Three nights in London

 

In spite of the very hot weather we had three enjoyable nights in London.  Having been far too stressed to enjoy the best stretch of the Thames, between the barrier and St Kats, I decided to go back on Tuesday 2 July and enjoy an aerial view from what is currently the IFS Cloud cable car. It must be very useful if you need to get to Excel to the O2 dome, otherwise it's a bit of a trip from nowhere much to nowhere else much, with excellent views over the Royal Docks and up and down the river.

The O2 is described as "Greenwich" but in fact it's a long way from the Observatory and the pretty bits. Having failed to find a bus (I later discovered that was because my TfL app was set to exclude bus travel) I explored the O2 itself, which I last visited when it was the Millennium Dome in 2000. Then I walked down the river to the rather wacky Greenwich Yacht Club which stands on stilts in the Thames. One day I will get there, but it was closed.

On Wednesday I managed a brief run before it got too hot, then a walk along the north bank of the Thames to the Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House - another attraction I'd been meaning to get to for ages, full of wonderful and familiar paintings including Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère.  After some deliberation on routes I returned along the South Bank, which is actually a more pleasant walk with fewer busy roads, and the chance to pop into Tate Modern and enjoy some jolly installations. We had an excellent tapas dinner with Henry (my crews' son) in the evening.

St Kats is a fabulous location but the facilities are always a bit disappointing, especially considering the price. One of my showers was in a cubicle where the door wouldn't close, so you stepped out into a large lukewarm puddle. The other was missing a drain cover, so you stood over an open pipe. Alex and David had one successful shower and one with no hot water. The wifi never worked at all but the power was OK after we finally found a functional socket. The charge for three nights was £300, and that was supposed to be three nights for the price of two. It's by some way the most expensive place Kalessin has ever been and is now accelerating well ahead of the Sunseeker quay in Mahon which was €79 a night, although that was back in 2007 and it doesn't exist as such any more.

View from the cable car

Inside the O2. There are lots of shops but nothing I wanted to buy

The very striking Greenwich Yacht Club

On my return journey I met an engineer who has been working on the new Silvertown Tunnel. It opened in April making the cable car even more unnecessary 

The courtyard of Somerset House

A sample Cezanne

Under Blackfriars Bridge

Installation at Tate Modern