London

Love London. Would happily have stayed longer, although Peter was ready to leave after our 17 night stay.
Journey to London is wearing. A long drive with various motorway holdups, then longer holdups getting into Luton, finding the hire car drop-off, going off again to get petrol, finding the drop-off again, finding out where to go to get the car checked out, waiting for the shuttle to London, crawling through London peak hour traffic in the bus, and finally a hot and crowded tube journey from Baker Street to Canary Wharf. We sink our pride and get a taxi from the station to our lodgings, even though it is only about a 10 minute walk. Final piece of the disaster becomes apparent later when Peter realises he has left his wallet in the taxi. Despite considerable effort (visits to police stations, multiple visits to Transport for London Lost Property), we never see it again.
Our accommodation in Canary Wharf is great - a cleverly designed open plan apartment where the bed pulls out like a huge drawer from under a raised living area. It has all mod cons - washing machine and dryer, dishwasher, good kitchen where we cook quite a few meals. We occasionally patronise the local Indian restaurant which is two minutes walk from the door, or eat in London proper while we are out and about.
Weather in London is amazingly good. It doesn't rain until our very last day, and the temperature is generally in the low twenties. As a result we spend a lot more time outdoors than we anticipated. We walk and walk and walk, and get our money's worth out of our weekly Oyster cards. We go to Bush Road in the Surrey Quays area to see the house where Peter spent his first months, in the middle of the Blitz. Contrary to family myth, the terrace that the house is in wasn't destroyed by bombing, only damaged when the houses across the road and further down the road were destroyed. Their place has been taken by rather ugly 50s utilitarian buildings, but the Victorian terrace containing Peter's family house is intact. Peter manages to find some people who've been in the area for years to confirm this.
I re-visit some of my old haunts. After one of our fruitless trips to TFL Lost Property, near Baker Street, we walk through Regents Park and up to Chalk Farm, where I manage to locate the bedsit that my brother and sister-in-law were renting when I first arrived in London in 1969, and where I lived until I found a place of my own. On another excursion I explore Paddington, finding that the office where I worked is no longer in existence, but the pub where I drank is. After a chat with the barman I walk to Inverness Terrace in Bayswater where I lived next in 1969, and from there walk across Hyde Park to join Peter who is enjoying a day in the Science Museum.
We love being near the Thames. On our first Saturday we go via the tube to Greenwich, explore Greenwich market, visit the Naval College. We return to the north bank via the foot tunnel under the Thames, then walk all the way up the east side of the Isle of Dogs and back to the flat in Canary Wharf. On another excursion we go via the Docklands Light Railway to Tower Bridge.Starting with Tower Bridge, we cross the river, walk along the bank, cross at the next bridge, walk along the bank... we get as far as Southwark Bridge before we run out of steam, stopping along the way to visit a wharf that's now a shopping mall, and to have a cup of tea in the Tate Modern, and to admire the view from the top of that building.