After lunch we went to the nearby Tate Modern Gallery, which is a cavernous space occupying a giant brick power plant, obviously no longer in service. It was relatively new when we visited, and was thronged with visitors, mostly there to look at the huge empty spaces since the collection has (or at least had) relatively few blockbuster pieces. We then trucked over to the National Gallery, which I guess made about eight hours in museums that day. Presumably the Tate had siphoned off all the visitors to the National Gallery, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves, which was great because a) I really like this museum and b)crowds can be really aggravating during your eigth hour of museuming. We had dinner at Chez Nico, at the time one of three three Michelin star restaurants in London and I believe our first. Nico had a reputation for being a wild man who was always throwing famous people out of his restaurant for supposedly transgressing his ordering rules, but probably more for the publicity. Well, no such fireworks at our dinner, which was silent, just people whispering to one another at the well spaced out tables. Food was classic French, quite elegant. We ordered an eight course tasting menu, and I think lost Somchai around the fourth course. Since we didn't want to incur the wrath of Nico, I think that meant I ended up with twelve courses.

The most famous landmark on Trafalgar Square is the National Gallery, which is a small-ish art gallery but a great collection and very nicely displayed. There's also the almost totally ignored National Portrait Gallery behind it. It's ignored because portraits tend to occupy the boring spectrum of painting, so the prospect of seeing thousands of portraits is understandably offputting, but it's a cute little museum and a great place to get up to speed on the who's who of britain before you tackle the historical sights these people used to occupy. The church photo is of St. Martin's, which is famous in the US because it's the prototype for the Congregational churches that occupy the prime real estate in every New England town.

One clarification-the weather in London is changeable, but not that changeable. We walked through this area almost every day so the various pics were taken on different days with different weather conditions, but I thought it would be easier to present if I grouped them geographically rather than sticking strictly to chronology.