A late dinner was served during our flight from Hong Kong to London, then the lighting was dimmed and sleep encouraged. We both dosed our way through the night but the twelve hour flight seemed to go on and on. Our flight path took us north over China and the over Russia before eventually west to England. A light breakfast was served just prior to arrival at Heathrow at 04.45 am. Again a fast train ride took us to baggage claim and we departed via the "no declaration" exit and surprisingly with no checks we were through Customs. We took the underground train to Kings Cross station and changed there to another line to go just one station and then changed to an overground li e to go just two stations. It certainly doesn't take long to get used to the London public transport system. Once we arrived in Dalston Junction we had a short walk, in the cold drizzly rain, to our accommodation. We are staying in a studio flat on the lower ground floor of a typical British home. The flat is well equipped and will be perfect for our stay. It is in a nice residential street and is opposite a typical British pub which we will enjoy visiting at some stage. After food, unpacking and a couple of hours sleep we headed out in the rain. One of the reasons we chose to stay in this area is that we wish to explore some of the places our extended family lived before emigrating to New Zealand. My paternal family came from the Hackney/Leyton area very near where we are staying. This afternoon we took a short tide in a typical London double decker bus to Hackney Wick to visit St Mary's on Eton Church. It was there that my grandmother, the only grandparent that I knew, was christened in 1895. We were able to go inside the church and the current minister was happy to share some history with us. The church was originally built in 1894 (so would have been very new when my grandmother was christened there), has no foundations, and originally had plain windows to allow in as much light as possible and these were replaced with coloured lead lights after World War II when the church was extensively damaged by a bomb dropped very close by. Of course, in 1894 there was no heating in the church and there were only four gas lights, two on either side, had concrete flooring with a linoleum runner down the centre. There have been some recent changes to the church and it was closed for those renovations until late last year. The church is still in use as a practising church today. It was still raining so after a short stop at Tesco's supermarket for some supplies we returned to the flat. It has been a long couple of days. We have eight more days in London to continue our exploring.