London tour - Saturday April 11

Susan and I struggled out of our warm beds - her flatmate had kindly given me her bed to sleep in while she was away - around 10:30, grabbed a yogurt which Susan had kindly supplied, and went off to Lloyds of London to get banking done. Our first surprise at dear Lloyds was that the bank draft I had brought with me would not be cleared until the day I was to leave. So with that clarified we went to the bank machine where Susan was going to withdraw some GBPs to get us about London. Surprise - the bank machine swallowed her card and refused to return it. The management also refused to return it as this is their "policy for international transactions". Despite my indignation at their blatant disregard that this might be the only credit card we held and were tourists in their fair city and may need a shelter for the night, they clung to their rude policy. But they did assure us they "understood" but "No" we could not have the credit card back. It left us wondering if the transaction had gone through and had Susan lost the $$$.
Luckily I had already withdrawn some GBPs and so off we went - after Susan managed to calm her indignant mother - "Calm down mother. Its not their fault for these ridiculous rules." Yes, she was the adult in control but her turn was to come when the swallowed credit card would be needed for confirmation of the already paid-for Eurostar train trip from Paris back to London!
Despite Lloyds unfriendly interaction they sent us away understanding our plight. We walked to London Bridge where I decided it would not help to jump from the famous height, besides Susan had planned lunch at the Borough Market with dining picnic style in the adjoining Church yard reminiscent of the cemetery picnic in Brampton long ago. The market was wonderful - outside - with every type of cheese imaginable and fresh octopus. There are no pictures of said items as I did not upload correctly to my hard drive and I then erased all evidence of this wonderful first day in London.
We moved on to the Tate Museum to enjoy various pretty pictures and another surprise found within its walls - a loved painting of Mary Magdalen. I was refused permission to take a picture of this, so this picture was not lost but fondly remembered.
Then we walked about London to have tea at the Savoy. Sadly it was wrapped in plastic for selling to the highest bidder but Lloyds had swallowed the Visa card. We moved on to the National Gallery and took great pictures of each other that you will never see. Luckily with drivers on the left of the streets, London makes it a little easier for tourists by painting on the street the way you ought to look before crossing. This helped me most of the time!
We then found a lovely Italian restaurant, not too busy and enjoyed the rest, the dinner and the conversation. Then it was off to Lester Square where we managed to purchase the last two tickets available to Stomp and watched and listened as the musicians swept the stage floors and untiringly bounced and drummed on giant tires about the stage. It was a fun and interesting performance and luckily the tickets were half price which made the price almost comparable in Canadian dollars rather than the usual twice as expensive.
Susan's friend Allison texted her and they arranged a number of meetings throughout the evening but settled on tea back at Susan's when we returned. Allison, a friend from Slade School of the Arts, was as dear as Susan had described! Sleep came somewhere around 1 am - my feet were very grateful! David had suggested we not travel by taxi and I managed to respect this until the last day in Paris. Techy Susan managed to use a programme that squeezed a few pictures of this day from my camera's empty memory card.