Our flight over was smooth. Business class makes all the difference when you're on a plane for 11 hours.
Our cab driver was friendly, fresh-faced, still kind of a yob, but a gentle one. He admitted to drinking too much, but the way he talked about his wife made him seem like a big sweetheart.
We're right next to Covent Garden.
We walked to Lincoln's Inn Fields, then down to Somerset House, then across the Waterloo Bridge, really just a brief fact-finding mission before dinner. The vistas from the Thames are fantastic, really brilliant. The Gherkin looks marvelous; ditto the Eye.
Now mind you, we've done nothing. We just got to our hotel at 5 p.m., so there wasn't much time to sightsee. There'll be plenty of time for that.
Now, on the the food. We dined at Sitar on The Strand, a white-cloth Indian food restaurant that was better than it should have been. The saffron chicken was delicate, and they used leg meat--so much better than blah breast meat. The Palak Paneer was more than just spinach and cheese. This version included some chopped up veggies like eggplant and carrot. Quite tasty.
We might even go back. It depends on what other Indian restaurants we get to. Maybe the quality in general is just higher in London. Food prices--as advertised--are out of this world. Basically, when you look at a menu, all the prices seem normal, dollar to pound. But then when you convert the pound and realize it's almost twice as expensive... yow!
But, as we keep saying, we're not going to translate.
Pictures and more interesting stuff when I get to a real computer that doesn't fight back.
Andy and Ira
