London Day 1 - Arrive in London

Sunday, July 2, 2000

I flew with my wife and kids from Los Angeles on a Virgin Atlantic flight that spent the night in the air and landed at Heathrow about lunchtime. Man, were we all tired!

The first pictures are of our apartment. I arranged all of our accommodations for this vacation over the Internet. In London, we stayed at Scala House, near the Goodge Street tube station. The seven of us rented two, two-bedroom apartments. These pictures show the living room and kitchen of one of those. (The first photo of the kitchen shows an appliance with a little round door; that's the clothes washer AND dryer combined! We made fun of it, but it did the job.)

I would recommend Scala House to anyone visiting London. The apartments were much more comfortable than a hotel, and the price was very reasonable. It was particularly convenient to have separate bedrooms while we were jet-lagged, because anyone who was awake at odd hours could sit up and read or watch TV quietly without disturbing everyone else. And the location near central London was perfect, with lots of nice restaurants in the neighborhood, and a tube station just around the corner.

That first evening we had dinner at the original Chez Gerard on Charlotte Street. This is now part of an upscale chain of restrurants. Scott fell asleep before the entree's arrived. The rest of us just wanted to fall asleep.