The great fire of ...; ... Calling; I'm in ... Still; etc.

We arrived in London on a Friday night and caught the train from Heathrow into the city. My maturity was immediately under pressure as the ultimate destination of our train was called Cockfosters. I opened the guide book; Spitalfields leapt off the page. I let Mel handle the planning from there.

As with New York, London is already known to us through place names: I have comprehensively bored our hosts pointing out locations that are also Australian Group 1 winning racehorses (Shaftesbury Avenue, Blackfriars, Kensington Palace, etc). The less said about Monopoly the better. Mel and I have both already visited here, so it wasn't necessarily one of our most anticipated stops. Having now left for Spain, we have both commented on how surprised we've been by how much we enjoyed it.

Firstly, we stayed with friends. Oh! The impossible luxury of a cobbled together bed on a living room floor! To be able to prepare our own breakfast in a private kitchen! To be able to hear the nearby nightclub's thumping beats from the bathroom! Yes, perhaps this latter situation was less desirable, but it tells of the excellent location of our hosts' apartment right in the middle of Soho. We lounged about a bit before remembering we were tourists and taking off to stroll through the city, taking in the magnificent St Pauls Cathedral and Southbank before the inevitable visit to Harrods and Buckingham Palace. On a Saturday night we turned away from the disco below and took advantage of our new domesticity with take-away food and a video (Changeling, starring Angelina Jolie's lips constantly exaggerated by bright red lipstick, even while receiving electro-convulsive therapy in an asylum; it was dreadful). The following night we took a half hour flight on the London Eye, enjoying superb views of the Thames and the city at sunset, including the offices of MI5 and 6 (as pointed out by our sightseeing brochure). Aren't they supposed to be secret organizations?

We headed to the Tower of London and were led around the bloody history of the British crown by a jolly Beefeater with an endless supply of sexist gags and digs at Americans and Australians ("to all Americans, I promise to speak slowly; to all Australians...welcome home"). We saw the spot where Ann Boleyn was romantically proposed to by Henry VIII, and the spot where she was later romantically beheaded. This spot was notable for a totally out-of-place modern glass sculpture of a cushion commemorating Ann and the other unfortunates who were relieved of their heads in the tower, their executions being too sensitive to perform up the street in front of the public. The following day we took in the National Gallery, an endless parade of masterpieces and advertisements for Ovid's Metamorphoses, the inspiration for almost every non-religious painting in there. Except, that is, for the paintings on the most important topic of all: racehorses. I'm not sure galleries and museums figured at all in my original inspiration for taking this trip, but having now had the chance to see multiple masterpieces by names previously only vaguely known to me has been an unexpectedly moving highlight. We also checked out the Tate Modern and picked out some genuine inspiration amongst a heap of impenetrable abstract stuff (although, gasp!, they did have a Jackson Pollock that I actually saw something in), avoiding the videos of people screaming at each other and huge sculptures of piles of mud. At the risk of sounding conservative, give me a bowl of apples and an artfully arranged dead duck on a table any day over that.

London looked pretty flash and confident to me, more than when I last visited five years ago, a few public white elephants (the new Wembley, the O2 Arena, the Millenium Bridge) having since been put right. There were quite a few homeless people sleeping rough near where we were staying but the pubs and shops were full and bloody expensive. We observed someone buying a tiny £1200 dog at Harrods. Perhaps this last observation is not adequate to summarise the state of a whole economy but someone is obviously doing alright.

We were sad to leave but the continent beckons, and I've nearly forgotten how to order a latte in Spanish; to Madrid!