First view of London after Tubing in from Heathrow.First meal in London, waiting for our hotel room to open, awake for 26 hours. Despite (because?) of the name, really good breakfast.Tate Britain, just around the corner from our room in Pimlico. Awake for 30 hours, but great tour.Obligatory Parliment shot. Note: Big Ben is the bell, not the clock. Brits are touchy about that.The London Eye, directly across from Parliment.Riding the Eye. Great views but Lisa isn't much into heights so kept seated.Panorama on high.View of Tower Bridge on our Thames river tour.Lisa with her best bud.Outside Buckingham with all the other tourists.Green ParkOur digs in Pimlico, nice neighborhood, minimal tourists.Our first real Full English breakfast after a night's sleep.Tube station public art.Outside the spiffed up British Museum.Inside the BM. This is a relatively empty room, in October.Mesopotamian pottery collection, BM.Borrowed Greecian architectual elements, BM.Chinese pottery, BM.Ceramic Chinese tiles, BM.Space-frame enclosed British Museum courtyard with new auditorium on the left.Enjoying high tea with Lisa at the top of the BM auditorium.St. Paul's as we tour central London.Interior of St. Paul's, never touched by WW2 bombing.Side altar in St. Paul's.Just another interesting piece of public art in London.Leeds Castle, on our day-trip to Canterbury town.The final owner of the castle was a 1920s American heiress who comprehensively mucked up the interior. But intersting to walk around.Some of the "modern" castle updates.More updates.Part of the beautiful surrounding gardens, complete with a hedge maze.Full hand-dug moat, no alligators.Castle grounds panorama, with Lisa.WW2 memorial on the way to the white cliffs of Dover, a 1:1 scale stainless steel Stuka dive bomber.View towards Dover, a little peek of the cliffs.The cliffs, with war-era cave openings visible. The town of Dover is crowded below.Canterbury town on a weekday, delightfully non-touristy.Canterbury cathedral where lots of English history happened.Beautiful vaulted interior of the cathedral, only a thousand years old.Amazing stained glass in the cathedral. Apparently the glass alone was 70% of the building cost.The Tower in central London, bright and early.Lisa making more friends.Panorama of the Tower grounds before all the tourist buses arrive.Proof that the Tower Bridge is associated with the Tower, properly.Scale model showing the original layout of the Tower complex.The poor ravens are now kept in a cage. They were loose (wings clipped) when I visited 30 years earlier.Lisa checking where we are. Paris! We took the Chunnel and barely had time to nap before we were there.Panorama of our Paris basecamp in Montparnasse, far from the tourist hordes (is there a theme here?)Musée d'Orsay, our favorite museum in Paris. Amazing what one can do with an old train station.Scenery model for the Paris Operahouse, a shoutout to my paternal grandfather, MO.One of many amazing ceramic collections, MO.Gorgeous Art Nouveau cabinetry, one of dozens, MO.Lisa is always looking for new fabric and knitting patterns, MO.Tiffany ceramics, MO.Full room displays of Art Nouveau decor, MO.Tiffany jewlery, MO.Tiffany lamp, MO.One of my favs, Degas’ sculpture, “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen”, MO."Breton Peasants gathering the harvest", MO.From The Chat Noir Cabaret Shadow Theatre, MO.Lastly, "And The Gold Of Their Bodies" by Paul Gauguin, MO.One more interior of Musée d'Orsay.Just walking along the Seine on a fine October day.We decided to stop at a floating restaurant for an excellent lunch.Another pano of the park near the Tower.Heading upwards for our champagne toast at the top of the Tower, evening time. Lisa didn't like that I kept noting that it was all a bunch of angle irons.View from the top. Many lights but hard to make out landmarks. Very crowded up there, immediately headed back down.Nicely lit Tower. Every hour they would set off a strobing light show.A better view of Paris from on top the 59-floor Tour de Montparnasse, the only skyscaper in the city boundaries.Typical Paris side street.The long funicular leading to Sacre Coeur Basilica.At the top, with a food fest going on below the stairs.Looking up the other way. Parisians looove their city, rightfully so.Inside the Basilica, main dome.One of the side altars, SC.Parisians enjoying Paris.Enclosed shopping gallery where Lisa prowled for yarn shops.Our Seine boat tour and one of the best meals we had in Paris.The towering Tower, heart of Paris.Cafe break, streetside Paris.We think this was sactioned "street art" as there was no other graffiti apparent.Les Jardin des Tuileries on an overcast day. We didn't tour the whole park, more of walk-by.Lisa again checking when and where we are.View from our Amsterdam hotel window, about two miles from the city center. Yes, lots of graffiti, everywhere. Also a very nice, clean tram system that we used extensively.Here's a more favorable view, Amsterdam central.First stop: Stroopwafel! Almost totally sugar and so good.Panorama of Dam Square, as in "dam the river".One of the many, many lovely canals in central Amsterdam.One of the many, many head shops in central Amsterdam.The interior of one of them, gave me high school flashbacks. And no, we didn't.A famous knitting shop searched out by Lisa. We managed to hit a major yarn spinning shop in each of our cities, but Lisa stuck to her budget. Mostly.Some of the beautiful city waterfront, Station Utrecht Centraal in the background.This is not even a tenth of the bikes on a typical city street. Many, many bikes.The Netherlands was one of the most active resistence centers during WW2, and they paid accordingly with their "Hungry Winter" in 1945. We visited this museum, located in the old Jewish center, to learn more.Museum interior with some of the many well-done displays. Wireless players allowed is to hear explanations at each station.Lisa's grandparents on her father's side (Kees) were actually part of the resistence and hid Jews on occasion. We thought we saw her oppa in one of the many video documentaries.Just an astronaut mimicking "The Thinker", for some reason.The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, one the largest museums in Europe and rivaling the Louvre for contents.Dutch masters combined with Donald Duck, RA. No idea why.Very cool collection of models based on ships used in the Dutch East Indies trade, RA.Some of the wares used in that trade, RA.Neat little mini-model showing off silver wares, RA.Beautiful opal-set hair comb, RA.Bat motif that caught Lisa's attention, RA.The man himself, Rembrandt van Rijn, RA.The famed "Night Watch" painting was undergoing restoration, but they allowed viewing of the process from afar, RA.Amazing woodworking and cabinetry, RA.Another hometown hero, Vincent van Gogh, RA. Very important to the Dutch how you pronounce that last H.The pianoforte ordered by King Louis Napoleon for his musical wife Hortense, RA.Just one of the pieces we saw at the Diamond Museum in central Amsterdam.Lisa's only jewerly purchase at the Diamond Museum, showing great restraint.Our last river tour, completing our three-city trifecta.The tour boat slowed down for this one--an alignment of seven bridges, way down the canal.The Keizersgracht (Emperor’s Canal) in central Amsterdam.Can't visit Amsterdam without having pea soup. Found the best little ten-table restaurant right down the street from our tour departure, thanks to Google.Waiting for our plane home at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport .
