Today we drove to to London. We were up and off before 8am after getting Julie out of bed so that we could pay our bill. The sun was shining and the day looked good. We had about 500kms to go and needed to drop the car in London by 2pm. Plenty of time.
The drive was pretty good, we made one minor mistake before we were on the highway and heading south . Soon we were on the M1 and getting closer. The traffic was pretty good (I wasn't driving so it looked fine) and we made good time.
We took the wrong exit to go to a service stop for a coffee and ended up in some backwater village which would have been ok, but they didn't have a coffee shop. There was a sign for one, but it turned out to be a cafe in a caravan sales yard that wasn't even open. So back on the highway and to the proper service exit where we had a Costa coffee in the McDonald's stop. I had a little bit of a chat online to Maws back home before we were on the road again. With the sun shining and Tay Tay on the radio everything was cruisy.
We went onto the tollway and were really speeding along for a while. It cost us £5.50. As we got closer to the city the traffic never really changed too much. Not too many people are silly enough to drive right in. There is an exclusion zone in the middle of the city, we are dropping the car near there and hope to avoid it and the huge fines!
The traffic was great and Stella was keeping up until we got to the road where we needed to turn at the St Pancras Kings Cross train station . We missed the turn, she shut down and we hit a traffic jam. We needed to go around the block and finally stopped. I jumped out and had a look around, we were near the carpark and had finally found the Avis office.
Our host had asked that we taxi to the apartment as she had an appointment on the other side of the city and needed to get away. So we hopped into a black cab and were soon at our destination in Red Lion Square. Elizabeth let us in and led us up all 64(Bugger!) stairs to the apartment on the top floor. It is a cute little place, with views over the park. She gave us the grand tour and all the info we needed to have a comfortable stay.
We put on a load of washing and hit the streets to explore our neighbourhood. We are really close to the Covent Garden area, so there were a lot of people out and about. We didn't take a map with us and inevitably got a little lost, but that was ok. It was hard to find landmarks from shops as there area a lot of chains to confuse you. We finally made our way back and rested for a while .
Out for dinner, we found The Spaghetti House and had a really nice pasta meal. There was a couple from Sydney on the table next to us who we had a chat to. The Aussie accent is a welcome bond with people.
Another stroll after dinner had us walking around the law court area of Grays Inn and Chancery Lane. It was pretty quiet, there was the occasional person still at work, on their way home or sitting in a bar with their mates. There were a few fireworks off the top of a hotel building on the way home to celebrate 4th of July.
Home to our little apartment, which is actually bigger than first glance. It is quite long and very comfortable.

Steps 11,571
Kms walked 7.4
Fuel £127.90/litre
£44.34