Monday: "I Just Kept Thinking of Falling"

Cheval Place is a very small 2-block street in Knightsbridge. It's cobblestone, and dead ends to the west of our flat. It is home to a couple of Indian restaurants, a few hair salons and two or three dress shops. The dress shops are called dress agencies. Apparently some of the dresses require representation. One of the shops is right across the street from our flat, and we can see it through the window in our kitchen. One of the favorite pastimes of Graham and Frank is to watch the mannequins be dressed in the window. The shop employees must have noticed this, because later in the week they began to pull down a shade as they dressed them. That is British modesty to an extreme.

Monday morning is trash day on Cheval Place. Early in the morning (felt like 3:00 AM to me), several trash dumspters were noisily lifted by a trash truck, violently shaken, and then replaced wherever they are hidden off of the street. I kept thinking it would stop, but it just kept on going on and on. I persevered in my quest for oversleeping, and slept in until 11:00. Better than the day before, but hardly adjusted. Polly's mom says we'll be perfectly attuned to Greenwich time when it is time to go home on Saturday.

Our first full day (sic) of sightseeing began with a tube trip to Westminster. It's a great tube stop because when you emerge you see Parliament, Big Ben (well, the clock that houses Big Ben), and Westminster Abbey. We crossed Westminster bridge on foot to the London Eye. This is a new attraction since I was last in London, and it is great. An incredible view of the city. I could see St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, the Thames... everything from a wonderfully high vantage point. I asked Virginia if she enjoyed the London Eye, and she said, "Sort of. I just kept thinking of falling."

From here we took the excellent advice of Michael Boxser, a friend of Fowler Jones, and took a Thames Clipper boat ride up the Thames. They have a bar on board and I had a Stella Artois as we cruised up to Greenwich. We didn't make it to the O2, London's new entertainment district and performing arts venue. Instead we ate at a pub.

We drank wine at the flat and turned in, hoping every day wasn't trash day on Cheval Place.