Thank you, Mr. Mayor

Perfect Chamber of Commerce weather was ordered up for the Mayor's Thames Festival today and we thoroughly enjoyed both the weather and the festival.

There were lots of booths with interesting merchandise (some of which was purchased) and tempting cuisine (some of that was purchased and consumed as well) lining the south bank of the river. This picture was taken on the north bank after most of our festival strolling, but I wanted to publish it to show that, yes, the sun does occasionally shine in London!

Lots of entertainment is also a feature of the festival, but other than some very entertaining street acts, the only official program we got to see was a very cute and energetic group of Korean boys break-dancing. The young man in red at the left put on quite a show, but for me the highlight was the pair who danced to a rap version of Pachebel's Canon (unfortunately I couldn't get a good picture of them). The crowds were not too unmanageable at this early point in the day, but later, when we tried to watch some tango demonstrations, we were unable to see the dancers. I'm glad we got to see the Koreans, however.

One of the events we'd been looking forward to was a race on the river that started 20 miles or so upstream. We waited and waited near Blackfriars Bridge for the racers but when they hadn't shown 30 minutes past the time they were scheduled, we gave up on them and headed for the other, less crowded side of the river to catch a tube home.

But they were just a little late and we were in time to catch them. So from a nice perch on the Jubilee footbridge next to the Hungerford rail bridge, we had the marvelous treat of seeing all these wonderful rowers and boats headed down the home stretch of the race!
Some of the boats were pretty serious about this, but a lot were just out for fun, such as the pub employees at the right. All in all, a marvelous day in this most civilized of cities. There were crowds, yes, but they were terribly well-mannered. And when you need a pit stop there's the amazingly well-run public convenience at just the right spot. I could get used to this.

And of course the wonderful scenery along the Thames that we're still having to pinch ourselves to be sure we're not just seeing in our dreams. (Even if some of it has a dreamlike quality of its own, such as the Dali clock sculpture at the left.)

Sigh. It's real—we're really here!

[And I was glad to get reports of minimal Ike damage from my brother when I got home this afternoon. Hope others I haven't heard from yet are ok and just out of juice.]