It was a long flight. I was situated between two men, both engaging in Man Spread, where they both helped themselves to their left and right armrests (translation: no arm rest for me, plus both have their elbows in my small space). They were also both spread down below, knees in my space. I didn’t sleep much, even resorted to writing a rare post during the flight. I think my typing woke them both up. (Good!) I topped it off with an epic nosebleed, during which I noticed they kept to themselves.

The Border at Heathrow was packed, and it took a long time to clear it. My husband was coming in from Rome where he had spent the week conducting research for a novel he’s working on while our son was on a Spring Break trip to Memphis and Nashville with his high school orchestra. My husband’s flight must have arrived 15 minutes before mine and I could see him three rows in advance of me at the Border.

Naturally, he was engaged in animated conversation with the person in front of him. My husband isn’t exactly an extrovert, but he does always seem to be able to strike up a conversation wherever he is. It makes traveling with him much more interesting than traveling alone; he gets us into situations. After we got through the Border, I briefly met his acquaintance, who happened to be a 21-year old rabid Arsenal fan from Perth Australia, in for the Man City match. They met on the flight from Rome. The Australian is now my Facebook friend. My husband, who has no problem friending everyone in real life, is not on Facebook.

It was nearly 6 p.m. when we got to our hotel, Citizen M Tower Hill. It is a hotel that would come in handy in the rain showers that often greet us in London, so close to the Tower tube stop is it. The requisite rain showers have not occurred so far. I do not complain.

My husband and I are divided on the Citizen M. It has a very cute lobby, but the rooms are very, very small, especially as I compare them with others we’ve had in this price point. My husband really likes the layout, especially in the bathroom. Although it is tiny, it has a fair amount of storage, notably a giant drawer under the King bed. It is similar to the Z Shoreditch we stayed in for our very first visit last season, in that the bed fills an entire alcove so the person on the interior side has to crawl over the person on the exterior side to use the restroom at night, but can’t turn on only the restroom light to be able to see where that toilet might be.  It does have more fancy amenities than the Z, such as an electronic “mood” board, which can be used to raise the shades, request a wake up call, and report one’s mood. My mood is good, albeit a bit cramped.

We headed out into the evening across the Tower Bridge to get a bite to eat, settling on Cote Brasserie on St. Katherine Docks. It is right across from a chain called The Slug and Lettuce. Although I’ve walked by this chain many times, somehow I’ve never chosen to eat there. At the Brasserie Cote I had roasted chicken with wild mushroom sauce and my husband had the Beef Bourguignon. Both delicious. We topped it off with profiteroles.

The Tower Bridge was lovely at night. The Shard also was looking beautiful on our walk home.

The next day, we woke up to a lovely, sunny morning. We had received many warnings from Arsenal by email that we needed to be at the stadium an hour early to clear Security given the recent terror attack in London. Since we got a late start in the morning, we decided to head over to the Tate Modern. Hard to beat a free museum when you don’t have much time to spend. I don’t know that much about art, and even less about Modern Art.  The only artists I recognized at the Tate Modern were Picasso and Andy Warhol.

In the same room with Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe study was some protest art from a collective called the Guerilla Girls, a group of female artists of the mid-80s addressing the paucity of female artists whose work was being displayed by the major galleries.

The Guerilla Girls must have been successful, because the Tate Modern is teeming with the work of female artists. I found it to be quite interesting, and I show some of it below.

If only the Guerilla Girls could take on Man Spread.