London on a windy day

We woke refreshed at 3am and dozed/stared at the ceiling until it was a reasonable time to get up. We headed out just before 9 to find coffee and start our day. The weather was blue skies and sunny, with 77km/h wind gusts - somewhat challenging for walking but perfect for nailing that windswept look.

We headed south towards Trafalgar Sq and then on to Big Ben, taking in various other squares on the Monopoly Board on the way (Leicester Sq, Picadilly, Oxford St, Regent St, Strand, Bow St, Whitehall, Euston Rd, etc, none of the expensive ones, but also none of the cheap ones.). Our main destination was The National Gallery to see a neo-impressionism exhibition - a private collection of dotty paintings, including by Camille Pissaro and Van Gogh. Despite the queue at opening time, it wasn't too crowded in the exhibition, which is good because dotty paintings look amazing from the other side of the room, and less dotty. You be the judge, but we think one of the paintings was of Port Willunga poles 😅.

From the gallery, we meandered back to the Embankment and then wound our way back to Fitzovia via Convent Garden and Leicester Sq (full of delightful statues of literary and film characters). A highlight for me was seeing the home of Samuel Pepys, a real person who features in a lot of the historical fiction I have read around the time of the Great Fire of London (his diaries are one of the main records of life in London at the time). I read his name as "Peppies," but according to Adrian, it is said "Peeps", which he finds hilarious, and so he will always be Samual Peppies to me.

By the time we got back to one of our locals for lunch, it was still very windy, and we'd walked about 9kms. We popped into a Tescos Express and Adrian grabbed some old favourites from his younger days - Hoola Hoops (sadly a victim of shrinkflation) and Shreddies (which apparently have no rival amongst the Australian breakfast cereals).

The area was much more lively on a Monday evening with lots of locals getting blown home. The wind was still gusting when we went out for a casual SE Asian dinner before another early night

Two observations of London. Firstly, the hire e-bikes are everywhere but no one wears helmets. Seems dangerous, Londoners! Secondly, we are so well trained to cross at lights on the audible signal in Australia that several times we stood through several changes of lights before realising we could cross. Must get better at crossing the road!Read more