August 9, 2016. A visit to Charles Darwin's village

LLOCATION:  House-sitting in Orpington, England, near London.

WEATHER:  Partly sunny. Highs in 60s

Today we set out for the village of Downe, where Charles Darwin lived.  It's not far, but we had to take 2 buses to get there.  We took one bus to a crossroads in the country, then caught another one into Downe.  It was rather an adventure to get there.

Downe is a darling, tiny village with 2 pubs, 2 churches, and houses...nothing else.  We had lunch in one of the pubs named George and the Dragon....

Then, we walked about a half mile out of town to Darwin's house.  We did a walking tour of the house and gardens,  

An interesting point is that his home was his actual laboratory.  He worked in his home office, and not a fancy scientific lab.

The gardens were for pleasure and also for studying.

The churchyard in the center of the village has several graves of Darwin's children. 

We had an hour to kill waiting for our bus back to Orpington, so checked out the second pub.

Both pubs are from the 17th century.  

Back home, we walked Bela again and relaxed.  

DINNER:  I modified a recipe for wasabi-covered steak.  Instead of buying wasabi, I bought a small snack package of wasabi-covered nuts,  I ground them up and coated the meat with them.  Tasty!  Side was mushrooms and potatoes, and steamed snow peas.