Beautiful!

We had a good train ride yesterday from Edinburgh to London; pretty uneventful which for us was a nice change. No falls outside the train station; yes, we'll take good omens everywhere we can. 

It was nice to check back into a familiar place and know we don't have to be on the move again. Kind of like coming home one could say. 

Today we reacquainted ourselves with the subway system which certainly is very efficient. And we put lots of miles on our shoes which was good for both of us - although we have been getting our share of exercise on this trip. London is very busy again and we think in part it is because the London Marathon is taking place on Sunday. Much of the central London roads will be closed down. It's a huge marathon attracting about 50,000 entrants so we will have to pick our vantage point somewhere close to our hotel. While we were walking around today we saw so many runners getting their pre-race training runs in, weaving in and out amongst all of the tourists. Words cannot describe the frenetic pace and hordes of people and traffic here. It's amazing to be amongst so many people from all over the world. 

All of the flowers seemed to be in bloom in St. James Park as we strolled by there today. 

Our morning was spent visiting the National Gallery where we saw beautiful paintings from most of the masters from various periods including Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Seurat, Vermeer, and Klimt and a number of other famous Dutch artists. The building itself is so large and its old architecture so beautifully displays all of the extraordinarily-sized works of a number of the artists. We found it quite easy to get lost in the gallery and we were not alone. There were lots of school trips happening while we were there and it was interesting to do a little eavesdropping and glean hints of what to look for in the different pieces, thanks to the educational knowledge of the docents. 

And we had a Beautiful afternoon taking in the musical which tells the story of Carole King - a wonderful afternoon of all the hits we grew up with. We thoroughly enjoyed it and think there may be more shows in our future. It's also nice to get a chance to see the old theatres while taking in a little culture.