A day in London without a plan
 

I seldom read a trip report and am even more reluctant to write one. I did one once before that was moderately well received by those who understood it was a joke. This is not.

We had three days in London in June prior to 4 days in Switzerland and a Rhine Cruise. We have been to London numerous times and my wife lived and worked there for 5 years in the mid 50s so we do know our way around. Yes, we could be parents to most of you and grandparents to many.

Anyway, on our second day we decided to go to Covent Garden. I'd tell you about our first day but I'm sure you don't care about our wanderings thru St. Mary's Hospital to get a prescription for medication we'd left at home.

It was really too early in the day for Covent Garden. Some of stalls were still being setup and the Transport Museum is being renovated. BTW, you can't get on the Tube there. Off, yes, On, no. My wife decided the strap on her shoulder bag was too short so we stopped at one of those emporiums on Southampton where a kindly young lady took pity and gave her a longer strap. Maybe it was the cane.

We continued to the Strand where we hopped on the bus for 2 stops to St. Clement Danes. It is a Wren church and home of the Air Force Church since being rebuilt after WWII. Google it for more info.

We realized Temple Church was very near so decided that was the next stop. It was closed until a communion service at 1:30 so I followed the crowd of lawyer's assistants to a shop on Fleet Street for takeaway sandwiches to eat in the church court. Hint, follow the locals - the sandwiches were delicious and reasonable. We celebrated the spoken communion after our brownbag lunch.

We looked at our map in Michelin and decided to walk down Essex St. to the Embankment. Photo of the London Eye, Big Ben and Parliament in one shot. Temple Place is a lovely little oasis for a few minutes respite but a passing shower caused us to seek shelter in the Temple tube station.

When it passed we made our way to the river side entrance to Somerset House and the Courtauld. Usually, we'd make a visit to one of the exhibitions but this time we were both a bit weary and had one more stop we wanted to make.

Valesquez was calling from the National Gallery. We headed straight to Gallery 30 for the Rokeby (Oh, what a lovely bottom) Venus.

We grabbed a bus to our hotel, had a little rest, went to dinner and retired.

A wonderful day.

Thanks for your report. We just returned from London and saw some of the same sites.

It sounds like you had a lovely day revisiting favorite sites in a city you know and enjoy. Isn't it rewarding to get to know a place so well that you are comfortable that you can just wander and hit your highlights? I hope the rest of your trip - Switzerland and the cruise - were also enjoyable.

Thank you for your kind comments, kate12 and noe847. Both St. Clement Dane, Temple Church and our little walk to Temple Place were new to us. We had read about both churches from a beautiful book "Churches and Cathedrals of London" and said we'd visit if ever in the area. Some will recognize Temple Church from The Da Vinci Code.

We did enjoy the rest of our trip which included 8 days in Paris after the Switzerland and Rhine segments.

We discovered the same thing about the Covent Garden tube stop. We got off there but had to walk to Leicester Square to get back on the tube. I have no idea why.

Crowd control - it gets dangerously packed at times.

This from the London Transport website:
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We are making changes to Covent Garden station to reduce current congestion, improve capacity and provide a better service to customers.

Key dates
Work started at the station in September 2006 and is due to be completed in .

Station disruption
The station will operate as way out only between 6 June – December 2007 to assist this work.

Ticketing faciliaties will also be unavailable.--------

jsmith - very funny the copy you took off of the website... the lack of an end-date for when the work will be completed pretty much sums up the update work on any of the tubes and stations!