London Day 2

Certainly, the highlight of today was meeting up with Fiona and Chris for lunch! We had such a lovely visit! Fiona chose a great location - we met up at The Drift, a funky modern restaurant a short bus ride from where we are staying (more about getting around London later). It was really wonderful to catch up with both of them and hear about teaching jobs getting underway, a new home in the near future, little sister's 30th in Edinburgh (HB Kirstie!) ...... and maybe a little family gossip :) We hope F&C will come to Canada soon!

After our great visit with Fiona and Chris, mum and I headed off to Tate Modern, a place that both of us have always longed to visit. To be honest, we both found it a bit underwhelming. Not the art (since I could never call any art underwhelming) but the venue itself. It's scheduled for a big upgrade in 2016, so maybe that explains why it looks so neglected at present. I love that the Tate promotes art for everyone by offering free admission to all. I really do love this, however, I felt like there were missed opportunities around every corner in terms of educating people about art in general, but particularly about modern art. So maybe I'll go work as a consultant to Tate Modern in my retirement, haha, or maybe not, but in the meantime, I thoroughly enjoyed viewing favorite Braques, Kandiskys, Picassos, and many others while we were there. Trish - look what I found!

OK, let's chat a little about getting around London. There are trains, buses, the tube, cabs, and foot travel. Yesterday we used a lot of cabs and spent way too much money in the name of convenience, so today, since we had more time and energy, we decided to try bus travel. Daily bus passes are very economical, but for London newbies, it is a bit of a challenge. We did well though, and got everywhere we need to be with minimal stress or error. Yay us! One bus driver actually said to me, " You've only been in London one day? You seem to understand the system pretty well!" Ha! Conquered!

I did a lot of screen captures of google maps - no data service en route is another whole conversation, and obstacle....but this solution helped a lot!

There is always way more foot travel than one expects, so we are enjoying a fairly lazy evening with feet up after a yummy Italian dinner just down the street.

Tomorrow, hop on hop off tour. Sounds simple. Yay!