Cherie's Place

Case packed; we check out of the Premier Inn before our last breakfast in St Albans. We both had a senior moment in the car park; we paid the car parking fee put the bags in the car and then remembered that we were walking into town for breakfast!

We had to leave the car park and drove round the corner to re-enter the car park and were surprised find that the next entrance was to a different car park albeit part of the same building complex.

Mischief managed, we walked into town and settled on breakfast in The Street Café due to the appealing breakfast menu options. Luckily there was one table available and once seated, I perused the menu beyond the breakfast options and noticed ‘tomatoes on bruschetta with herbs and balsamic vinegar’. That is my kind of heaven for breakfast and, when it came, it was beautifully presented with the tomatoes diced and piled on the crispy toasted bruschetta with balsamic vinegar drizzled across the plate. Mr C’s ‘full English’ was equally well presented.

Before leaving town, we walked to the war memorial which we had been meaning to visit but hadn’t quite made it to. We looked at the names on the memorial to see if any of our family names were there.

We drove to the nearby De Haviland Aircraft museum, arriving just before it opened. As we queued to pay it was quite noticeable that I was the ‘token girly’.

When we arrived in the first hangar, we were greeted by one of the volunteer guides who explained the aircraft exhibits on display, the Mosquito prototype and the Horsa Glider in a corner of the hangar. The guide explained the Mosquito was constructed of wood and that layers of materials were used to strengthen the wings. The Horsa Glider was of particular interest to Mr C as his grandfather lost his life landing in the sea on one of these during the invasion of Sicily in 1943.

Mr C told the guide the story of his grandfather. The same guide caught up with Mr C when he arrived at the Horsa to share additional information about the aircraft.

We looked round the other hangars walking through a de Havilland Comet and looking at an autogyro. We were also taken into a workshop and shown the restoration process of a passenger aircraft’s wings. By this time, we were thinking of lunch and decided that the café menu options weren’t quite what we were looking for.

So, once again we perused ‘The Extra Mile’ and settled on Fred & Ginger Coffee in Kings Langley High Street. The food was delicious, my choice was toasted tomato and mozzarella of focaccia bread.

On our way home we picked up dinner items for ‘fine dining’ at chez nous.

Tags: Autogyro, De Havilland Aircraft Museum, Fred & Ginger Coffe Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, Horsa Glida, London Colney, Mosquito Prototype, The Street Cafe, Vacation