I joined Mike for 5 days in England at the end of July. We spent two nights in London and three in Hastings.

I liked what I saw of London a lot more than New York City. There was more stone, and greenery. It was certainly dense, with narrow streets and buildings right up against each other. Yards, if a house had one, were the tiniest of spaces. Lots of little shops on the street level, with apartments above. Everything was so pleasantly walkable. The underground station near our London hotel was closed the weekend we were there, so we used the nearby train station instead.

The trains were great! I have only amusement park and restored tourist railroads to compare against, and I’m told there are better in mainland Europe, but these were sturdy, frequent, and comfortable. And fairly expensive. But they, along with the other forms of public transport, are a completely feasible way to get around in the more populated areas. In London we never checked time tables; we just showed up at the station and always had less than a ten minute wait.

On my first day, we visited Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, west of London. This is the Chokushi-Mon (Gateway of the Imperial Messenger): “a four-fifths sized replica of the Karamon of Nishi Hongan-ji Temple in Kyoto…. The gateway is made of hinoki wood (Japanese cypress) with a traditional copper roof.”

We also walked through the Temperate and Evolution Glasshouses.

These were delightful buildings, quaint, whimsical, kind of steampunk, overflowing with plants delightedly climbing over each other. This is the exit from a catwalk that is open to visitors.

Aeonium undulatum, a large succulent from the Canary Islands, with rosettes probably a foot and a half wide.

On our second day in London, we went to the Natural History Museum. This is the main hall. The tip of a the 105-foot long Diplodocus carnegii’s tail is just visible at the base of the staircase.