London, day 1

Our flight from Florence to London took off mid-morning, so we left Panzano early to be sure we could navigate the roads (from paved to dirt to autostrada) and return the car in time.  The early morning fog was beautiful:

Arrival in London was easy enough, with the small difficulty of replacement buses because of work on the Overground.  Being native speakers of English helped us figure out where to wait and when to get off, and we only walked past the entrance to the apartment complex twice before realizing we had found our HomeExchange hosts' home.  They live on the 17th floor, and this is the view at night:

Our excursion today was to the British Library, partly to see an exhibit called "Beautiful Science," which showed various ways to visualize numeric data.  It included Florence Nightingale's circular graph in three colors, representing causes of death over time during the Crimean War, and computer-generated tracks using records from hundreds of British East India ship voyages, as well as a beautiful few-minute-long NASA animation of ocean currents over a few years, from satellite data.

We also saw the six-story temperature- and humidity-controlled library collected by George III, and the Magna Carta (written by scribes shortly after the agreement at Runnymede in 1215), and a Shakespeare first folio, and original Beatle scribblings of a few songs.  The Library building opened in 1998, bringing together collections that had been in different locations.  A modern image of Isaac Newton measuring the universe with a compass is in the courtyard:

On our way to the Library, we passed St. Pancras Station, which today houses a hotel above the tracks and shopping mall below.  The whole building is huge:

and there are various artworks inside.  This is one detail from a much larger sculpture that must have been done recently:

Finally, a shot from somewhere along our walk today.  Riding a bicycle in London must be scary enough, so I can see why this bike's owner decided to stop: