Fulham

Today we made a long overdue return visit to one of our favourite places for a cheap, delicious lunch: El Vergel. Last time, I showed you the menu, but not what we had, so this time I'll give you a better idea of the delights that await you at El Vergel--I had the churrasco palta (rump steak, avocados, tomatoes),

and Bob had the torta Mexicana (chicken breast, refried beans, salsa, cheese, lettuce, and guacamole).

Both were made with what El Vergel calls "village bread," which has an amazing consistency--chewy yet light, with just the slightest bit of pleasant sourdough tang. The fresh ingredients and bread really make these humble sandwiches shine. Ah, but you must leave room for dessert at El Vergel! Although they have several dessert offerings, the most popular (it always seems to sell out an order or two after we put in our order) is the addictive cheesecake, which melts in your mouth--all the more reason to quickly replace it with another mouthful. El Vergel also does fantastic coffee, and at prices that are hard to find in London.

As we walked toward the tube station after lunch, we passed by this exclamatory sign:

What was going to be a relatively quick journey on the Jubilee and District lines ended up being a bit of a longer trip, with our District-line train sitting in St. James's Park station while we waited to hear if we would be let through. It turned out that our train was the last District-line train to run that particular route before the line was shut behind us (due to signalling errors), and we got off at West Brompton station feeling lucky to have been on this train, even with the delays. We were in the west London neighbourhood of Fulham to do another online walk, and got through most of the six-mile route before heading for home on the tube. I liked this bakery sign

and this odd house definitely caught our attention:

It appeared to be several residences and a possibly-out-of-business restaurant, Gasworks, whose empty menu holder looked a bit lonely on one of the doors:

In case you're wondering about the restaurant's name, perhaps this nearby sight will clear things up a bit:

I can't imagine living in one of these houses and opening my front door every day to the sight of these gasworks. There are actually two of these enormous structures here, side-by-side (the other one is to the left of this photo). We spotted a slightly more modest sight across the Thames, but the waterfront location of this church still struck us as interesting:

At one point along the walk, our information told us that "Chelsea College of Art & Design is on the left," but this was the sight that sat to our left:

The only Chelsea College of Arts & Design that I know of is near Tate Britain, so perhaps these abandoned buildings were part of an earlier campus. As we continued walking, the neighbourhood slowly changed from working-class to middle-class to more and more upscale. Bob spotted a rather posh resident peering out at us from the first-floor window of this house,

which was topped with wee lions. When we paid closer attention to the street, we noticed that all the houses were topped with lions:

Apparently, this bit of decoration was a trademark of the builder responsible for erecting these houses in the 1890s--kind of a nice touch, don't you think?