Our airport does not have a direct flight to Athens. Only a handful of U.S. cities do, most being central hubs for the major airlines. However, Austin does fly direct to London; the flight that we have taken on several other adventures found in these pages, in fact. Jen and I decided early on that it would be fun to stop over for a couple of days in London before moving on to Athens. This would break the trip up into two parts, allow us to get over our jet lag early, and of course enable us to visit some favorite places in the city.
I booked the flights and a hotel across the street from the British Museum called "The Montegue on the Gardens", named for the aforementioned street. This tickled Jen tremendously, as Sherlock Holmes had rooms on Montegue Street when Watson first meets him in A Study in Scarlet. Have I mentioned how much I love this woman?
The flight itself was uneventful. I had mistakenly booked it on the wrong day and spent a small fortune correcting this at the last minute. We also lost our TSA Pre check status on the rebooked tickets, and they were in the economy section, which is not at all comfy on a long flight. We nevertheless made it, though exhausted by lack of sleep and cramped accommodations. This would cause us to curtail activities in London while we (mostly I) recuperated.
The hotel was lovely. I really enjoy small, eclectic hotels with personality, and this one did not disappoint. I would very much like to book there again for a longer stay at some point.
Forgive this last photo; I was having difficulty with my camera. I would only discover at the end of our vacation that the ISO setting had somehow been changed to a very high value (I normally leave it on automatic to let the camera automadjuat it to the stop I select). So there will be a few shots like this here and there. I've left them in when I hadn't made other compensatory shots with a better stop, as I figured something was better than nothing. I've cleaned them up as best I can but sometimes there just isn't enough contrast, as in this case.
