First touristy type day

I woke up at 9:40. Mind you, that's 4:30 at home, but that meant that I had slept for 9 1/2 hours. I cannot tell you the last time that happened. That's almost 2 normal nights of sleep for me.

This, of course, completely disrupted my normal morning schedule when we travel. Normally I am up at least an hour before Ronnie and go for a walk somewhere. Today?  Forget it. Not that I didn't get around at all today, but the first thing Ronnie said to me was "So what did you do this morning?" and for once I said, "I just woke up."

I'm guessing (and hoping) that this means I'm okay on London time. I'm setting an alarm for the mooning in any event. But for today it meant nothing done before breakfast, so that's how it rolls.

Our first stop today was the National Gallery, one of the great art museums. There were about a half dozen paintings we were particularly looking for, but we saw plenty of other things that were great as well. One thing I noticed- there's a lot of crazy shit happening in a lot of these paintings. Look at these- what would you do if you were walking along and stumbled on this?

Or this?

Or this?

Or maybe this?

I wasn't around when these all were painted, but I'm not sure they're very realistic. Just saying.

The coolest thing wasn't by anyone famous (to me anyway, which in the art world isn't saying all that much). It was a weird, distorted-looking painting that if you looked at it through a peephole looked both perfectly to scale and 3-D. From the 17th century. Pretty amazing.

Because we got up so late, there wasn't a ton of time left in the day when we finished with that, so I went for a short walk down to the water.

No, it's not really curved like that. I went back to the hotel and then we walked over to New Bond Street, which is a kind of Madison Avenue sort of place. All fancy brands and nothing even slightly unfamiliar. We looked at some stuff but I wasn't in the mood to do this kind of shopping. We then walked on Oxford Street and I really wasn't in the mood to do that kind of shopping. It was like the shlockier versions of H&M, all in a row. If you wanted to buy cheap clothes, this was the place. So we got off the street and wound our way back to the hotel.

After a short rest, we went out to a pretty neighborhood far enough from the center of London that it was actually pretty calm and quiet, which was very nice. I had my first plate of bangers and mash, which was quite tasty, and a couple of nice beers. Then back to the hotel.

A pretty mellow first day, I must say. The whole area where we're staying is a mob scene. Not nasty in any way, but just crowded. Every sidewalk and every street is full of people. It's going to be quite a shock to get out into the country. Even if the places are busy, it won't be like this.