September 14
It is a terrible mistake to take an upgrade to business class on your first trip abroad. Future trips will seem like a hardship I am sure. Champagne before take off. Capacious storage for carry on. Wide leather seats and fresh blankets. Bose Noise cancelling headphones and personal movie selection. ( mine was a wonderful, tense British drama about a middle aged woman who falls for a too good to be true cad.)My dinner selection was lamb. Ok-- so now I have tried it :>(
About 1:30 I may have dozed a little. Moot point because I felt very alert when the Flight Attendent woke me for breakfast at 5:30 am. An hour later we landed. The porter grabbed bags for me and then I got swallowed up in a large group from Zimbabwa and waited, waited for a bus, to take me to another bus, after navigating long corridors and a brief shower outside. Finally made it to Hoppa Bus which took me to the hotel and without too much drama I was checked in.

Conceige tutored me in coin values and dial plans and then ( two lattes later) off I went-- the Piccadilly line to a change at Acton-- and into Chiswick.

This reasonably close in hamlet is as charming as one could wish. The first shope I passed was antiques with a chandalier my Claire would love and an 18 in bronze of a women in blowing skirts.
Beautiful old church, interesting restaurants, charming little pink hotel called, preditably enough, The Chiswick Hotel. Now- just in case you should come to visit the pronounciation is Chiz- ick. Walked till I could walk no more.Thinking of staying in one of their little apartments.. but the commute would entail two tubes and one bus so.. we'll see. Stopped at a Tappas restaurant.. food ok.. wonderful ambiance. My server called me a cab for the way home. A Mercedes cab... I will have to adjust somehow! We had a fine talk. He thinks Bush has taken things over the edge. He is distrurbed by the demonisation of Islamic people. He thinks-- without wanting to say it-- but that London and England are in trouble because of hte US influence.. and of course their own challenges. I kept his card.

Saturday-- Leiscter Square, the stop before first Covenant Garden.Sunny skies and cool breeze as I grabbed fish and chips at Garrick's by a wide open window. Food miserable- lunch fabulous. Get it?

I walked to Tralfalgar Square and the West End. Extraordinary, the scale of things. National Gallery- spent quite a bit of time with the Rembrandts. Funny how as he aged, he became less meticulous, more palette knife and less brush, maybe faster... and simpler. His self portraits no longer built around pretense, status, posturing. Still, perhaps my favorite painting was in his room but thought likely to be the work of a student, not his, called Man Reading By Window. Had tea (ok-- coffee!) and scones in the Gallery tea room and read.

Forgot to mention- tearing through a book called, Confessions of An Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins. The tube is ideal for reading... my Mom use to say .. "going into a little brown study". Strolled the theatres to see what struck me, almost went to see Alan Sorkins', A Few Good Men but instead saw On the Ceiling, a tour de force, two of Michelangelo's assistants grasp for second hand glory as the most magnificent achievement of the age comes into being.