We left London this morning to begin our trip to Ireland.

Daphne at lunch at the Brenner Jewish Day Center

Our itinerary in London would not pass muster with any real tourist sites. I spent a lot of time here as a kid, and Pat has been here a couple of times, so we did not put on the normal forced march between museums and art galleries. My personal goal was to revisit some first cousins whom I had not seen in 20 or 30 years, and I have always enjoyed just hanging around in London.

However, just in the normal course of events, we did manage to walk past Buckingham Place, through Green Park and Kensington Gardens and along the Victoria Embankment. We saw a couple of plays and ate some of the indigenous English food: steak pie, fish and chips and Indian curry.

Pat has been watching the Selfridges television show on public television, so we went to see the store on Oxford Street, which led to a walk through Soho.

Amy Woolfson and Pat in the Houses of Parliament

For me, the trip was more about seeking out some long-lost cousins – one I didn’t know I had lost.

My cousin Daphne introduced us to a second cousin, Amy Woolfson, who works for a member of Parliament and gave us a tour. We saw Andrew Lloyd-Webber sitting in the House of Lords. Although there is a lot more ecclesiastical architecture, the rules and byways remind me a lot of Congress – we got in trouble for taking a picture in the wrong place, for example.

And we saw cousin Madeline for lunch near her office in Mayfair.

In this post I am sending along some photos of some of my long-lost relatives, and some other phenomena of life in London. Watch this space for something about Ireland soon.

The Underground at rush hour. We won’t make this mistake again.

A very nice pay toilet in South Kensington

A string quartet busking at the South Kensington underground.

Madeleine and me outside her offices in Mayfair.

Tea in the cafe at St. Martin’s in the Fields, near Trafalgar Square.