London is like my favorite sweater -- comfortable, familiar and warm. This is our fourth stay at the same hotel, just three blocks up from the Holborn tube station on the Piccadilly line that we take in from Heathrow airport. It's a brilliant location just three blocks to the British museum, four blocks to Covent Garden and an easy walk over to the Thames River to the south, Oxford Street Selfridges shopping to the west or St. Paul's and the City of London Museum to the east. In this climate changed weather, it was mild, sometimes windy and occasionally sunny during our week here. While in the north of England, cities and villages were inundated with rains and resulting floods, London had only light rain occasionally.
The purpose of this trip was to catch up with Martyn, with whom we have kept a friendship over twenty years after we first met on a hiking tour in Tuscany, and his daughter, family and close circle of friends. Under his guidance and companionship, we have a insider's experience when we visit, allowing us to embed ourselves in the culture and pulse of the city. I've been visiting London since 1984, but knowing Martyn makes it special. Whether it's dinner out in London or at his home in suburb north of London, attending a Sunday concert we would never have found on our own, accompaying him to an opera or play in Covent Garden, exploring on our own the National Gallery, Tate Modern or British Museum, or catching the river bus to Greenwich, we are at home in London.
London as many people know is a multi-cultural city. Because of this, the holiday lights are less gold, green and red, leaning more to the white, silver and blue. Window dressings are minor compared to what we have in the States, however, huge light ornaments and stars swing from lines that crisscross the main shopping streets in the areas of Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, and Covent Garden. Although, I must say, the holiday street market in front of the Tate Modern was especially festive with green and red lights, tinsel and bells. Stands selling crafts were intermingled with others offering grilled sausages, pretzels, and sweets. We indulged.
We had a chance to see two major exhibits this week. For the first, at the British Museum, we purchased tickets online before we came. This exhibit traced the history of religions in Egypt since the pharoahs and their influnences on Egyptian culture. Over a period of some six to seven hundred years, starting with the death of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony ending the age of the Pharaohs, came the Roman gods followed by Jews, then the Christains and then the Islamists, the dominant religious force today. Each adopted practices, icons and rituals of their predecessors and added new ones to the mix. For example, the familar icon of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ child looks almost exactly like the icon of the Egyptian goddess Isis holding her son in her arms.
The second exhibit, the portait painting of Goya, at the National Gallery, was recommended to us by Martyn. It was a breath taking collection as Goya was able to capture the essence of his subjects. Throughout the seven rooms of the exhibition, I felt like I was looking at real people, their eyes and features were so honestly and plainly presented. Most of us know Goya as a dark painter who presented in oils the horror of the Inquistion and war. The portaits reflect a completely different side that allowed him to succeed through a number of political upheavals in Spain during his lifetime.
At luncheon yesterday after a chamber music piano, cello and violin trio that played to packed the hall, I spent time explaining American politics to my eight companions. They were thristy for first hand knowledge of Obama, Trump and the upcoming election as well as an explanation of why the U.S. is so completely gun crazy. I did my best to explain it all, but had to admit that much was up in the air in our polarized environment. It was much less fun than the previous evening when John and I explained the rules of baseball to our dinner party, comparing what they saw as complext rules to what we saw as the incomprehensible rules of cricket. It was a brilliant, good laugh. Luckily, almost everyone had traveled in the U.S. and were very sympathic.
That's what I like about London.
As you can see from the photo and I am sure you are experiencing it for yourself, the weather this holiday season is gray, wet, warm and humid so our focus beyond a modest set of decorations in the apartment is on spending what is becoming "buckets of money" on preparations for next year -- repairing, outfitting, customizing, and enhancing Dolce Vento for our sailing adventure that starts in late summer 2016. The work is like a HGTV episode, except we know that in the end the cost will not be recovered when we"list it", but we need to do it to "love it" because it will be home for quite a long time in the not to distant future.
Although the title of the session was somewhat misleading (the target is actually a rough draft, not a ready to publish novel), our instructor, Kathryn Johnson, an author and mentor to other writers, provided an articulate no-nonsense approach to fiction writing. 
Next came the outdoor National Botanical Gardens. Opposite the main "hot house" building, across Independence Avenue, is a small garden containing the Bartholdi Fountain, surrounded by almost a wild garden. Next to the "hot house" is a formal rose garden, complete with a mailbox full of annotated instructions on the raising and caring of eight different categories of roses. Despite the closeness to the busy traffic on Independence Avenue, in both gardens, we sat on shaded benches, in a cocoon of quietness, filled with the fresh smells of fall flowers. It transported us to those other worlds of Paris and London, I mentioned earlier. 
One of our favorite gardens is at the Hirshhorn, filled with many fine sculptures of Moore, Rodin, David Smith and others acquired by the Hirshhorn family and later the museum itself. Of the traditional pieces, my personal favorite is "The Burgers of Calais" by Auguste Rodin. The main garden, where we were, is below ground level, isolating us from the business of the street and Mall aboce. We wished to linger longer by the reflecting pool, but with the day fading, there was a favorite garden we wanted to see before heading home.
As the sun began to drop to the tree tops, scattering sunlight in all directions, we entered the last garden, the Enid A. Haupt Garden, framed by the Smithsonian Castle, the Arts & Sciences building, and the Sackler Art Museum. Completed in 1987, it's actually three distinct gardens, the Moongate Garden next to the Sackler (Chinese style), the Victorian parterre (English style) and the Fountain Garden (Moorish style). Like all the other gardens we visited, every plant was identified allowing those of us who are not botanists, insight into the nature and origin of the plants with every space appropriately trimmed. For example, the Victorian parterre spaces were outlined with burnished, bent branches of caste iron creating a scalloped edge. What a delight!
You gotta love Facebook! When I requested ideas for renaming our boat, within 30minutes, 18 candidate names were delivered. Where we were at a loss for words, Facebook friends were filled with creativity. Candidate names were: 
