The National Gallery shows off, walking on narrow streets and another spot of tea, this time ritzy

Tate Modern is like, "we're the best museum in London!" and the National Gallery says, "no yer not - we have fancy paintings and portraits with people wearing coffee filters around their necks!" I am not going to get involved in this argument. This is not a productive way to spend time. But yes, National Gallery, it was your day and you are a marvel. We worked our way through hundreds of years of paintings (1200 to 1900ish) and spent most of the day doing it. The masters of old impressed with lots of religious art where baby Jesus had a head 4 times too small. And the renaissance folks were especially brilliant with good old Rembrant (or was it? - who's to know) stealing the show. And then, beauties like Van Gogh, Gaugin, Constable, and Pissarro batted clean-up. It was yet another great day of wondering through art. My favorite.

After the wondering wander, we went whale watching while wearing wellingtons without windbreakers. Sorry - I broke for a second there. We traveled to a little, very cool street called Goodwin's Court. It's all small and old-like and you can walk through it in a few minutes. I was confused because my maps app told me to turn right in the middle of a building, and I thought that we were having some kind of Harry Potter moment, but actually, the street was squeezed in between buildings and also it WAS used to film parts of a Potter movie. Afterwards, we visited nearby Covent Garden Apple Market, where I was unable to find an apple anywhere. Instead, there were handcrafted items for sale in little stalls under an old structure that looked like a railroad depot. Not saying it was a depot at one point, so don't start fact checking, but that was the feel of the place.

And because this is apparently the fanciest vacation I've even been on, Mom and I had tea at The Ritz London, an opulent and fussy place with so much gold on its walls that 45 would have wanted to buy it. Tea was tasty, especially the pastries. And our waiter was funny and insisted on walking Mom up the small flight of stairs afterwards. But Mom and I decided that we preferred yesterday's tea at the Wallace Collection. We've now had fancy teas in three locations (add QM2 for those counting), and tomorrow we will have one more in Cardiff, where you will find us, probably soaking wet and definitely more Welsh than we are today. See you then.