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July 12, 2014

One More Day in London before Moving On

I woke up at 9:00 this morning. I couldn't believe how long I slept. I went down to breakfast after they closed, but the nice waitress served me anyway. Connie was at her place packing to join me at the Celtic since we had decided to stay one more night after lodging wasn't available in Bath until Sunday evening.

It was another lovely day which began at the Courtauld Gallery at Summerset House which is a beautiful Neo Classical building on the River Thames. Connie's sister, Amy, had mentioned that it had a wonderful collection of Impressionists and she was right. It was a little gem of a museum reminding me a bit of the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston. We toured the top floor, then ate lunch in a little cafe housed in another wing of the building, and finished up on the second and first floor with some Medievel and Renaissance art. The whole experience was peaceful and lovely, and the museum was not crowded with tourists.

From there we walked around central London with thousands of other Saturday shoppers until just after 5:00 when we met Dani and Charles's friend from their Yale days, Cindy Paces and her two lovely daughters for tea at a hotel in Covent Gardens. Cindy came to Bellingham when Charlotte was about six months and Mariel was about eight. She also happened to be in Singapore when I was visiting -- so she reminded me that we now have had tea on three continents.

We returned to the hotel and wandered out about 8:00 p.m. to a little Italian place around the corner for a bit of pasta to round off the evening. While there, I was telling Connie about how the Boston museum had been robbed, and the woman next to us told us which paintings had been stolen. She is a Londoner, deals in art with a degree from USC. Her husband is Swiss and she proceeded to tell us a great deal about the art world in London. It was a serendipitous end of a lovely day.

Tomorrow we catch the train to Bath.

Here's Cindy, Mariel, and Charlotte at tea
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Posted by Marilyn at July 12, 2014 2:43 PM

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