LONDON CALLING

My flight to London was appalling. Really. First I misheard what was being served for dinner (my ears were plugged up the entire flight).  I thought the selection was chicken or curry or cheese lasagna. I asked for the chicken. The choices were chicken curry or cheese lasagna. I got  chicken curry which did NOT sit very well in my tummy. I claim temporary insanity when I neglected to get an aisle seat for this flight. So here I am jammed up against the window, yucky chicken curry misbehaving in my tummy, whiplash-inducing turbulence, intense nausea churning inside, no air controls so I was way too hot, sitting next to a guy who was 6'6" at least and stocky. His elbow was in my lap the entire flight. He fell asleep and I could not wake him so I could go to the bathroom. Needless to say, it was a very long flight.

But I finally arrived, and thankfully, Cartref House B&B was a like an oasis. Cartref is Welsh for "home".  The host that served breakfast, a full English breakfast, got everyone talking and sharing about what they were going to do for the day. That really made it fun and we all got the inside scoop on where we were going from someone had been there the day before.

London was a blast. I wouldn't mind living there if I thought I could find a way to do that.  It's easy to find your way around via the "tube" or "underground". We would call it a subway. Not only are things well marked, organized and fairly intuitive, you can always ask questions since we speak the same language. True we have different accents but technically it is the same language.

My first order of business was to climb the stairs at St. Paul's Cathedral. There are some 400 stairs - steep and narrow stairs to the top. So narrow that in some places the walls were only about 4 inches wider than my shoulders.

You may not recall but in 2007 when I was here my ankle was sprained (bloody cobblestone sidewalks) and I had a bruised bone in my knee.  There was no way I could have made that climb then and I'm glad I didn't attempt to. This time I made my way to the top and was rewarded with amazing views. These pictures don't do it justice of course but you get the idea.

 

London is swimming in cranes (I counted 52 in the skyline) and construction/refab in preparation for the Olympics. 

The weather was so warm and sunny that one morning instead of going to a museum I decided to spend some time in Hyde Park. It was glorious. Beautiful gardens.

 

Later that day I went to the Florence Nightingale Museum and what a treat it was. She really spearheaded and changed the entire nursing profession. Instead of an audio guide to carry around, each person was given a stethoscope (is it "a stethoscope" or a "pair of stethoscopes"?) and when I pressed them up against the black circles near pictures or exhibits, it initiated a recorded narration that I could hear through the stethoscope.  It was a small but sophisticated space with just enough information about her and nursing to keep me interested without being boring. She was the first nurse, on record, to use statistics to show that most soldiers died in the hospital from infection and poor conditions rather that on the field from injuries. She changed all of that. She even instituted a method for the men to send their pay home to their wives because the military hadn't yet done that. Until she began training the nurses they didn't even have an education about anatomy or germ theory. There's an endless list of things she created, started, initiated and invented. She was tireless and impressive.