Sitting on the train to Paris. Miguel is trying to check his email, but we keep going through tunnels...

Yesterday, we walked. Out to the Tate, where Whistler, Turner, and Monet were waiting for us. It was incredible, a hundred pieces from around the world, including some that were series on the same subjects, but to see them would mean going to probably 40 different collections. One of the things that is so wild about seeing all this here is that a lot of the subject matter of the paintings is in London. So we saw a lot of it before going to the Tate, and then wandered around afterwards saying, "He painted that from here maybe?" We want to know where the Savoy was, they all stayed there. In the afternoon, we hit the Tate Modern, and I have to admit I wasn't very reverent. The space is a converted power station, amazing, so huge, the big hall downstairs had a sound thing, you walked through different speaker banks with repeated texts -- "shit in your hat", "work, work, work" -- to what end, I don't know, but cool all the same.

Saw some Alice Neel -- a painting of a man with four penises. Some bizarre thing with paper cut-out people on the floor in a big room, all being swept up by mannequins and put into boxes for recycling. I went to the back of the room and looked towards the entry door -- ten people with their mouths open, staring at a televison suspended from the ceiling, showing a mock commercial for the recycling service. I hadn't watched it for long, I figured it wasn't going to have much to say. However, from the other side of the room looking back, I suspect it is something set up for the amusement of the gallery staff. How long will people wait to see if things are explained?

After a while, we rounded a corner and came across a glass cabinet with two small silver cylinders the only things in it. I told Miguel I was going to write a label and claim it as my art. "Two Cylinders -- Kate C. -- 2005 -- This represents the artist and her husband, and their experience in the vastness of life."

Outside, we ate our cheese sticks and Miguel rashly fed a pigeon. Suddenly there were twelve. We laughed about them eating us like in Monty Python.

Walked on, although it was too late to get admission we wanted to see the Tower of London. then we navigated the Underground, even managed to change trains at Embankment. Unfortunately, although Miguel said he remembered where the Indian restaurant we had identified as a dinner possibility was, it had moved... Found a different although slightly awkward Indian restaurant, and had butter chicken and prawn curry, followed by a beer at the Imperial on Leicester street. Friday night and gangs of roving youth, but mostly harmless.

In about an hour or so we will be in Paris.

Regent's Palace Hotel
Glasshouse St., London

We were tourists, today. We walked among throngs and posed for pictures in front of lions, Eros, Nelson. The National Gallery, where we went as soon as we had dropped our bags at the hotel, proved more evocative than when I was seventeen. I sat for a long time in front of Monet, revelling in light and shadow. Tomorrow, Turner. We anticipate. Buses go by with huge advertisements for the show at the Tate, Whistler/Turner/Monet, we nudge each other. Tomorrow. I pointed out Buckingham Palace but Miguel resisted -- it transpired that I was correct, his hesitation inspired by a feeling that the reality was not ornate enough. I identify what I can, fill in the pieces with my strange childhood recollections -- that's the Duke of York, and he and his ten thousand men went up a hill, but I don't know why.

We had fish and chips for dinner, with brown sauce and fish knives. I explain the use of fish knives -- don't put it down, keep your fork in the other hand. He gamely acquiesces. We discuss, in an unfocused way, how he had no idea there were so very many old buildings stretching on and on, with new bits added on at random. How he thought people would be more smoothly dressed, how cosmopolitan London is.

We discuss the fact, while walking back from the Palace in the dark, that we are now too old to move to London and be young and hip. We settle for tourist.

On the Underground this morning, we are stopped at Knightsbridge and the station is evacuated due to some unspecified emergency. Everyone obediently streams out into the street and heads for Green Park. We find our way slowly to the hotel.

Tonight, there is Ribena. And Hula Hoops and Milky Way bars. Food of my childhood. Our room is the size of a shoebox but it has a bed. We are in London.