London Calling

House of Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye from the Thames

This is the first time Doc & I have visited London without the jet lag battle. Generally, Doc is falling asleep over afternoon tea during the first few days of our London visits. This visit, Doc is also not haunting the house wide-awake at 2:00 AM. We’d been in Spain for two weeks and are well acclimated to the time change.

I sorely under-packed for London. I brought no cold weather clothes. I have a light jacket, t-shirts and shorts. I packed one pair of Levis: no long sleeved shirts. I did, thankfully, remember an umbrella. I did not need the swimsuit in London.

Doc & I generally visit London in autumn, winter or spring, not summer. This is our first summer trip to London. It is July! How cold can it get? It’s been cold and rainy. I don’t know if it’s been exceptionally cool this summer or if this is normal weather. It explains the pale pallor of the Brits and everyone’s comments about our having been on holiday.

I absolutely love London. It’s the one city in the world I’ve visited most often. I don’t know that I could actually LIVE permanently in London but I do love visiting. We generally stay with our dear friend, Peter. in Islington in a home older than the United States. The home is in also in better shape than the US, I’m afraid.

From Islington, we make our daily excursions into London. This year, we are traveling primarily by bus, as the Underground seems unusually crowed. I don’t know why. I enjoy the busses as it affords a view of London unavailable by tube. It’s rather like traveling the surface streets of LA instead of taking the freeways. You get to “see” the city.

Doc and I do our best to not be burdensome house guests. We are definitely NOT labor-intensive house guests. We are quite capable of entertaining ourselves during the day. Doc & I are off to museums, galleries and theater most every day. We meet up with our hosts for dinner often and make sure we top off the fridge with wine, milk, bread, cheese, pate, butter, etc.

We seem to have had more Asian food than usual: Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese: repeat often. We also made it to a great fish & chip shop in Islington (Central Fish) only to find out it is owned by the cousin of our neighbor in Palm Springs!

This blog was posted on Monday, July 25^th. We return to Palm Springs tomorrow. We need to be on the tube to Heathrow at the ungodly hour of 5:30 in order to check in on time. I’m ready to return home; it’s been a long trip with lots to do, see and friends to catch up with. Although it does not feel like it, we’ve been to four countries in two continents.

I hope I can still close that suitcase.

I’ll talk to you on the other side of the pond AND thank you for listening.

Jerry L. Hanson