London

The usual overnight flight – 9 1/2 hours of flying with 2 hours of sleep, we arrived at Heathrow – zombies. We took the subway to the South Kensington station, 5 minutes walk from our hotel – then after checking in, headed back to the same area for a 3 pm lunch and then back to the hotel again for a nap followed by a long walk to Kensington Park – stopping at a pub on the way back – dinner at 9 pm. Next morning we weren’t up bright and early – in fact we missed breakfast altogether and went for an early lunch instead.

We’ve done this all before but as we get older, the harder it gets.

Other than getting a SIM card for an iPhone, the only other thing scheduled the next day was a play in the evening. We came all this way to see “Come from Away” in London; it was very well done and left us invigorated.

Below: South Kensington Station.

Below: lunch at Le Pain Quotidien

Below: teaching Trapeze in Kensington Park

Below: theatre district – on the way to see our play

Our hotel is directly opposite the Victoria & Albert Museum. We’ve stayed at the same hotel twice before but have never visited the museum so that was on the top of our list. It is, however, the largest museum in the world so we only had a brief encounter.

Museums are free in London – except for some exhibits like the Mary Quant exhibit above which we would have liked to see except the lines for tickets were too long.

We had a nice dinner at the restaurant next door.

Our last day we wandered around the Burrough Market (thanks to Susan and Robert for the suggestion) and then headed over to the National Portrait Gallery and Trafalgar’s Square. We had lunch at “Rules”, the oldest continuously operating restaurant in London (opened by Thomas Rule in 1798). We shared a smoked salmon appetizer, a chicken pie and we each had a beer. We noticed that there was no beer on the menu – only expensive wines. However, we only had to ask; when the beer arrived it was in silver goblets.