Number Sixteen Croissant de Londres? DETAILS: South Kensington GETTING THERE: British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and United offer nonstop service from the Washington area to London; all three are quoting a round-trip fare of about $400, with restrictions. South Kensington is easily reached from just about anywhere in London. It is about a 10-minute tube ride from Harrods and the shops on Kings Road and Sloane Street, and a 10-minute walk from Hyde Park--less from the museums. Nearest tube stop: South Kensington. From the station, follow Old Brompton Road--and the language--south to the French quarter. WHERE TO EAT: You can do fancy, inexpensive or just graze from shop to shop. Better still, buy the makings for a picnique in Le Parc Hyde. La Bouchee (56 Old Brompton Rd., SW7) has inexpensive prix-fixe menus (about $14.50 for three courses, including a terrine of rabbit and sundried tomatoes on a coulis of shallots). Raison d'Etre (18 Bute St., SW7) is an excellent boulanger/patisserie with great coffee. LODGING: Number Sixteen (16 Sumner Pl., SW7, telephone 011-44-207-589-5232) is a small, romantic hotel with traditional period furnishings and a bright conservatory bedecked wth shrubs and flowers. Rooms run from about $137 to $296 per night. Five Sumner Place (5 Sumner Pl., SW7 3EE, 011-44-207-584-7586) is a small bed-and-breakfast, also with traditional period furnishings and a Victorian-style conservatory, and with rates from about $159 to $217 per night. Aster House (3 Sumner Pl., SW7, 011-44-207-581-5888) is a bed-and-breakfast with a pretty garden in back and singles at only $87 (a bargain in London). Less pricey hotels can be found in Belgravia, is a short tube ride away near Victoria Station. WHAT TO DO: The Victoria and Albert Museum (Cromwell Road, http://www.vam.ac.uk/), Science Museum (Exhibition Road, http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/) and Natural History Museum (Exhibition and Cromwell roads, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/) are worthy destinations in their own right. Harrods, a 10-minute tube ride, is the most famous department store in Britain, and Sloane Street shops include the most fashionable: Armani, Prada, Gucci. INFORMATION: British Tourist Authority, 800-462-2748, www.visitbritain.com Ø Return to top of page Ø Details: South Kensington Ø Return to home page

Last Minute Flights of Fancy Cheerio, Mon Ami A Bit of Paris in London's South Kensington I had been working hard and hadn’t traveled anywhere for months. There were no trips on my agenda, only more piles of work. Then I faced a long weekend with relatively few obligations – time entirely to myself – and a last-minute bargain e-fare to London. Should I go? I wasn’t sure at first. I wanted to travel with someone else, but everybody was busy. I went anyway. Result: A four-day whirlwind of theater, great restaurants, enjoyable time to myself, and discoveries – including a little bit for France in unlikely Britain. Just in from Heathrow that morning, I was, as the English say, nackered. And starving. For at least a thousand miles I'd been fantasizing about one of Britain's few culinary accomplishments and one of life's more sensible exceptions to the cholesterol ban: an English breakfast. Eggs like gooey suns. Grilled to-mah-to. Strips of fatty bacon. Toast, albeit cold, with marmalade. Pork sausage, a k a bangers. And, with a little luck, blood sausage, too. I asked at the front desk of my hotel at 16 Sumner Place, among a regimental line of stately white Victorians in South Kensington, one of London's toniest neighborhoods. "Breakfast?" the clerk repeated. "You can get a good croissant at one of the patisseries on the next corner." It wasn't what I had in mind, but the nearest English breakfast, tempting grail that it might be, was too many blocks away. So I wandered outside. Had the clerk said patisseries, plural? I found not one, not two--but five. All on the same block. And not a banger or a blood sausage in sight. Among the French, it is not South Kensington but Le Quartier de South Kensington. And for bonne raison: It is their neighborhood now. On the street, in the cafes, in the patisseries and boulangeries, it is easier to sample tartes aux pommes, buy a baguette or eavesdrop on conversations in French than it is to find a fish and chipper or a pint of lager. I passed a greengrocer, a pub and a Barclays bank--but mostly restaurants with names such as La Vigneronne, Faloniere and Francofill. That last one, named for a loaf of bread filled with various kinds of meat and sauces, turned out to be a perfect lunch break from the museums. There's also a ragout of the day and impressive creme brulee, but I'm getting ahead of myself. At the time I first spotted the place, I was still relishing the croissant, the language around me and the sights, such as bookstores offering Moliere scripts and old Asterix comic books. Food stores like La Grande Bouchee (not to be confused with a delicatessen, Bonne Bouche) offered wares as tantalizing as any shop in Paris. Here and there, people lingered, as they do along the avenues in just about any French city, at cafes--Raison d'Etre and St. Germain being just two. I ordered a demitasse just as a couple of students wandered in debating French politics. I sat, sipped and listened. Mon Dieu! Quelle surprise! I have always been in love with France. I just hadn't time for it on this trip. Or so I'd thought. The Victoria and Albert Museum could wait. To most tourists--and many Brits--the area just south of Hyde Park is better known as "Museumland." It has a proud--and very English--history, stretching back to a moment in the 1850s when a minor civil servant in the Record Office proposed a "Great Exhibition" of "Works and Industry of All Nations." Snooty Kensington natives feared an "invasion of undesirables who would ravish their silver and their serving maids."But Prince Albert loved the idea. The result was a large "Crystal Palace" of wrought iron and glass in which wares of the world were displayed: an ivory throne from India, a floating church from Philadelphia, a fountain that spouted eau de Cologne. The most surprising thing of all was that the first "museum," the Victoria and Albert, made money. The profits paid for land for an "Albertopolis," with more museums, colleges and the concert hall famous for the "Proms" and other standing-room-only performances. Today, the early experiment in urban planning contains, besides the Victoria and Albert Museum with its seven-mile maze of halls, the science and natural history museums, colleges of art and music, and the Royal Geographical Society. Sprouting eagerly among the museums were Italianate homes and multistory mansions, among London's most fashionable. "South Ken" prospered. In 1946 the French government made its move. It acquired the Duke of Marlborough's digs. It ferried over some Beauvais tapestries and Savonnerie carpets. The grand stately mansion, now the ambassador's residence, proudly reigns over Hyde Park. In South Kensington, it was only the beginning. London has always been one of the planet's most cosmopolitan cities. But French? A guide to "Ethnic London," by Ian McAuley, lists fascinating details about Polish London, Irish London, Greek London, Turkish London, Arab London, Cypriot London and Asian London--but not a word about South Ken's Frenchness. But head south from the South Kensington tube stop, away from Cromwell Road, Queensgate and the throngs of tourists, as I did, and--once past the Rolls-Royce dealership, anyway--you'll land in a virtual departement. There's a French high school and university, Le Lycee et le College de South Kensington, which draws hundreds of adolescents from across the channel. There's a creche of the Nativity as French-looking as the one in Rennes. A music store had its doors open, Edith Piaf crooning from a loudspeaker, only a few blocks from the multimillion-pound place Madonna bought, perhaps so her child can live here and learn French. At the Institut Francais--which bills itself as "a corner of France in South Kensington" and where more than 4,500 students learn French each year--there are exhibitions, language courses, theater and other events. For lack of a better term, the Institut is a cultural center. It houses the largest French-language library outside France. You can attend a lecture on how the British art community responded to the "challenges" from Cezanne and Picasso; whether artist Marcel Duchamp was just trying to be shocking with his ready-made urinal; or join an intimate discussion with the editor of Proust's last volume of letters. The Cine Lumiere is one of the best places outside France to see the latest in French film. Before the show, at the brasserie on the ground floor, you can have a glass of Vouvray and dine on seafood specialties from Brittany. An unusual French touch in art deco can be found farther south on Fulham Road. The Michelin House contains a store, oyster bar and restaurant. Outside, the building is decorated with murals of tires and automobiles from the early 1900s. Stained-glass Michelin Man If you want to take a break from les choses francaises, you can always try out other cultural offerings nearby--the Goethe Institut on Exhibition Road, with its Germanic events; the Ismaili Centre, with an Islamic orientation; or, farther up toward Hyde Park, the Sikorski Museum, which houses paintings depicting events in Polish history and the famous Enigma Machine with which the Allies cracked Nazi Germany's code. Or you can just wander back to your small hotel on Sumner Place, as I did, to enjoy biscuits and a cup of tea in the conservatory. And, the next morning, a perfectly glorious cooked English breakfast. Ø Return to top of page Ø Details: South Kensington Ø Return to home page