London

I slept about half an hour on the plane, I think.
Then it was passport control, baggage claim, into the Underground, Oyster cards, on the tube, and I’m staring out the window at rooftops and chimney pots that make me expect Dick Van Dyke singing chim chim cheree.
We’re out on the street at Victoria Station, getting lost twice finding our little side street hotel. It’s 8:00 AM. Way too early for checking in. But they hold our bags and we head out into London without a plan or a sense of direction or anywhere near enough coffee.

There’s decorative guards in boxes, so I gave Meg a little bit of AA Milne: “They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace/Christopher Robin went down with Alice...”

There’s real guards with machine guns and bullet proof vests, too. 

We went through St. James Park, to Trafalgar Square, down to the Embankment, into the Temple, around by Covent Garden, back to Trafalgar area to the National Portrait Gallery. The rain got serious. We were using the gallery as a dry place to sit while time passed before we met Jan & Bruce at the Sherlock Holmes pub. 

The pub was nice enough, but they were out of their namesake ale, and we couldn’t lunch there. 

So we wandered back toward our hotels, searching in the rain for a place to eat. 

Whitehall, Scotland Yard, #10 Downing St.: legendary places piled up all around. Back near Victoria we found the Albert and had a pint & a pie. 

Meg & I went back to the Grange Rochester to check in. I showered, we changed, convinced ourselves we had a second wind (after I can’t do the math with the time change hours of being awake). 

A flurry of texts with Jan & Bruce, and we set out in the rain for the Eye to catch a Thames Clipper. Just past Westminster Abby, tired of walking in the rain, Meg hailed a cab. 

The Clipper was nice, the Naval College, too. So was the Trafalgar pub, where I joked that I used the same urinal and Dyson Air-thing that Dickens used back in the day. 

Then we’re staring blankly in the tube back to St. James’s, and soon, bed.