London
June 22-24, 2026
We left SFO after 11 pm on June 22nd on a non-stop flight to London Heathrow. You might ask why we were flying to London, since our trip is to Iceland. Well, rather than take a flight that arrives in Iceland at 8 am, we decided to arrive in London in the late afternoon/early evening, and then have a day in London to adjust to the time change before embarking on our drive around Iceland.
Above is a map showing the route of our flight. Total distance was 5,367 miles, with a flight time of just over 10 hours.
Upon arrival at Heathrow, we took a taxi to our central London hotel, located in the Mayfair neighborhood. The drive was about one hour in length. We had stayed at this same hotel in 2002, when we made a week-long visit to London.
After checking in around 7 pm, we had dinner in the hotel and promptly crashed.
June 24, 2026
We awoke to a weather forecast predicting a high temperature of 94F (spoiler, it actually exceeded this predicted high). Although this is not the hottest it has ever been in London, it was darn hot. Therefore, we decided against taking the Tube or walking any distance. We relied today on Uber and taxi rides. One driver told us the traffic was worse than normal, because lots of people took cars for their trips instead of walking.
The first place we visited was the Churchill War Rooms in the Westminster neighborhood. The museum was not open when we were here in 2002, as it was under redevelopment. The rooms are largely intact from when they were abandoned in 1945 when the Second World War ended. The exhibits gave fascinating insight into the conduct of the war from the perspective of the Allies.
The tour was conducted by audio guides, but there was even more information to read at many of the exhibits. Besides the historical rooms, there is a large museum dedicated to the life of Winston Churchill. The museum is quite well done and worth a visit. We spent close to two hours here.
A typical exhibit from the Churchill Museum.
Here’s a view of Big Ben, not far from the Churchill War Rooms.
After that, we took a taxi to visit an art museum recommended to us by neighbors, Courtauld Gallery, which hosts a very fine collection of European art. The museum was not crowded, and it was air conditioned, in addition to having masterpieces by artists such as Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Reubens, Goya, Manet, Renoir and Van Gogh. Nice museum.
Here are two well known works in the Gallery, on the left, Adam and Eve by Cranach, and above, Manet’s A Bar At the Folies Bergére.
Afterwards, we took a very slow taxi ride across town to the City area of London. We had lunch at one of the establishments in the nineteenth century Leadenhall Market. After eating our Mexican food lunch, we walked a short distance to one of two adjacent public look-out spaces on the top of a skyscraper.
Leadenhall Market at lunch time.
A few days before our visit, we booked a free ticket to the Horizon 22 Viewing Decks, located on the 58th and 59th floors of an office building. The floor to ceiling windows offered expansive views of the City in two directions. There was a good view down to the Tower of London as well as St Paul’s Cathedral and the famous pointy skyscraper across the river called the Shard.
The famous Gherkin skyscraper was next door and slightly below us, but we couldn’t get a good photograph of it due the angle of the sun. Here are some photos taken from Horizon 22.
Here is a map of the areas we visited in London. Zoom in for details.
We then took an Uber ride back to our Mayfair hotel, which took more than a half hour. One benefit to riding in cars, was that we saw more of London than we could have seen in the Tube. We found the city more attractive than we remembered, although there was a great deal of construction going on which closed off some streets. Even though it was only mid-afternoon, the heat and jet lag led us to crash in our air conditioned hotel room the rest of the afternoon. Later, we went out to dinner in SoHo neighborhood and had very good Taiwanese food. After dinner, it had cooled enough to walk about 20 minutes or so back to our hotel. London made a good impression on us, and we might return at a cooler time of year.
Tomorrow, we will fly from Gatwick airport to Iceland.
