Mind the gap

We've been in London for two days now and have been loving it. We're staying with Chris' college roommate, Neel, who lives in the Canary Wharf section of London (which is an entire neighborhood of high rises, office buildings, underground malls, and apartments built from scratch in the last 10 or so years).

We've spent our time doing tons of walking throughout the various neighborhoods and have seen some of the main sites. We put on our art history hats and visited the National Gallery (one of the world's great art museums), the Courtald Gallery (one of the best small museums) and Westminster Abbey.  We saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham (along with every other tourist in the city) and have walked a lot of the city seeing smaller historical sites along the way and getting a great sense of the city.

Our favorite part of London is the way the city embraces change while maintaining continuity -- old buildings mixed with brand new; traditions going back hundreds of years along with modern industry; traditional culture alongside the new -- London seems to pull this off like nowhere else we've been.  All of the architecture is beautiful and constantly amazes us.

(The title of the blog comes from the common British phrase as you get on and off the Tube.  Very polite.)