We slept in today (for us) until 8:00, and I cooked breakfast at the flat. We ate leisurely and had coffee, then we dressed and readied for some retail therapy.
Shopping off Sloane Square and down King’s Road is some fun! 
I scored two pairs of shoes and some leggings and a flowing black top. LJ got a beautiful dress shirt. We ate outdoors at a boutique restaurant in Duke of York Square. 
We took all our purchases back to the flat and took the tube to Westminster again.
This time we visited the Churchill Center and Museum. This is the preserved underground bunker used by Churchill and his Cabinet during the Nazi attacks on London. It was amazing. It has been perfectly preserved from the day they walked out of the bunker. It has all the maps still hanging, and the bedrooms and communications rooms, strategy rooms, and conference rooms are exactly the way they were. It certainly brought that period to life.
Very hot and tired, we took the tube back to Sloane and a wonderful new bar/restaurant, The Botonist. It’s very modern and opens out to the square. They serve brunch and high tea there as well. We will definitely be returning.
Dinner Friday night was at a lovely new Indian Restaurant called Vama. It got very high ratings in the Times, and we thought the food was really good, if somewhat pedestrian. We had Saag Ghosht (lamb with spinach) and Chicken Korma with Garlic Naan Bread and basmati rice. After dinner we returned to our little neighborhood pub, the Phoenix for a nightcap.
Back to the flat for a good night’s sleep before an early and busy day tomorrow. Bath Spa!
We started the day with breakfast at a little neighborhood boulingerie on King’s Road-coffee and ham and cheese croissants. We then made our way to the tube to Waterloo Pier to buy tickets to a riverboat cruise down the Thames to Greenwich.
The weather was picture perfect, partly sunny and a cool breeze. The tour guide gave us the history of London on The Thames as we motored slowly down the river. 
I liked the Mayflower Pub which commemorates the place where the Mayflower ship launched for America. We de-boated in Greenwich about lunch time. We found a local pub and had fish & chips and a cold lager. (They actually serve it cold now.)
After lunch we took the boat back and got off at the Tower of London stop. 
We had done the Tower tourist stuff on our first trip to London years ago, so we just took a couple of photos and tubed back to Sloane Square. We stopped at a market and bought food for the flat - eggs and streaky bacon, beer and wine. All of the essentials. 
We also stopped in a stationary store and bought a card to write a message to Stacey Kent and Jim Tomlinson. She is a great jazz singer and he is a sax and flute player and their music is what caused us to make this particular trip. We’ll see them perform tonight in celebration of our 40th wedding anniversary. We wrote a note in the card saying how happy we were to be able to be here in London seeing them on our special occasion, and we asked them to play our song, “Never Let Me Go.”
We took the tube one full hour to Hornschurch and then walked another 25 minutes to the Queen’s Theatre. We were pretty glowing by the time we arrived, but boy was it worth it! Stacey and Jim and group were truly awesome! They were more improvisational than the last time we saw them in the States. And the highlight of the evening was when Stacey made a beautiful tribute to us and sang our song. We both sat with tears running down our faces. What a miraculous evening. We made the tube trip back in a kind of romantic haze.
Oh, by the way, we heard on our walk home from the tube station that Michael Jackson has died.
We left DFW late. AA flight 50 was supposed to leave at 4:45pm, but we didn’t lift off till 5:45. The couple in the center aisle seats brought a very unhappy little boy who looked under 2 years old. He screamed at the top of his lungs for the first 2 hours and was very fussy most of the trip. But that is just the cost of overseas travel these days. We made it and I’m thrilled to be landing at Heathrow.
It’s 10:00am and we’re at our flat at 11 Redburn Street, Chelsea, London. 
It’s quite small, but suits our needs perfectly. It has a small living room, one bedroom, kitchen and bath. It has a great shower (hard to find in London) and an efficient little kitchen.
And it came with Scotch. Who can complain?
After we unpacked and settled in, we walked the neighborhood to get our bearings. We’re a 10 minute walk from the Sloane Square tube station and we got a 7 day Oyster Card for use anywhere in the central district. 
We stopped at the phone store and got a little phone for L4.95 and loaded it with minutes so we’d be able to make restaurant reservations, call taxis and make any other calls we might want to. We took the tube to Harrod’s (that’s obligatory) and had lunch at the Green Man Pub. I had a salmon nicoise salad and LJ had a roast beef club. Both were even better than they sound. Nice start. We walked around Harrod’s and down Sloane past the top flight shops and tubed back to Chelsea. We both immediately passed out. We napped at least 2 hours.
We cleaned up and left for dinner in our neighborhood at a little cafe called Blushes. I had Parma ham, mozzarella and tomato pannini, and LJ copied me. We then took the tube to the National Theatre where we saw Helen Mirren in the Greek Tragedy “Phedre”. I have never seen such beautiful acting - even on the New York stage. It was stunning. Afterward, we stopped by a little pub near our flat called Phoenix for a nightcap.
What a great first day. More to come.
I scored two pairs of shoes and some leggings and a flowing black top. LJ got a beautiful dress shirt. We ate outdoors at a boutique restaurant in Duke of York Square. 
We took all our purchases back to the flat and took the tube to Westminster again.
