Believe it or not, we managed to sleep all the way until nearly 8am today! For Frank, that was about 12 hours of sleep which is actually way longer than I could have possibly imagined. We had a lovely, leisurely morning that involved tea, toast, yoga, and avoiding the rain. Once stretched, fed, and bathed we were off on our first real day of holiday.
We started with a trip down memory lane. Tube trip from Paddington to Holborn and a walk down the Kingsway brought us to the LSE where I once studied. That’s why I was in London at the time I met my now wonderful hubby. 
We wandered past the Olde Curiosity Shoppe which has been there since Dickens wrote about it and which I remembered fondly from my time 20+ years ago. And then I turned around to view the campus and recognized…. nothing. Funny how time changes so many things. I wondered at one point whether I should try to find some of the professors I had all 
those years ago. But when I saw the changes that had occured in the intervening years, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to find them if I wanted to. And so it goes…
So then we’re off to the London Film Museum where they were exhibiting the largest collection of official Bond vehicles anywhere. It was very fun wandering
around the Aston Martin, Lotus, Jaguar, helicopter, tuk-tuk taxi and other 007 vehicles. We might even have gotten our photo taken… 🙂
Another grip of nostalgia saw us on the tube to northern London to go visit Stamford Hill where I used to live. We made it all the way to the Manor House tube station and realized that there wasn’t much reason to go look at a flat I hadn’t thought of for more than a decade so we wandered south through Finsbury Park and hopped on the tube to Hyde Park station to grab some lunch.
Which turned out to be more difficult that we would have thought. We ended up wandering through Knightsbridge to Sloane Street where we found the only pub (at least that’s what it said over the door) and had a nice meal as we watched stupidly rich people walk and drive by. It was amazing to see that at one stop light, there were SEVEN Mercedes in a row. Common as dirt apparently…. 🙂
The afternoon’s entertainment was a tour of the state rooms at Buckingham Palace. The palace is open to the public for about 5 weeks a year and so off we went to see where the state dinners, formal investitures, and other gala events take place. (John Nash went a little ga-ga with the gilt if you ask me.) No photos 
were allowed inside but we did experiment with a selfie on the lawn where the garden parties take place. We then wandered back through Knightsbridge to Kensington where we found…. a Whole Foods! I thought the Five Guys in Covent Garden was bad enough but there is apparently no limit to encroachment of Americanism in all price ranges.
And finally back up through Notting Hill and the tube back to Paddington. It was time to prepare for the main event of the day: dinner with Dominic! I have known Dominic since we both suffered through Monetary Economics together at the LSE many moons ago. I will swear that he got me through the course and I believe he would say the same about me. We have been in intermittent contact over the years starting when he was at the Bank of England and I was first at the Board. We’ve had the chance to meet in person only a few times (once, twice?) over the years but I knew he still lived in London and was looking forward to seeing him and finally meeting his wife, Emanuela, and he was going to meet Frank for the first time (even though we got engaged while I was at the LSE).
So when we were arranging to meet while we were here, we discovered that the flat we had rented months ago was directly across the street from where he lived. Okay, statisticians, get out your pencils. What are the odds that out of all the rental properties in all of London that we’d wind up directly across the street from the only person I knew living in London? (If you want to get really small numbers, factor in the odds of me and Emanuela both being Celiac.) We gathered for drinks in their lovely flat and then headed out for a fabulous meal and lovely conversation. I am thrilled to have been able to spend time with them and can’t wait until I can hold them to their (drunken?) promise to visit us in Kansas City.
And so our first full day (read: stayed awake past 8pm) is now done.
Today’s numbers:
- Models of exotic cars in the Film Museum: 2
- Models of exotic cars in the parking lot of the Wellesley Hotel in Knightsbridge: 3
- Number of steps today: 25,359 (or 10.92 miles)
- Number of hours of sleep needed to recuperate from today: at least 10.
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