London Day 2

Monday, 8 July 2024

I woke up feeling surprisingly fresh (probably not that surprising given my 11 hour sleep) just before 7 so Jon and I went out for a cruisy run at Hyde Park which was nice. Neither of us were desperate to use them but I can’t believe London is still trying to charge people 20p to use public toilets everywhere – who even has cash anyway? It seems mean spirited and unnecessary and London I think less of you for it.

After showers we all headed back to Paddington Station at 9am and got the metro to Black Friers which gave us a nice stroll to the Tate Modern.  After our Europe trip in 2019 I was imagining huge queues but there was hardly anyone waiting to get in when we got there. I really enjoyed the gallery – if I lived in London it would be nice to be a member and really spend more time with the artworks but I’m pretty happy we got a glimpse of some of it anyway.

After the Tate we strolled ten minutes to Borough Markets which was pretty packed compared to the gallery. I’m surprised how many long queues there were for some of the stalls _oysters and donuts seemed to be the most popular. We bought some bread and pretzels and ate them as we walked back over London Bridge to St Pauls Cathedral.  From there we strolled through some more cool little streets back to the train station and headed back to Paddington so we could meet Jett who was arriving from Venice and was making his way to our hotel from Gatwick.

As we left the station we checked Jett’s location on google maps and saw that he was last tracked 2minutes earlier just a few streets away but with only 1% battery, so chances were his phone had gone flat in the meantime. We hurried back to the hotel to see if he’d made it but he hadn’t so we set out again to find him, likely wandering aimlessly through Paddington with a flat phone .  Our timing was perfect as we bumped into him just a block away – he’d done a good job of remembering the route before his phone died but he was almost at the point of asking strangers of the address.

We took him back to our room and quizzed him on his adventures – we’ve discovered that a) he’s a bit sick and b) he’s got a big bag of washing we’re not going to be able to do anything about for at least a week!

No-one was keen to rush out again (particularly Jett) so we watched the grand prix at Silverstone on tv and had some lunch with our market products.

Once recovered we took the metro back to Victoria station and did a walking loop back to Buckingham Palace, then 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, Westminster Abbey & Big Ben then we crossed the Thames on our way to Waterloo Station where we took the metro on the Bakerloo line which we resolved never to use again due to it’s dinginess and hot steamy trains despite it not really being that warm outside.

We bought fish and chips from a place a block from our hotel and took them home to eat which was probably a good thing as our shock and surprise at how terrible they were might have offended the chef had we eaten in the establishment.

Back to our hotel room we’re settling in -Jett is still not feeling great – hopefully a good night’s rest will help.