You've probably been wondering when we were going to get around to visiting London. After all, as recently as 2018, London was the most-visited city in Europe. We didn't visit London in 2018. But we did go there in 2016, and I'm finally getting around to writing about it, so your wait is over. On the other hand, maybe you've heard enough about London from other sources (it's not like no one ever writes about it), and already know everything you’ll ever want to know about this old-world capital city. Stay tuned, and maybe you'll be surprised! (No promises though.)

London, of course, is the capital of England and of the United Kingdom. With a municipal population of more than 9 million, it's by far the largest city in the European Union (as of this moment; should Brexit succeed, this title would move over to Berlin, with less than 4 million). Like the rest of the UK, London's currency is based on the Pound Sterling. Once upon a time, the Pound Sterling's value was based on the value of a pound of sterling silver (an alloy containing 92.5% pure silver). These days a British Pound hovers around $1.28 US, a whole lot less than a pound of silver (currently around $18 per ounce). Since 1971, there have been 100 British pennies to a British pound, though for some reason multiple pennies are called "pence" (abbreviated as the letter "p") instead of "pennies". Before 1971, money was much more complicated. There were pounds, but then there were shillings (20 per pound), pennies or pence (abbreviated "d" for reasons unknown, 12 per shilling), farthings (one-quarter of a penny), ha'pennies (half of a penny), threepence and sixpence coins, florins (2 shillings), crowns (5 shillings) and half-crowns (2 shillings sixpence). And this was before portable calculators!

Greater London (a specific area containing the London region) is split up into 32 districts called boroughs. Actually there are 33, but one, located in the middle of everything at the north end of London and Southwark bridges, is called the "City of London" and is not considered to be a borough for some reason. The borough containing the Houses of Parliament is called the "City of Westminster" (while still being a borough), but none of the other boroughs are considered to be cities. The special treatment of the City of London might have something to do with its historical significance. This is where everything started.

The Romans first settled in the area of the present-day City of London shortly before 50 A.D. While many Roman settlements were accomplished by taking established settlements away from the ancient Britons who already lived in them, the Romans appear to have been the first people to have settled in the City of London area. The Romans called their settlement Londinium (it's not clear where this name came from) and referred to the river on which it was located as the Tamesis (from a Brittonic Celtic name for the river). Over the centuries, the name of the city went through several variations before ending up as London, and of course the river ended up being the Thames (pronounced Tim's). The initial settlement was burned down around 61 A.D. during an uprising by the Iceni tribe, led by Queen Boadicea. But the Romans weren't put off for long, rebuilding the town bigger and better, and eventually establishing it as the capital of the province of Britannia in 100 A.D.

When the Roman Empire fell, so did Londinium, which was abandoned for a time in the 5th Century. But Anglo-Saxons (from Germanic tribes that migrated from the continent) soon moved into the area and eventually reestablished the city as a major port. The city has been continuously occupied since then and has had many ups and downs over the centuries (Vikings, Normans, civil wars, plagues, fires, etc.). The history of London is long and exhaustively documented, with actions ranging from the inspirational to the reprehensible, and I really have no choice but to ignore most of it. But as usual, I will bring up some things when they relate to the activities undertaken by us during our visit, and I hope you find them interesting.

Our first activity was getting to London from Southern California. This ended up being less complicated than the starts to many of our trips, as we were able to find a reasonably-priced United Airlines nonstop from Los Angeles International Airport to London's Heathrow Airport. Again, our children (who, we our forced to acknowledge, are really looking and behaving like adults these days) were otherwise occupied, so Nella and I would only have each other to take pictures of (and of course all that scenery).

The nice thing about a nonstop flight to London from L.A. is that you don't have to kill time at any intermediate destinations. The less-nice thing is that you have to sit on the same droning airplane for eleven and a half hours. Fortunately most transatlantic airlines have pretty big movie libraries for passengers to select from, so you can catch up on any semi-recent edited-for-airplane movies you haven't seen. Or you can sleep, if you're able. We did some of both.

After going through immigration and customs, we were faced with the question of how to get from Heathrow to our hotel, a distance of just under 20 miles.

This is when we started to learn that, generally speaking, London is a pricier place than some other European destinations. A taxi fare would have cost us something like 70 pounds (about $100 in U.S. money). An Uber would undoubtedly have been somewhat cheaper, but we weren't yet users of Uber at the time. But we ended up selecting an option that was cheaper than either of these choices. We took the London Underground.

The London Underground is London's subway system. Many cities have subway systems, but London's system, commonly known as The Tube, is the oldest, having its origins way back in 1863. The system has become quite extensive over the years, with 270 stations serving all but six of the London boroughs. There are eleven lines, each of which has a name and a color code used on maps of the system. One line, the Piccadilly line (dark blue), has three stations at Heathrow (at different terminal buildings) and passes through central London (including Piccadilly Circus, as you might have suspected from the name).

This line also has a station within a couple of blocks of our hotel, which meant that we would not have to worry about transferring between trains with all of our luggage. It's possible to purchase tickets for individual rides, but it's simpler and more cost-effective to get something called an Oyster Card, on which you can "load" fare money and with which you can pay for your trips by waving the card at turnstile sensors. We found a ticket office at Heathrow at which we acquired Oyster Cards and had them loaded with enough cash to get us to our hotel (about 5 pounds apiece) and take a few more trips, all for much less money than a taxi ride (and probably an Uber).

Our hotel, the Holiday Inn London – Bloomsbury, was located in the borough of Camden and was a short distance from the Piccadilly line's deep-underground Russell Square station. A sign in the station informed us that there were 175 steps to be taken to get from the train platform to street level, and recommended that we take an elevator (or "lift" – there were three). We accepted this sound advice, then exited the station and took the short walk to our hotel.

We didn't stay in the hotel room for long, as we hadn't eaten lunch yet, so we went out and found some at a restaurant in a nearby shopping mall called The Brunswick Centre. After eating, we walked around the mall, checking out the shops. Then I had an incident. Earlier, when we'd been on the Underground (which isn't really all underground), we'd noticed that a rain shower was starting. And when we'd exited the elevator at the station, we'd found it to be raining both cats and dogs outside. We waited a few minutes before leaving the station, and in this time the rain pretty much subsided. After lunch, we were walking down a short stairway with some oddly-arranged steps, and I stumbled a little. I tried to catch my footing, but the stairs were still wet and slippery from the rain and I went down heavily (and impressively, judging from the gasps of the passersby). People were concerned and seemed pleased that I hadn't killed myself, and someone pointed out where the nearest hospital was. I suspected there would be some bruises later, but most of the damage seemed to be in my right wrist, which was in some pain. But there was nothing visibly wrong, and everything seemed to function all right, so I figured it was probably a sprain. I decided a hospital wasn't really necessary, but we went to a pharmacy we'd seen in the mall to look for something to immobilize the wrist. The people at the pharmacy were quite helpful – they found an elastic sleeve sort of thing, cut a hole in it for my thumb to poke through, and charged us a couple of pounds. I ended up wearing the thing off and on for the next week or so - you'll be seeing it in the pictures.

Undeterred by my injury, we resolved to do something touristy as it was still only about 4 P.M. Nothing too ambitious, though – we decided to visit the British Library, which was only one stop away on the Underground. This stop was the King's Cross/St. Pancras station. On exiting the station, we were confronted by a gigantic brick building which could not be ignored. This was the St. Pancras (not pancreas) railway station (as opposed to the underground station), a major station from which Eurostar trains depart for the Channel Tunnel to reach the European mainland. The building was first opened in 1868, and within five years was modified to include a hotel (now the St. Pancras Renaissance London Hotel).

The British Library is the largest national library in the world, ranked by number of catalogued items (something like 200 million). It was once part of the British Museum, but was separated in 1972 and has been in its own building since 1998. It's obviously a major research library, but there is also a gallery in which many items of general interest are on display. These include early editions of works by authors like Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Rudyard Kipling, and Charles Dickens, as well as a Gutenberg Bible, Captain Cook's journal, a manuscript copy of Beowulf, the original manuscript of Handel's Messiah, hand-written lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and a 1215 copy of the Magna Carta. And many more items, none of which visitors are allowed to photograph (the pictures below are public domain). But the building itself is kind of interesting, and there is a bronze statue called NEWTON by Eduardo Paolozzi (1995).


We returned to the hotel, where I procured some ice to apply to my wrist. It turns out ice machines for use by guests aren't really a thing in Britain (or at least at this Holiday Inn), but we were able to get a small bag of ice from a bar off the lobby.

Having had enough excitement for one day, we retired and tried to get some sleep. We already had ambitious plans for the next day. First up: a ride on the London Eye.