Good morning! Yesterday was quite the adventure. We left Paris early in the morning for Gare du Nord where we boarded the Eurostar train to Paris. This train is quite a feat of engineering. The French and British tunneled under the English Channel to create a line for the train to take passengers directly from Paris to the heart of London. The train itself is a quarter mile long. I didn't count the number of cars, but it was massive. After a coffee and pain chocolat (Cory's favorite French pastry) in the station's coffee shop, we boarded the train and settled in for the two hour ride. The ride was smooth and quiet, unlike the garrulous French family who sat in front of us. We read our books and relaxed and were in London before noon.

 We took the tube, which is the Underground here instead of the Metro in Paris, to our apartment in Richmond . We absolutely love this apartment. It's in an old Georgian building and has been completely renovated very recently. The living room has a comfortable leather sectional, very cushy, and I'm reclining on it right now watching all the locals walk to the train station to work. The kitchen is gorgeous with black granite counters, cherry cabinets, double ovens, gas stovetop and even a wine frig! The couple who own the apartment are very sweet and met us when we arrived. They left the wine frig stocked with a couple bottles of wine, beer, water, soft drinks and staple in the cupboard.

 We went out for a wonderful lunch at the pub just around the corner, the Red Cow. Cory had fish and chips with a side dish of peas! How British is that? I had the Sunday roast beef and it was awesome. Then we walked to find the shopping area only two blocks away. It's on the edge of a large green and grassy park. We bought a British hair dryer and curling iron as our plugs from France didn't work. Then, we went into a pub to watch the World Cup game. We sat at a table with half a dozen locals and had beers and cheered for Netherlands but secretly I hoped Mexico could pull it off. They didn't, but we talked to a friendly young couple who advised us to buy an Oyster card for the public transit system and told us about several upcoming events we want to attend. One is the huge flower show at Hampton Court Palace next week, so that's on our schedule now, as well as going into London for the finale of the three-day Tour de France. We're going to wish we had more than two weeks here, I think!