London

My first day back in London was lazy to say the least. We stayed up too late and then had to catch early trains the next morning. Morgane's was 35 minutes or so after mine and was then delayed an 1 1/2 at the Chunnel. Once she got in it was after 11. We set off for her sister's place and spent the next few hours napping, eating lunch, and napping more before finally setting out to find a cafe. As we walked around the neighborhood (west Kensington) Morgane of course picked the one wine bar (no English Pub?!). After an hour or so we walked back to the flat where Emmanuelle (her sister) and Mark (sisters BF) were waiting on us. After the initial formalities etc we all set off for dinner at Gazette.
Saturday-
The pattern continues. Got up late, had lunch at a pub (my first fish and chips left something to be desired), then walked by Westminster Abbey (which was closed), around Parliament Sq, and past Whitehall to Trafalgar Sq where the skies opened up on us. Hustling in to the National Gallery we quickly realized that a lot of people had the same idea to take advantage of the free museum to stay dry. Despite the somewhat noisy crowd I found the gallery to be a very pleasing museum. I was able to see several masterpieces from the likes of Botticelli, All the ninja turtles (sans Donatello), Rubens, Velásquez, Goya, etc. My favorite by far was a fairly striking yet simple portrait by (to me) and unknown artist, Bartolome Esteban Murillo's portrait of Don Justino Deneve.
After strolling through the gallery for some time we decided to head towards St. Paul's. Luckily the rain had stopped and we were able to get into the Cathedral. I had bad luck with churches in London. Westminster was closed and St. Martin-in-the-fields was closed until fall for renovations, so I was 1 for 3, which wouldn't have been bad if sightseeing were baseball. After St. Paul we headed to Green Park to enjoy the "sun"--I say sun because it was periodically counter balanced by powerful gusts of wind. After sitting in the park reading, the cold became to much for my Austin bones and we headed back to the flat.
Emmanuelle and Mark had been at a tennis tournament all day and were crashed out. Morgane and I followed suit. Upon waking up I couldn't believe it was 10PM--the sun still plays tricks. We ordered Chinese food and watched a movie.