Our Grand Tour of Europe

Sunrise in London today is at 4:41 am. And it doesn’t get dark until after 9:30 pm. Strange. This is not something I had known before about London in mid-June. It hadn’t impacted me until this morning, when I awoke for some reason at 4:00 am and then couldn’t get back to sleep as the daylight streamed through the curtains of our yellow bedroom.

What a wonderful luxury to have two full weeks in London! This is our third family visit to London, the fourth for Charley and me… we had our honeymoon here in 1992. On each of these visits we’ve stayed three days, five for our honeymoon. There is no time to recover from jet lag. We’ve always worked a full itinerary every day, never quite enough time to pause that extra few moments, always a rush to push onto the next place on the list.

But here we are just midway through our two-week stay with a week yet to go. We feel we know London. Certainly we know our way around our neighborhood here and the main tourist areas. We also are very comfortable on the London underground—experts on the Circle and District lines that serve the Sloane Street station I prefer and then the Northern and Waterloo lines that seem to go most everywhere we have wanted to go. Kelly is extremely confident on the underground, though she much prefers to sit between the two of us instead of next to a stranger.

Saturday, June 12

We arrived at Gatwick airport thirty minutes ahead of schedule due to favorable tail winds. All three of us slept on the plane. I usually have a very difficult time sleeping but had taken two Tylenol PMs. And perhaps the stress of the last few weeks (months!?) had kicked in as well. I fell asleep while my dinner tray was still in front of me. Kelly and I always sit together by the window… Charley across the aisle. He doesn’t want to look out the window and see that we are high up in the sky. This time I was by the window and had a beautiful view of the English coast and then London as we flew in. The woman at the passport control asked how long we were staying. “Eleven weeks,” we said. She was expecting the normal response of one or two weeks and seemed properly impressed. All our bags arrived promptly, even the walking sticks…, which were strangely left lying on the floor by the baggage carousel.

We can manage our bags, but just barely. We have the number of bags we had planned—one rolling duffel each, one backpack each, a rolling bag with the laptop, and the homemade bag with the walking sticks. But Kelly and I have both packed our bags very full with too many books… my bag weighed in at 58 pounds in Knoxville. We plan to mail books home as we finish with them and hopefully we will not add too many books along the way. We have already decided that we won’t buy many souvenirs.

When we had our bags, I found a phone and called “Agnes,” the contact person who was to meet us at the flat. We took the Gatwick Express train from the airport to Victoria Station. Our flat was a ten-minute walk from the station. We pulled our rolling duffels over the cobbled streets, joining a throng of people of all nationalities also with rolling bags in the area around the busy station. We found our building easily, on Elizabeth Street, a few blocks from Victoria Station and right down the street from the Victoria Coach (bus) station. Agnes arrived just a few minutes later. The apartment is on the third floor of a converted fire hall. Charley hauled the heavy duffels up the three flights of steps. On first glance the flat seemed small, not quite as it was pictured on the website. It also seemed shabbier than I had thought. And someone seemed to live here—this was not a typical rental apartment…. there were personal items here and there—clothes in the hall closet, half-bottles of shampoo at the bathtub, and bed tables stuffed full of who-knows-what. I found myself apologizing to Charley and Kelly.

Now, one week later, the flat is just fine—it’s home here in London and I like it. There are just four rooms—bathroom with an acceptable shower, living room, bedroom, and a small galley kitchen. In most of the places we’ll be on the trip, Kelly will have her own room. She’ll sleep on a couch in a few of the very expensive cities—like London. The bedroom and kitchen look out over the main street. The bathroom and living room are to the back. There is good light from the several windows and good ventilation. Charley is happy to have a big fan in the bedroom—he points this at himself… not at me. (I’m buried under a giant duvet, which suits me just fine.) The flat is painted in bright colors, which was part of the initial appeal to me. Kind of a burnished orange in the foyer, nice yellows in the living room and bedrooms, a mint green paint and wallpaper in the kitchen. I like the curtains and duvet in the bedroom and the bright blue couches with colorful pillows in the living room, which is also Kelly’s bedroom. These are colors I have in my own house… although as Charley says, this entire apartment is about the size of our living room at home! We have everything that we need—small kitchen appliances, washer and dryer, television, CD player, hairdryer, even an iron and ironing board.

The location is an interesting one. We are literally right on the border of the area surrounding Victoria Station and the “posh” neighborhoods of Belgravia. Go out of our front door and turn right and you’re in the world of the station: lots of inexpensive food places and tourist hotels… and lots of people with rolling bags. There’s a big shopping complex at Victoria Station, including a small Sainsbury grocery store. Go out of the front door and turn left and you’re in the world of Belgravia: upscale shops and restaurants, beautiful townhouses, expensive cars parked on the side of the street.

We are about a ten-minute walk from two different underground stations—turn left and walk through Belgravia to Sloane Square or turn right and walk to Victoria Station. Kelly thinks the station is closer, but I think it’s about the same. And I much prefer the scenery—and the people—on the walk to Sloane Square. But from this location we can walk almost anywhere… and we have already on this week.

Saturday was a settling in day for us. We unpacked and then went for a walk to explore our neighborhood—we ended up at Sloane Square and headed down Kings Road. Charley had left his shaving kit at the Residence Inn in Knoxville, so he stopped at “Boots the Chemist” to buy some replacement supplies. We went to the Sainsbury at Victoria Station to stock up on groceries. We like shopping in grocery stores in different countries. We fixed an afternoon snack of bread, cheese and apples. About 5 pm I decided to lie down and take a nap. The next thing I knew it was 11 pm…. Kelly was on the bed next to me, fully dressed, and Charley was on the foldout couch in the living room. We all got up for about two hours, ate the pizza I had bought at Sainsburys, then went back to bed. This isn’t our normal procedure for getting adjusted to a new time zone, but it worked on this trip!

Sunday, June 13

We got up on Sunday around 6:00 am, well rested and ready for London. We decided to have an unstructured day… no real plan or destination. (This is a very different approach than we have taken on our shorter trips to London!) The weather in London is great—upper 70’s and sunny. We walked to Buckingham Palace, about half a mile from our flat, and watched some minor activity with the guards. In our previous visits to London, we’ve somehow never made it to Buckingham Palace, so this was something new on this trip. From the palace, we walked down through St. James Park—very pretty with lots of waterfowl. We sat on a bench and enjoyed the sun and the surroundings. At this point Kelly felt disoriented—she wanted to see the London she knew… Big Ben! So, we walked on down to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Just down the street (Whitehall), we spotted some activity going on. We asked a policeman, and it was a special ceremony honoring the Irish war dead. There was a band, a small regiment of Beefeaters, and lots of old Irishmen… some in kilts. We watched for about 20 minutes—the band played haunting music as the old Irishmen marched up in pairs to the memorial, saluted and placed a red wreath.

We walked on to the Westminster tube station, where we bought travelcards on the underground for the week. We had decided we would spend our first week in London itself and then the second week we would do a couple (perhaps three) day trips out of London. The travelcards were expensive (especially because we decided on the option to travel during rush hour), but we planned to use the underground a lot during the first week. We took the tube to Charing Cross and emerged at a very busy Trafalgar Square—some type of festival involving bicycles going on! We walked around Leicester Square and decided on lunch at a sidewalk restaurant—fish and chips for Charley and me… pizza for Kelly. We walked down Charing Cross and visited a couple of bookstores. I can already tell that one of the most difficult aspects of our trip will be shopping (looking) without buying! Kelly and I both love to buy things—especially books.

We detoured down a side street to see the Mountbatten, where Charley and I had our honeymoon 12 years ago. Kelly took our picture out in front of the hotel.

Then we visited the National Gallery for just a short time. I love the Impressionist rooms… they have several Van Goghs and Monets. Near the gallery we found an “EasyInternetCafe,” with several hundred workstations. We stopped in to check e-mail… this will be the first of many visits to internet cafes on our trip. After that, we decided to head “home,” stopping at Sainsburys on the way. I made pasta for dinner and Kelly fixed a Caesar salad from a bag. We find the food prices reasonable and have decided to consider that ₤1 equals $2 for the ease of our mental currency conversion. We plan to eat breakfasts and most dinners at the flat. Another difficult aspect of our trip will be economizing on our meals. We are accustomed to eating pretty much wherever we want, and it is not unusual to spend $120 a day on food on our European vacations. On this trip, we hope to spend on average $300 a week on food.

After dinner we went for a long talk—about an hour. We walked all the way up to Harrods in Knightsbridge and back…. very pretty neighborhoods and lots of expensive cars! Bentleys, Rolls Royces, Mercedes, BMWs. We most like the “toy” cars though… the Smart Cars and the Mini Coopers.

Monday, June 14

Another beautiful day in London—and a great day for our visit the Tower of London—Kelly’s first real trip there. Charley and I had been on our honeymoon, and we all three had come for the Ceremony of Keys in 2002 but it was after dark and we didn’t have a proper tour. We took the tube to Tower Hill and bought our tickets for the Tower. We decided to follow along with a tour guide, one of the yeoman warders. He was quite interesting, though he talked a lot about England’s loss the night before to France in the Euro 2004 football tournament. He also seemed to relish telling the stories of the many executions and beheadings that had occurred at the Tower in years past. I found myself becoming queasy as he shared the gory details. We toured through several sections of the Tower… it’s almost a small city. In fact, eighty-three yeoman warders actually live at the Tower today. The tour ended in a chapel that can only be visited on the tour. The bodies of all those executed had been dumped in a public grave underneath the chapel floor and only in the last 100 years or so had been exhumed and reburied. They had identified about thirty of the bodies, including Anne Boleyn, the unlucky queen of Henry VIII. At the end of our official tour, we visited the exhibit of the Crown Jewels and also the armory with all the weapons and armour.

We walked across the Tower Bridge and had lunch at a J. D. Weatherspoon pub on the other side. Many of the pubs aren’t allowed to admit children, but this pub had a “family area” set aside. I’m not really sure how the rules work on this, but Kelly was not allowed to go across a certain line. Charley had I had fish and chips and beer and Kelly had a hamburger and diet coke. Good meal and a good deal too—less than ₤14. We had talked about going to the top of the Tower Bridge and walking across, but Kelly got nervous as we started in the door and we decided to consider it another day. I am nervous about all the money we are spending in London, so I was just as glad to skip another admissions fee. I’m hoping—I’m confident-- that we will spend less money when we’re out in the countryside!

We walked around the business area behind the Tower, London’s equivalent of Wall Street. Charley was especially interested in a bullet-shaped building, a very modern structure rising among much older buildings. We walked right up to the building to check it out, and found it was still under construction. I spoke to a security guard who gave me a card about the building—it is called 30 St. Mary Axe (the address) and 40 stories high. And apparently it is London’s first environmentally sustainable tall building, whatever that means.

We took the subway back from Liverpool Street Station, also one of London’s eleven train stations… and a very busy place. For dinner back at the flat we had sandwiches from a little shop down the street just two doors. We sent Charley on his own. He brought a shaved chicken pita sandwich and a shaved lamb pita sandwich, which he told Kelly was beef. She was tricked into trying it, as she would not have tried lamb. Cheap dinner, but not all that good.

After dinner we went out in search of an alternate grocery store, as the Sainsbury at Victoria Station is quite small. We went down Elizabeth Street past the station, then turned left on Warwick Way—several blocks down in a shopping area was a big Tesco with a lot more stuff than the Victoria Station Sainsbury. We walked inside and looked around, but didn’t shop today. We circled around toward Sloane Street to finish our walk back to the flat.

Tuesday, June 15

We had a hard time getting going this morning, which frustrates me because I do want to see and do all that we can and would like to beat the tourist crowds by getting an early start. I know we are trying to travel in a more leisurely manner, but it is clearly my nature to want to do something—to achieve—rather than while away our time in the flat. I want to experience London, not just do what we could be doing at home. Although I am getting much more sleep than at home, I still seem to be the one up first… then Charley about an hour later, and finally Kelly who we are having to drag out of her deep sleep.

Our first stop on Tuesday morning was the tickets stand at Leicester Square. We were able to get half price tickets to see Chitty, Chitty Bang, Bang that evening, which was Kelly’s choice. I waited in the sunny line while Charley and Kelly sat on a bench in the square. I talked with a nice couple from northern England while waiting in line. I like the environment in Leicester Square, though I distinctly remember not liking it on our honeymoon trip when we stayed nearby.

From Leicester Square we walked down to Covent Garden. I could have explored there for a long time, but Kelly and Charley didn’t seem too interested. (Another situation where it is hard to “shop,” when you are not buying!) Kelly and I did get Charley a Father’s Day gift at the Body Shop—after-shave tonic of some sort—and I got some peppermint foot soothing lotion for my poor aching (and very dirty) feet. The dirt seems permanently caked into my soles despite my efforts to scrub it away.

Not far from Covent Gardens I spotted a travel bookstore called Stanfords across the street. It is three whole floors of books, maps and other things related to travel. The ground floor was almost totally Europe—about four floor-to-ceiling bookcases of books on France alone, plus two racks of French maps. I bought a travel book called “Living in a Postcard”… another in the genre I like of a family buying and fixing up a crumbling home in rural France, this time an old monastery in the Pyrenees. I could have stayed in the bookstore for hours. I bought a Michelin Green Guide for the area where we’ll be staying in the Limousin for two weeks. I also bought a detailed ordinance map of our area in Provence (it shows the Quartier Trigaud) and fold-out map of Bruges. This is a time when I simply had to buy! We decided we want to come back here again.

We detoured to a nearby post office so I could mail our Father’s Day cards to Dad. I had brought stamps with me from our last trip to England and had enough to mail the cards. The post office (Royal Mail) sells all kinds of things and also converts money.

We headed back to Leicester Square where we had seen an “all you can eat” Mexican buffet. We should have checked out the buffet before committing to the meal, as it was not at all what we thought—barely any Mexican food at all and really a very odd assortment of food. I had a baked potato (called “jacket” potato in England) with mushrooms. Good, but not what I expected at a Mexican buffet, and not at all worth the ₤5.99 per person that we paid! We also ate much more than we should have… but we wanted to get our money’s worth. What good is an “all you can eat” if you have only one serving?

After our lunch, we took the tube to the British Museum, a destination high on Charley’s list. We didn’t stay long at all… again. (We didn’t stay long in 2002 either.) And we really saw the same things that we had seen in 2002—the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles. We did spend some time in the Reading Room, which I enjoyed. The museum was very very crowded in the mid-afternoon and also quite hot.

We came back to our flat by way of Victoria Station again—and Sainsburys. We had a simple dinner at about 5 pm. Kelly had her favorite Ramen Noodle soup (brought from home… we have a precious four packages and did not see it in the store!). Charley and I had grilled cheese sandwiches. We dressed up just a little and took the tube to Oxford Circus for our show at the London Palladium. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was really great—fun, funny, very entertaining. We have the old movie with Dick Van Dyke at home, and they did a good job of moving it to the stage. The actor playing the “childcatcher” was quite good—appropriately evil—and was booed by the audience every time he came on stage. They actually did make the car fly on a type of mechanical arm. We were in the third row and could vaguely see the arm, but I’m sure from farther back in the theatre the car really did fly. There were LOTS of children in the audience (we had what appeared to be a group about Kelly’s age on a school trip all around us), and they were all totally engrossed throughout the show. Everyone clapped along at the end and sang the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang song.

I didn’t want to come out of Victoria Station after dark, so we took the tube to Sloane Square, which has a whole different ambiance.

Wednesday, June 16

Today we planned to have a late start, but it seems we still had to rush to leave by 10:30 am. Kelly likes to stay up late, then has a hard time getting up in the morning! We stopped at an “outdoors” shop as we walked down Buckingham Palace Road past Victoria Station. I bought Kelly a pair of Merrill walking sandals, since she hadn’t brought any sandals other than thin flip-flops, which we won’t allow her to walk in. Her sneakers are bothering her—we bought insoles, but they keep slipping. We left her sneakers at the shop to pick up later on, and she wore her sandals out for the day.

We arrived at Buckingham Palace in time to get a good place right against the railings for the Changing of the Guard. Charley found a spot a bit away from us, where he could sit in the shade. He found several people to talk to. I couldn’t quite figure out what the routine was for the Changing of the Guard… two military groups changing places, each with a band… different guards marching around. There were lots and lots of people around the palace on this beautiful sunny day. After the ceremony, we walked over to the St. James subway station and bought sandwiches, chips and drinks. We took our lunch to St. James Park to eat. This appears to be a popular place for lunch. We were able to find an empty bench…. many people were sitting on the grass, eating their lunch or just relaxing.

We split up after lunch. Charley wanted to see the Cabinet War Rooms, which really weren’t of interest to Kelly and me. We took the tube to the internet place at Trafalgar Square, where Charley later met us. I had quite a few e-mail messages and also checked in on Slow Travel. Kelly was pleased to also have some e-mails from friends. I am used to checking e-mail several times a day, so it has been strange to be away from it.

We left the internet café and went out on Trafalgar Square. It was such a beautiful day. Kelly climbed up on one of the big lion statues and I took her photo. She saw some people wading in the fountain and was desperate to put her feet in. Then she begged to wade in the fountain. She didn’t listen to Charley when he said no, and kept begging to wade. Finally he gave in—she stood up and immediately slipped and fell on her bottom—water up to her waist. This was the first bad family moment of our trip… I’m sure there will be others, though hopefully not many. Charley was absolutely furious and lost his temper at Kelly, which he realized he should not have done. We spent about fifteen minutes trying to figure out what to do. We had planned that Kelly and Charley would go to the National Gallery—I wanted to see the Portrait Gallery instead. At that point, Charley wanted nothing to do with Kelly and didn’t want to go to the art museum anymore. He was mad at Kelly and mad at himself for what he had said to her. He decided to walk back to the flat, and wet Kelly was going to go with me to the Portrait Gallery, as I didn’t want to give up my afternoon plan. Charley left and Kelly and I sat on the steps so she could dry out a bit in the sun. We watched Charley walk away through the crowd. Suddenly he turned and came back. He didn’t want to leave us after all. He and Kelly both apologized to each other… a family reconciliation. Kelly said that her big lesson was that she needed to listen to her parents the first time. We will see if she remembers that lesson in the months ahead! We ended up with our original plan—they went to the National Gallery for an hour and I went to the National Portrait Gallery. I loved the Portrait Gallery… I decided I like the focus on history and famous people more than the focus on the art itself. We need to go back, as none of us finished seeing what we want to see.

We met back up at Trafalgar Square. Charley walked back to pick up Kelly’s shoes at the outdoor place, and Kelly and I took the subway back.

I fixed a great meal here at the flat—chicken in a Knorr “Chicken Tonight” sauce… French wine and herbs. I added mushrooms, onion and my Herbes de Provence (brought from home) to the sauce. We also had rice, sugar snap peas, and bread. Kelly had just plain chicken, as she didn’t want to try to the wine sauce, but I’ll give her credit—she did try the sugar snap peas and liked them. After dinner we took another long walk, this time through Belgrave Square to Hyde Park. The rose gardens in the park were absolutely beautiful…. lots of people out in the park enjoying the end of the pretty day. We came back the same way: Kelly enjoyed spotting all the embassies in Belgravia. She saw 14. At one of the middle eastern embassies they were having a fancy cocktail party. We also enjoy looking for the blue plaques that identify homes where famous people once lived. There are quite a few in the area around our flat.

It seems like we’ve done so much…. and we still have nine more days in London!

Thursday, June 17

We didn’t have an advance plan for today but the weather was still very good and it seemed like we should be outdoors. The paper says that it will get cooler and perhaps some showers in the days ahead, so we will do more museums then.

Charley is going out every morning to get some type of bread for breakfast and also a paper. He has found that the bus station is a good place to go and has brought back some great pastries. I like reading the London papers—I like the Times and also the Daily Telegraph, but we have also gotten the Daily Mirror, one of the tabloids. It’s like a daily dose of People magazine—only stronger. We are not getting much news of the US. We’re trying not to watch TV either. We have brought a case of CDs and there is a CD player here, so we are listening to music and reading (or writing) in our quiet times. I am the only one who is being really diligent about a journal. I have “assigned” Kelly to write twice a week (we are targeting Tuesdays and Fridays) as part of her schoolwork for the year. I don’t get a sense that Charley will be writing much, as he doesn’t seem to be oriented to keeping a journal on our trips.

I studied my two guidebooks and suggested we take a canal boat from Camden Lock to the London Zoo. We got a bit of a late start (seems a regular entry I’m making) and left the flat about 10:15 am. We took the tube at Sloane Street, and then changed at Embankment for Camden Town. Camden is an older, working-class, funky part of London… a shopping street and permanent flea market. The crowd was young… lots of young women with piercings in various places and some with pink hair. The young men were mostly wearing black. It wasn’t really the ideal place for the Wood family-- very different from the Provence that we love and the English countryside, but we were experiencing London. We stopped at a little Chinese restaurant so Kelly could have a snack of Chinese noodles. She got a big portion, so we all had some. There was an internet café in the back of the restaurant.

Regent’s Canal and Camden Lock are at the top of Camden’s High Street. This area appealed to us more…. restaurants, sidewalk cafes and shops surrounded the canal and the lock. The boat to the zoo left at noon, so we had about half an hour to browse in a used bookstore and of course, found a few books to buy. (I should have waited to buy “Living in a Postcard,” as there were two used copies in almost perfect condition!) The two boatmen were very nice… interested to hear about our trip… and suggested several other places to see in London.

We were on the narrow canalboat for about 15 minutes. The canal runs about nine miles, so we just saw a small segment. It’s barely wide enough for two boats to pass. We were dropped off right at the zoo—in fact, our boat ticket included our admission, so we were actually in the zoo.

The London Zoo is supposed to be one of the best in the world. With that expectation, I have to say I was a bit disappointed. We saw pretty much the whole zoo, except we didn’t really want to see the reptiles and bugs. We liked the gorillas and some of the pretty birds. There was a big house of small mammals, which were interesting. We had hoped to see an English hedgehog, but maybe we will see one in the wild. The information said there were 8000 animals, but there weren’t any elephants! (Supposedly the few they had were moved to be with a male elephant at another wild animal center run by the London Zoo called Whipsnade.) We had lunch at a cafeteria and sat outside—had a mix of things we shared… pizza, a sandwich, chips. We also had ice cream.

The best part of the day was walking back through Regents Park and the beautiful Queen Mary’s Gardens—there were thousands of roses, probably hundreds of varieties… all in bloom. I’d love to go back there on another pretty day.

Brian Huskey is a friend of mine from ImagePoint who left the company last fall to get a masters at the London School of Economics. His wife is also working on a masters here in London, but at a different school. I say that he is one of my inspirations for our trip, as I found myself actually feeling jealous when he announced he was leaving to go to school in London. I first met Brian when I joined the company and he was working in my department while still in college, so we have known each other 10 years. He advanced to be one of the key managers in our Information Services Department, but had really never ventured far from his home in Knoxville. This has been a big adventure for him. We met Brian and Jenny tonight at 6:30 pm at the statue at Piccadilly Square. It was fun to meet friends from home. They suggested a little Italian place, not far from Piccadilly Square… called Topo Gigio. I remember the little mouse on the Ed Sullivan show… when I was a little girl. We had a corner table down in the basement. Very Italian—real Italian-speaking waiters even. This was our “special” (read that “expensive”) meal out in London, since we are not eating many dinners out at all on this trip. We enjoyed hearing about Brian and Jenny’s experiences in London. They’re going home in about a week and a half. After dinner we walked together to a big statue that we spotted as we left the restaurant, then ended up walking together down to Buckingham Palace. We had planned to take the tube home, but ended up walking the whole way. Tomorrow we have an early reservation for the London Eye, so we decided to get to sleep early. We will see how we do in the morning with an early wake up call! (We’ll actually see how Kelly does in the morning!)

Friday, June 18

We did manage to get up early today, but had to race to get to the London Eye. We were supposed to be there at 9:00 am for our 9:30 am “ride.” I made a mistake in thinking we should go to Waterloo, the closest station to the Eye. Waterloo is a very big train station, in addition to an underground station… it’s where the Eurostar originates for the trip under the Channel to France. The station was crowded and complicated. We should have gotten off on the other side of the Thames at Westminster and walked across the bridge. As it was, we hardly needed to be there at 9 am. Charley picked up our tickets, and Kelly and I were among the first on the Eye at 9:20 am. Charley decided not to go again this time, though I think he missed a great view of London and for me there was no sensation of the heights at all, much less a feeling of danger.

We shared our car (capsule??) with only three other people, an American family from Texas with a daughter about Kelly’s age. The complete rotation takes about thirty minutes and there really is a fabulous view of London, which we are now getting to know so well.

After the Eye ride, we walked along the Thames and crossed at Westminster Bridge—wonderful views of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. It seemed a good time to visit Westminster Abbey, which has been a church for over 900 years. All the kings and queens of England have been crowned there, I think since Edward the Confessor. Many of them—and many other famous people—are buried in various tombs, vaults and side chapels throughout the abbey. I especially enjoyed Poets Corner, which includes tombs and memorials to many famous British writers, poets and actors. We spent about an hour at the Abbey, including an interesting museum I don’t remember visiting before.

We walked back to the flat and bought sandwiches from the shop just next door to our building, which we ate at home. We decided to spend a few hours resting and relaxing at the flat… it was a much cooler day and we even needed to use our umbrellas for a few minutes while we lined up to buy tickets at the Abbey. Kelly and I both took the opportunity for an afternoon nap.

About 5 pm we decided to go out again—after all, we’re in LONDON! We went back to Stanfords, the travel bookshop near Covent Gardens and then over to the internet café again. I have a fair amount to do and check on at the café. We need to find something for Charley to do at the café—he did go ahead and get his own e-mail address on Yahoo, so he can get and send his own e-mail. Kelly is keeping up an active correspondence with several of her friends and also Sasha at ImagePoint.

We came home around 8 pm and had a late dinner here at the flat. Charley had promised Kelly a surprise and brought her Burger King from the bus station. He and I had fish and chips from the neighborhood shop

This is the end of our first week in London, and it is great to have another week still in front of us. We have enjoyed being more relaxed in our days… to take a nap, sit in a park, visit a bookstore for a second time. However, I also realize that for the rest of our time in the UK, Friday is the night we will be working on our packing… getting ready to move on to our next week’s home.