One of the big chain restaurants in London is Garfunkel's.  When we were based at The Strand Palace Hotel, we had several Garfunkel's just a stone's throw away. We only ate at a Garfunkel's once during our trip, but I must report that they do a good breakfast. Dan ordered a full- English and I had eggs on toast with a side of bacon. I love the thick-cut bacon that is found in the UK. 

In my St. Pauls' Cathedral post, I lamented about our lack of vacation planning. However, sometimes when you fail to plan, you leave yourself open to amazing spontaneous discoveries.  

As we were wandering around the area near The Tower of London, we came across a harbor that was getting ready to host a very special event. The Race of Your Life yacht race was a few days shy of kicking off in London. The yachts were being prepped and they had a mini festival going on to promote the event.

The Race of Your Life is a real adventure. It's an eleven month race spanning thirteen countries around the world. The race is broken up into different legs and participants can do a single leg, multiple legs or the whole thing. The crazy thing is, it's open to total novices. If you want to race and have the entry fee, you can join a crew and they will teach you what you need to know. Twelve teams are competing in the race and you can follow them on the official site. 

We found the best bakery vendor at the event.

After intense deliberation, we decided on delicious almond pastries for our afternoon snack. Snacks are serious business.  

Our first curry in London was a bit of a bust. We ate at Maharaja in Bayswater. it was late and we had just come from seeing a movie at the Odeon. This is a case where doing a little research would have swayed us to avoid this restaurant.

It wasn't bad, it was mediocre. Mediocre is unacceptable in a city where there are so many restaurants competing for our business. It was expensive too. A double whammy. We were the only people dining in the restaurant and the service was slow.  

Unfortunately, we were starving and our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. It felt like we ordered everything on the menu - Poppadoms, Piluao Rice, Mutta Paneer, Chicken Madrass, Chicken Tika Masala, both plain and Pshwari Naan. 

We had a feast of mediocre food. 

There are many curry house reviews to come.

Did we find a good one?

Stay tuned.