Our lovely place in Balham

This is the gorgeous place we're staying at in Balham.  Jen and I each have our own room in Andrew and Mario's place.  Andrew prepared a lovely breakfast and chatted to us while we ate.  He's a lovely guy and is very helpful.  If you stayed here you would have to like animals as they have two very friendly little terriers and two gorgeous cats and they are very much a part of the family.  It suits Jen and I as we're missing our pets already. 

Getting from Heathrow to Balham yesterday afternoon was quite an adventure, especially lugging bags during peak hour when most people were in a tearing hurry.  Thank God we had Fran with us who navigated beautifully and had already purchased train tickets and an Oyster card (like a go card) for each of us.  That made life much easier! 

After we'd dropped our bags off at our b&b, James and Fran took us to a gorgeous little Italian restaurant in Balham where we ate lots of yummy pizza and bruschetta and garlic bread.  Despite being fed constantly on the plane, the food was pretty awful and we didn't each much of it, so we found we were quite hungry.

The twilight here is quite deceiving, but by 9.30 the tiredness had kicked in for both of us and although it was still light and felt much earlier, we were falling asleep while talking!  Fran is taking us to Mayfair today and we're having lunch with James in a park near his work at Victoria which is apparently near Buckingham Palace.  No doubt the queen will be thrilled to see us!