According to Wikipedia, Mews is a chiefly British term formerly describing a row of stables, usually with carriage houses below and living quarters above, built around a paved yard or court, or along a street, behind large city houses, such as those of London, during the 17th and 18th centuries. The word may also refer to the lane, alley or back street onto which such stables open. It is sometimes applied to rows or groups of garages or, more broadly, to a narrow passage or a confined place. Today most mews stables have been converted into dwellings, some greatly modernized and considered highly desirable residences.

So we are staying in a small townhouse in Eaton Mews.  Back here in the stable section there is a significant amount of construction going on.  It reminds me of the scrape offs and rehabbing of old properties in Denver during the boom time.  Here, because everything is connected, they go in and demolish the entire guts and start over but have to leave the walls standing.  Ours is old and a bit worn and needs to be redone.  But the remodels we have been able to see into look very nice.  And the “large city houses” referred to above which are on the streetside of our building look like very lovely homes.

And a couple of mews(ings) from London…

They have clearly forgiven the Germans here for the relentless bombings of London in 1940 and that whole 1939-1945 war thing (we have seen that reference on plaques rather than WWII).  German cars dominate and expensive ones to boot.  On one block near us the other night I counted six Porsches (is that the plural of Porsche or is it like deer?) and because I couldn’t multi-task at the time I was unable to count the Mercedes and BMWs on that same block but they too were numerous.  Other fancy cars are also common in this area including Rolls Royce, Aston Martin, Bentley, Jaguar, Ferrari and Maserati.

As mentioned earlier, things here are very expensive.  Perhaps that is why we seldom hear an American accent on this visit.  But there are two exceptions of note for us.  Coffee.  Even after the exchange rate this works out to be less expensive here than in New York or Steamboat Springs.  And theater tickets are much less expensive than comparable seats in New York.

And speaking of the theater, our third theater visit of the trip took us to the Vaudeville Theatre to see “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” by Neil Simon starring Jeff Goldblum and Mercedes Ruehl.  And boy these theaters are small which is obviously a very nice feature in addition to the lesser than New York prices.

After our third visit to Patara, which we obviously really love, Thursday night was pub night with a visit to The Trafalger.  Off to York for the weekend this afternoon.