bad luck finding good wine in London. The stubborn American in me refuses to learn that ordering wine at a beer-and-cider pub means sure disaster. The majority of the wine I find in the grocery stores is over-priced, under-vetted surplus from the wine producing countries of the world (£25 for a bottle of Gallo? Yes, it’s true). I once even got a bottle of corked wine at dinner at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay on Hospital Road.

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I love my neighborhood. From Hampstead Heath to Hampstead High Street, Hampstead Butcher and Providore to Hampstead Antique Market, I am smitten.

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I didn’t need to go back to Amsterdam. I’ve been there before.

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