In London

In London!

20 November 2012

I arrived at the hotel just a few minutes after 2:00 PM as I had predicted.  (I would have been here at 2:00 PM exactly except for a missed approach into LHR requiring that we circle around.)

The Strand Palace is very nice, certainly not as elegant or opulent as The Savoy, but it's been recently renovated and is very comfortable, not to mention being in the best location imaginable.  They did give me an upgrade to a full King for a small fee, far nicer than the real single I would have had otherwise. 

I walked to Westminster Abbey, even though it was very wet, rainy and cold.  I found it after 15 minutes, entered at a cost of 16 pounds ($25), and I was surprised to see there was much more to it than I remembered from my trip many years ago.  Basically, it's a shrine to the famous "who's who" in British History (Kings, Queens, Isaac Newton, etc.).

From there, I headed off for and found Westminster Cathedral, which in spite of the similar name could not have been more different than the Abbey:  A very solemn, respectful church, with people visibly touched and even crying in quiet reverence.

I headed back towards home, stumbling across Victoria Station, a locale that brings back very vivid memories from my first trip.  Some thing had changed, some were unchanged from all those years ago:  The escalators now have electronic posters not the old paper ones, but buskers still abound.

The show "Mousetrap" was definitely worth seeing, especially given its history as the longest running show of all time.  I predicted “whodunit,” even if I was not entirely clear on the "why."  I won’t break the rule and discuss it,, but let’s simply say it helps in figuring out the culprit if you are an INFP or a psychologist, not an analytic.  A software dev would never stand a chance as they would be overindexing the whole time!!

I finally went to bed about 10:30 even though I had my second wind as I wanted to get up early on Thursday for Southwark Cathedral.