Time flies.

This is being written in Brugge. Early on Sunday morning.

One has to cast one's mind back  - all the way to last Tuesday.

We thought it might be a good idea to go over to King's Cross / St Pancras station to check out where we would be getting the Eurostar to Brussels at sparrows-fart on Thursday. It was reassuring. The building is a terrific mix of the old and very modern.

I thought we might head into the "City" of London and have a look at the laneways around the old town and the "Inns of court" legal area. We got a bit off course and never really got back on it. We had a look at the Monument that was built to commemorate the "Great Fire of London" and then just wandered.

After lunch we wound up in Hamley's toy shop.It is something of an institution - they claim to have been selling toys since about 1760. It was scary.

The British National Gallery was a welcome change - but foolishly we arrived only an hour before closing and there was a sort of rush to see all the fabulous things we wanted to see. It was very silly and we wound up starting the day there on Wednesday morning when it was a lot less crowded and we were relaxed. Truly wonderful.

We visited Covent Garden for lunch on Wednesday. It is very touristy, and well worth a visit. There are markets and restaurants and lots of specialty shops. There are also buskers. Very good buskers. We saw an excellent string quintet, lead by a man with a really big operatic voice ,who was picking on folk eating at a cafe singing "Give me your money" to the tune of O sole mio. The whole group crowded around this poor women. She just had to buy one of their CDs.

After we stopped laughing, we walked over to the British Museum and stayed until they shooed us out at 5:30.

On our last night in London, we just had to have a feed of fish and chips. So we did.

Speaking of food -I'm off to breakfast.

I will catch up, soon.

I've been too . . . lazy?

I thought doing this every day might turn out to be a bit ambitious.

After a hard day sight seeing / sitting in the local pub, typing on this wee keyboard is lower on the agenda than sleeping.

Yesterday, (Sunday 24th) we went over to Portobello markets.

There was antiques / jewellry, knick-knacks, second hand books and a lot of straight out crap. But there was a friendly sort of vibe to the place.

Afterwards, we headed over to Hyde Park and Speaker's Corner - a bastion of truly free speech - if you have the courage to deal with the hecklers. One way of doing this seemed to be to get into an arguement, some of them quite good-natured, some pretty heated. The other method seemed to be simply carrying on with the planned speech very loudly completely ignoring the chap shouting at you from half a metre away. A quite impressive feat.

Of course, some blokes just go down there for a laugh.

We walked and then we walked a bit futher.

We passed the front of Buckingham Palace, where there is already a media frenzy over the wedding on Friday.

We also passed Westminster Abbey, where I had hoped to attend evensong - not out of any religious motive - simply for the splendid music. Surprisingly, Evensong was at 3pm - with the sun not setting until about 8:30, I thought it would be later, and we missed it.

Today (Monday 25th) we started out with a visit to the Charring Cross Hospital Accident and Emergency Department for a medical assessment of a very suspicious mole on Fiona's forearm. It was examined and given the all-clear - apparenly there are a number of characteristics of melanomas that it lacks. Better safe than sorry.

Reassured, we resumed our normal programme of touristing with a visit to one of the best small galleries in the world. The Courtauld - some fabulous works (van Gogh, Manet, Picasso, Degas, Seurat) mixed in with some of the ugliest canvases I have ever seen.

Later we went on to the Tate Britian a gallery that specialises in the works of British artists. Again, a very mixed bag. Fiona is a big fan of JMW Turner - lots of good things for her to see.

It is very tiring standing around looking at pictures - and hard on the feet.

We hopped on the bus and got home early.

Time for a little lie down.

Photo of the day a couple playing with their dog in the fountain at Somerset House.

Greenwich

I can do this very quickly.

Went to Greenwich, felt like shit, came home again and slept.

We got the boat from Westminster Pier and saw much of the city from the water.

Nice trip.

Feeling much better today - after about 15 hours sleep.

I have three photos for you today.

The first is Regent Street full of union flags

The second is Fiona and me either side of the Prime Meridian

And the third is for all the library workers. This is the elegant and sophisticated after hours returns chute at the Hammersmith Library.

Try nicking something from that!

The weather continues to be sub-tropical.

We walk in the shade where possible - and  were lucky to be home when the afternoon thunderstorm hit around 5pm yesteday.

Not a cloud to be seen this morning.

Ciao.

Up and walking

Well, here we are.

It really is a very long journey.

Our plane left Perth at 10:30pm on Wednesday and we arrived in our hotel room 24 hours later.

I am still not sleeping well - Fiona is fine.

Yesterday we were amazed at how good the weather was and headed over to Kew Gardens. Brilliant.

There is a wonderful mix of the formal and the natural look.

As you can see the bluebells are out.

We spent a little time watching at a bird feeding station - we saw a magpie (European) a robin and a couple of tits. One blue tit, and one great tit. Honest.

It got rather warm by mid afternoon - mid 20s with the definite chance of getting a sweat up.

We headed back into the city and were amused to see hundreds of union flags lining several of the main  streets. I asume that the happy couple will be processing along them later in the week.

London is a great place to just wander about.

It is another nice day so we are off to Greenwich on the boat.

It's all about the preparation

Fiona and I invite you to come with us on our travels.

We leave on Wednesday night and fly to London.

From there it is Eurostar train to Brussels, then Brugge, Aachen, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Cesky Krumlov, Munich, Strasbourg and Paris.

We will arrive home on 1st June.

This weekend we have been getting the last bits organised - collecting cash for our arrival, doing a "dress rehearsal" pack to make sure that all the stuff we plan on taking will fit into our luggage, flea treating the cats for their stay at the cattery etc.

There is also a desire to do a whole lot of cleaning / tidying around the house before we go.

The plan I have is that as we travel I will keep this blog as a diary, and I also intend to post the best photo I take each day.