Day 2 in London

On day 2, we walked 18,000 steps in London! We took the Tube to the National Gallery to see the Vincent Van Gogh exhibit, only to find when we got there that it was already sold out for the day. Undaunted, we looked at a special exhibit on David Hockney and regular holdings of various French and British painters. Michelle's favorite was Cézanne (the colors and the blocks of paint) and Lisa's was Turner and Constable (recalling her time spent studying in London and visiting these works).

Then we crossed the Thames and walked along the south side to the Tate Modern museum to see an exhibit on the photographs of Zanele Muholi, which was NOT sold out and which WAS amazing. So glad to have learned about her and her work.

Since St. Paul's Cathedral was just across the footbridge from there, we walked there and only went in because a woman who just walked out of the cathedral handed Lisa her two entrance tickets, making it free for us. After discussing the morality of charging people 25 pounds to go into a church and then treading on the graves of some old British people in the basement crypt, we hopped on the Tube toward Notting Hill. Not long after getting off the train a slice of cake hailed us from the window of a bakery and we could not resist its call. Michelle finally scored her pot of afternoon tea to go along with the cake.

It wasn't actually that far back to our peasant digs in Paddington, so we walked more and at some point we happened upon Burnham Court, the posh property that Michelle had forgotten to tell Lisa about 😄 Michelle was pointing at the Burnham Court sign in the background but the photo instead documents a weirdly curved finger so perhaps Michelle doesn't know what she's talking about after all...

You would think that all that walking would result in tired people who slept soundly through the night, but you would be wrong. After somewhere between two hours and five minutes of actual sleep, we got up at 5 am to get to our flight to Bologna. But you'll have to check in tomorrow to hear all about that!