That was the plan for today.  View the symbolic Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace with its celebratory atmosphere (not to be confused in any way with the solemn Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery) and then head to the city center for an in-depth visit.  But upon arrival at Buckingham, it was clear that the mob present in front of the Buckingham fence and gates would dictate the need to try again later in our visit.  There were many warnings from the officers patrolling on horseback that "there are pickpockets in the area."  See the sign in the pictures warning the pickpockets that there are undercover officers in the area also.  It reminded me of the photo radar warnings to drivers in Denver. 

So we spent the next five hours touring the city center on foot.  The markets, the plazas, the unique retail makeup of central London with entire areas selling the same type of item such as books, the beautiful buildings, gardens and storefronts.  Lunch at La Roche (modern Mediterranean cuisine with Moroccan and Lebanese influences), the Temple Church (http://www.templechurch.com/), Kings College, Trafalgar Square, St. James Park and then dinner at Haandi (North Indian Frontier Cuisine) in the Brompton area. 

I am trying to avoid making this strictly a travelogue but do hope that the places we go and comment about might be helpful to others who will visit here.  So while I hope friends and families might find the information useful in knowing what we are up to (but they also have the option of ignoring it), first and foremost these are notes to me for sometime in the future so I can remember what I did with my youth.  So I skipped yesterday as our day consisted of a long walk through the Chelsea area and Battersea Park which included a visit to the Royal Hospital where the pensioners live.  Interesting and fun to do but certainly not to read about.

The highlight of the day was losing our pubginity.  Spell check says there is no such word but there is now.  I have decided that a pubgin is someone who has been to the UK many times but never in a pub.  We have one right up the street and it was Konnie’s brilliant idea to try it for dinner.  With all of those beautiful floral displays on the outside, why not?  Bingo!  The food was fine, the wine was fine, they don’t smoke in them anymore and we saved a bunch of money.

With Thursday’s forecast of only a 20% chance of rain it seemed like the day to scoot back to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew which is advertised as the most complete public gardens in the world with 300 acres and about 40,000 plants.  It is about a half hour via the Tube from downtown and Kew is a lovely village to visit also.  We made a springtime visit there in 2009 which was spectacular but even the late summer visit of today was worth the trip.

So here are way too many pictures and I will tell you up front that if you don’t like ridiculous close ups of flowers and us you might as well skip this one.  Oh yes, please check in later as I am working on two “special” posts for publication later in the trip.  One is “Signs You Don’t See in the US” and the other will be “The Window Boxes of London.”

One more thing.  The kids over here in their school uniforms (blazers, hats, ties, school backpacks etc.) are sooooo cute.  I have been afraid to try to take pictures of them except for the one from behind at the pastry counter but hopefully I’ll get up the nerve to ask a parent sometime.

A day that started crisp and clear turned to rain.  The drizzle and Underground strike altered our plans and we headed to Westminster Abbey instead of to the theater district where we planned to consider a matinee.  As is typical of the cathedrals from that era, it is spectacular including nearly a millennium of history on the site.  Admission was a head turning 15 pounds (about $25 dollars) but when you get inside it now includes a free thorough audio guide which makes the price more reasonable.

Here are some sights from today.

The weather remains as we expected with temperatures in the mid-sixties and overcast.  A quiet day here as expected which started with getting my first run of the trip and the opportunity to see how huge the bike sharing program is here.  We have a superb one in Denver which has come under fire by the Republican gubernatorial candidate as something that "could threaten our personal freedoms."  (http://www.denverpost.com/election2010/ci_1567389)  It appears that they are at an even greater risk to a loss of freedom here because of their efforts to reduce traffic and pollution and stay healthy. 

We were so European on Sunday.  Up late, coffee late, dinner late.  Okay, dinner was at 7 but that's late for us.  But the advantage of being Americans who go for the senior citizen discount at dinner is that, in Europe, there is always a table.

The house sitter is in place, a gardener hired to protect all of Konnie’s hard work this year and the trans-Atlantic flight complete.  I will try to make the next 23 days more observational than “we did this and that” but as this trip is our experimental “what would it be like to live here trip,” some days it will just be a travel diary.

We arrived at Heathrow at noon on Saturday, September 4.  We love the non-stop from Denver.  Leaving later in the evening without an interim stop just makes the trip more comfortable and the transition to the new time zone, i.e. staying up for the rest of the first European day, much easier.  Our townhouse is comfortable, equipped and roomy and, most importantly, is on a dead end lane of row townhouses in a residential neighborhood resulting in a quiet environment for those who tend to have difficulty sleeping.  Not me of course!

We are close to Hyde Park, Victoria Station, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Westminster Cathedral, the grocery store, other key sights and, we got lucky again, a Starbucks.  Or, as the picture of a freestanding Starbuck’s kiosk on the street near Victoria Station might indicate, perhaps their habit here is even worse than in US cities so always being close to one may require no luck at all.

I have learned to label the pictures which might help one understand why I might have taken some of the less obvious ones.  Just click on the image to see a description.  For today, they are just some very obvious kind of London views.  Thanks for following us.