Day 1

Good evening! Greetings from a sunny London apartment. I flew Aer Lingus into Dublin and took RyanAir into Gatwick. Note: Aer Lingus is terrible for overnight flights - my seat reclined about 1", they served dinner near midnight, never turned off the cabin lights, didn't force everyone to shut their window screens as we flew into the sun, and their blankets were lint bombs.

I took a train into the city from Gatwick to the apartment, which is modern and lovely - the fridge and washing machine are hidden behind the cabinets and we have an induction stovetop, which only heats the pans placed on top of it, rather than the stovetop surface.

For dinner, I rented a bike and headed over to a street with countless Indian restaurants, each of which had a host that bartered the cost of dinner on the street to pull you into their restaurant. In India, there's a lot of bartering and cajoling, but usually not by the restaurants. Also, the food was much sweeter here and there were items on the menu that you don't actually see in India, much like American Chinese food (so I'm told).

This is where we rented the bikes - for a pound (~$1.50)  a day you can rent a bicycle, but you can only take it in thirty minute increments (similar to DC).

Graffiti along the way:  

 I was surprised to see they still have functional red telephone booths. Every one I've seen has advertisements for prostitutes and 1-800 sex lines inside them. I've only seen one person using a booth so far - it was late at night, the door was closed, and he appeared to be listening intently.

After dinner, I biked to the Millenium Bridge that crosses the Thames River and saw the Tower Bridge (often confused with London Bridge, which is fairly unremarkable). As with most photos, I took a picture to remember I did this, but of course there are many better ones out there...