KyotoAlioto

Tyler joined me for a long weekend in London after what seemed like an endless week of meetings. Aside from rain on the first of my "free" days, the weather was clear and crisp and cold and windy as one would expect in mid-November.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• Tea and Scones at the Portrait Gallery after a fantastic run from our hotel near Paddington Station through Hyde Park through Kensington Gardens stopping in front of Buckingham Palace through St. James Park near the changing of the horse guard past #10 Downing Street past Big Ben / Parliament to and partially across London Tower Bridge back to a nice footbridge…
• Tea and Scones at the Portrait Gallery every day! I just could not get enough of them.
• The Unilever Slide Exhibition at the Tate Modern: tunnel slides (yes slides!) in the main gallery. Tickets for the slides were free; we rode 4 out of 5 of them and our favorite by far was the slide from the 5th floor to the ground floor.
• Harrod's: Fabulous food galleries, the singing pizza chef, the performer on the Egyptian staircase - who needs to pay to see a show?
• A Saturday afternoon stroll down Portabello Road. We snacked on cupcakes and veggie pot stickers - neither of which we could ever find here.
• A Sunday afternoon stroll on Hampstead Heath and a decidely non-English lunch at a very English Pub, the Holly Bush (fresh goat's cheese salad?).
• The Rosetta Stone at the British Museum. Can you believe that the Magna Carta has moved. I went on a nostalgic search from my first visit at age 13 and was told that it is now in the BM Library. St. Paul's, Westminster - both from the outside. We simply couldn't enter in our running clothes (short shorts).
• Vegetarian food ranging from Kerala Indian Restaurant Rasa (It wasn't Saravana Bhavan, but it was fantastic just the same) to Maroush Lebanese to Tas Pide Turkish Restaurant.