Playing Monopoly :-)

One night just before falling asleep we came up with the brilliant idea of visiting all the places on the Monopoly Board. I know the game originated in America, Atlantic City to be exact and this is the game our children grew up with but David and my childhood memories are of the London place names. Of course we lay there in bed trying to remember all the names and the colours… silly thing to do just before falling asleep and we failed to get more than a handful of names each.
Next day David looked them up on the Internet and discovered that a group of young people had done a Monopoly Pub Crawl, so much for thinking we had come up with a brilliant new idea!

David did a couple of nights research at home in front of the telly, with the names, then with Tube and Bus maps as well as the A to Z. We started off with a tube to Kings Cross Station which is under renovation and looking a mess, then we found Euston Road and Pentonville Road before catching a bus to Angel Islington then a tube to Whitechapel and so on and on, there are 26 names to find… we jumped on and off buses, on and off tubes and walked and walked, it was great fun and the cheaper places like Old Kent Road and Whitechapel are still cheaper places just as Park Lane and Mayfair are the poshest of places.
Kings Cross Station
Pentonville Road
Whitechapel Road

One surprise was Fenchurch Street Station, neither of us had ever seen or been here before, it’s tucked away in the Business District of London behind one of the Lloyds of London offices and was a joy to see.
Fenchurch Street Station

Unfortunately we didn’t finish the Monopoly Board we still have 5 more places to visit… Marylebone Station, Oxford Street, Bow Street, Great Marlborough St and Leicester Square, these are all near each other so it will be easy to get around them in a short time.

By the time we got to Mayfair which is the only name that isn’t a street or station (it’s a suburb), the light was going as were both of us so we caught the tube back to Turnpike Lane and staggered to our favourite pub the ‘Toll Gate’… lucky for us the two great big leather armchairs were free so we plonked ourselves down with a drink and I promptly fell asleep for almost one hour! LOL I’ve never done that in a pub before… anyway it was Steak Night so after a good steak costing £5.49 each we were revived enough to walk home to a good soaking bath.
Park Lane and one of those dreaded Bendy Buses.
The Dorchester Hotel in the Background, David and I celebrated our first Wedding Anniversary here in June 1969

Costs… I’ve lost count of how many buses and trains we got on and off but with our Oyster cards we never needed to buy a ticket and the whole day’s transport only cost £5.20 that’s the maximum it will cost in one day no matter how many more buses or trains we wanted to catch! Terrific isn’t it!!