Wobbling Through A Day

Yesterday was a washout. We left Vancouver around 6 pm on Wednesday and the flight was about as good as you could wish for. We think that the virus that everyone is talking about has really reduced the passenger traffic in airports everywhere. Vancouver was so quiet that we walked up to the security check with no lines at all. We got in to Heathrow at about 11 am and it was quiet as well. Again no lines to speak of.

Brilliant old Shushy had all the notes to get us to the Heathrow Central Bus terminal, where we caught a bus to the very edge of the free zone, and walked about 100 Metres to our hotel. It's a very functional district but also rather bleak. Just hotel after hotel and nothing else. They let us into our room even though we were a bit early and we just collapsed on the bed until 5pm when we went out for food. I'm pretty sure that I didn't sleep at all last night.

Today, we took the bus back to Heathrow and bought Oyster cards to go into London on the Piccadilly Line to South Kensington. From there we walked through the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to Buckingham Palace. Some of the priciest real estate in the world.

As we passed real estate offices, most of these for sale were well up in the millions of pounds and the rentals? Check it out.

Anyway we really enjoyed our walk and saw lots of the blue plaques that tell of famous people who had lived in the neighbourhood.

We stopped for tea and toasted tea cakes near the Palace.The plan was to have those with the Queen, but she had to leave for Windsor unexpectedly. We went to her gallery, though, the Queen's Gallery, which came into being to feature the many pieces of art that have been bought by the Royal Family over the years. 

The exhibition up at the moment is a collection of pieces bought by George IV in the 1700's. 

This is Georgie himself looking very jaunty.

 This one of the galleries. 

I pretty much ran out of steam at this point. As I said, I was wobbling through the day. But, the good news is the tickets are good for a year from date of purchase. And we will return to London from Feb 20 to 26. So we will be back.