Some more photos of Mayfair, although the text, about dinner, isn't related, but we haven't stooped to such a tourist level that we take photos at dinner so there will always have to be this text-photo disconnect at dinner time. We had dinner at Nobu's, which I believe originated in New York but now seems to have sprouted in a dozen or so cities around the world. The London version is housed at the trendy Metropolitan Hotel, although this Nobu is much less trendy than the New York version. It looks more like a diner, a sprawling blandly designed place absolutely crammed with customers paying very high prices for pretty good Japanese food. It was packed even on a Sunday night, and the crowd looked like the crowd at McDonald's, big families, lots of kids all noisily enjoying dinner. Not complaining at all about that, but you rarely see a trip to the local sushi restaurant as a kids' favorite in the US.

We had lunch at Quaglino's in nearby Mayfair (pictured here). Mayfair is the most expensive part of London. When I lived there, mostly Arab sheiks lived there, but now it's mostly occupied by hedge funds. Similarly, when I was living here, Quaglino's, an enormous restaurant with a very dramatic staircase and famous for its raw bar, was the talk of the town. But today for lunch, there were only two tables occupied in the whole place. One minor consolation is the other table was occupied by Alan Rickman (barely recognizable in the US, but a bona fide celebrity spotting in the UK) and the food was still reliably good.