Travelling Diaries
2018 Swedish Lapland / Day 2 - London
Previous and next: Day 1 - Travel to London / Day 3 - Travel to Sweden
3rd February 2018
Celebrations
Today was the 10th anniversary of us getting Tess as a pet for Karen to celebrate her 50th birthday.
We were thinking of Tess and hoping she was enjoying her vacation. Although we couldn’t be with her, we thought it was important to celebrate as best as we could.
Back in London, it was a time for us to enjoy ourselves before we head out on our arctic adventure.
It was a wet miserable old day; not wet enough to stop you doing anything but with just enough moisture to slow you down a bit.
We started off by having a lovely breakfast in our favourite café in Kensington. We have been coming here for years and the food always hits the spot.
[Karen and I about to have breakfast]
We then travelled on to the Tate Modern. Here we had booked tickets to go and see the Modigliani exhibition. It was also our first chance to meet up with Mark. It was great to see him and catch up with his news.
[Karen with Mark on the 10th floor of the Tate Modern]
The exhibition itself was a celebration of one mans short life and the art he produced in that period. It got us thinking about Tess and her short life. One minute you are chasing everything with a strong body and mind, the next you have stiff joints, ageing teeth and you’re not as fast as you used to be. It must be the same for Tess.
One of the things that Karen and I do to try and keep healthy is to complete 10,000 steps a day. However, there was a programme on television this week that said that recent research shows that this may not be as healthy as we think and that short bursts of high energy are better for you.
This got us wondering whether chasing the 10,000 steps a day goal was really beneficial to us and were discussing this with Mark up on the 10th floor of the Tate Modern, when the fire alarm went off. We were then forced to vacate the building and had to walk down the the ten floors via numerous flights of stairs to get out. Beneficial or not, it looked like we were going to reach our step goal before lunchtime.
[The Tate Modern. We were evacuated from the top floor]
We then decided that lunch was in order, so Mark took us to a pub that is reckoned to be one of the oldest in London. Here we had a drink and a bite to eat. For London, the price of the beer was very competitive (£3.20 a pint) although I do remember my first pint back in the seventies being just 16 pence. Them were the days.
We went back to the hotel and Karen opened the cards she had received to celebrate the ten years since we had got Tess.
[Karen with her cards, and Mark reflected in the mirror behind her.]
In the evening, Mark had organised for us to go to an Egyptian restaurant not far away. As Egypt is one of the oldest civilisations in the world, we thought it appropriate for the day that’s in it!
The food was excellent and the waiter heard about our celebration and gave Karen a free dessert.
We thought about Tess as we shared it.
{Karen and I thinking of Tess]
We returned to the hotel for a nightcap and bid our farewell to Mark. It was early to bed for us as we had a busy day ahead of us tomorrow.
With all this talk about passing years, old pubs and ancient civilisations, Karen turned to me and said, “Will you still love me when I’m not as young as I used to be?”
That was when I made my first mistake. I answered, “Of course I do.”
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