London - Day 1

April 29, 2015

Thank you for checking in on our travel adventures! I am sitting on the bed in a great little B&B in London. We are in the second bedroom of a delightful couple, Colin and Angela, who are just completing a full renovation of the flat. We are their first guests since the redo. A bonus is that we get good exercise since we are on the fourth floor! 

The travel has gone very well and we are just headed to bed after being up almost 24 hours. I just about fell asleep today at the National Gallery!. I was standing there and caught myself as my legs started to give way.  We enjoyed great artwork of Renoir, Caravaggio, Monet, Botticelli and more. 

In addition to the National Gallery we explored the National Portrait Gallery, Trafalgar Square, our first glimpses of Big Bend and Westminster Abbey. We will return to explore them further another day.  The weather was great which was really nice but It looks like rain tomorrow. We enjoyed a great little supper tonight at a small English Pub near our B & B.

Well, I will keep this brief since I continue to drift off.

Tim

A travel tip from Kathy:  It is very, very helpful to have a credit card with a chip in it for travel in Europe.  We had one and just before we left the USA, it had a fraudulent charge and the bank reissued a new card and sent it overnight mail, but it didn't arrive before we left.  As a consequence we were unable to ride the bus or buy "tube" tickets from the machines.  Luckily there was an attendant at the tube station that could sell us tickets. We are set for the rest of our London stay as we picked up our pre-purchased Oyster travel card and London Pass yesterday.