Exploring London

I went to have coffee at a flat nearby with the mother of one of Susanne's friends. Doreen and I share a love of books and writing. After visiting for awhile, we took a bus down Oxford Street to find Charing Cross Road. . .site of a famous book by American author Helen Hanff , "84 Charing Cross Road." 84 is now a pizza place, but on the outside wall is an identifying plaque about the 1970 book, a New York City-London conversation about books.
Charing Cross Road was once a "book village" with shop after shop of old and new book stores. Presently there is a Borders, Blackwell's (a big British chain), many restaurants and a few antiquarian book stores. We browsed through old books then went for tea in the undercroft of the National Portrait Gallery. Doreen told me about being evacuated from London as a child during the WWII Blitz. I was deeply touched by stories of sleeping in the tube stations at night
and listening for Doodlebugs, unmanned aerial bombs which made a buzzing noise--if they suddenly became silent, you ran for cover because it was going to explode right where you were standing. To make a day of it, we visited a wholesale jewelry shop on our return home!