Nov 17th. Wimbleton

Today we took a leisurely stroll to Starbucks for breakfast. Concierges in our building must think that we exist solely on coffee - we almost always carry a cup when we pass by.

While I was trying to take the after-breakfast nap, kids decided do bake short bread cookie. Dan convinced me to join them. He had a point: too much independence while cooking will only result in longer clean up time for me. The cookies came out awesome!

We grabbed the cookies while they were still hot and headed out to Thai Temple in Wimbleton. That's the one that Isabella visited earlier in the week. There was a festival going on today. The temple complex was very busy with lots of food stalls, concert on the stage setup on the large lawn, stalls selling floating flowers for the offerings.

The temple is much nicer than it appears on the pictures. They have some of the prettiest frescos I have ever seen. Everywhere around there were monks in bright orange robes and knitted hats.

One of the food stalls had a fascinating decorative element: animated torso of a man with blue eyes, Thai jewelry and a bit of leather jacket. The face was amazingly well animated with apparently lots of areas capable of motion under its skin. It moved its eyes, raised eyebrows, it detected that we were standing close to it and started to talk and even winked. It was pretty disturbing looking even for adults. The stall owner saw our faces and laughed. I was thinking that if there was a home robot that move like that it may take some getting used to it not being human.

After the temple we took a walk down to Wimbleton train station to see it during the day. The last time we were here, it was after dark. We were with Irina and Ricardo. This part of the town was not that memorable. Wimbleton is very hilly. We kept going up and down.

On the way back to the car parked near the temple we passed by the High Street. This part of town was more interesting. We stopped at the Lawn Bakery and picked up some excellent chocolate sticks and chocolate salami. Then we found a great grocery shop selling some unusual items. We got a few cheeses. Should come back here with our guests. There are also several interesting looking restaurants around.
We came back home and finished the afternoon off at the movie theater. We saw Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs 2. It now holds a firm place in at the top of my list of the most moronic cartoons ever made. I even went to sleep not to watch it.

A funny thing about Isabella today. She put her little stuffed dog Cookie and one glove inside her beret and was swinging it in her hand as we were walking. At some point she lost both the glove and the dog. When we came back to the car her beret was empty. Dan and I felt bad for her but were a bit upset with her carelessness. So she said not to worry because she left the other glove at home so it is safe. And she has scores of stuffed dogs at home in Kingston and in US.