SUNDAY morning. Early still. The November sky is the kind of clear bright blue you'd buy if that was possible. We're in Belgravia so the people around here could probably afford it.
I'm walking up Lowndes Street, through Lowndes Square and up past the handsome terrace buildings, past the Iraqi restaurant where hijab-wearing women were drawing on hookahs the night before, up past Harvey Nics and across the road and up past the French and Kuwaiti embassies at Albert Gate (originally built for the rogue 19th-century railway magnate George Hudson and, according to the architectural critic Ian Nairn "almost the best individual thing in Belgravia"), and on into Hyde Park.
And here the early morning quiet finds a new level. Traffic noise damps down, planes roar distantly but the most obvious noise is the susurrus of the wind in the trees, an ambient soundtrack to start the day. Here is the city's green lung rising and falling quietly.
And yet the park is full of life. Full of dogs and their dog walkers at any rate, and joggers, and joggers pushing prams, and Russian ladies taking the air in their fur coats. All the people. So many people.
And not just people. Moorhens, geese, gulls, swans and anglers crowd the water's edge as the Serpentine glitters in the morning sun. Look up and you can the tops of Buckingham Palace squatting on the horizon. Look down and birds peck at anything that even remotely looks edible.
In the water in between the swans I suddenly notice people are swimming. I hear them before I see them. Their lean, stringy bodies cut through the cold water. Some shout and scream at the slapping shock of it.
There's a woman who would appear to be wearing a fur hat while she swims. Actually on closer inspection it might be faux fur but it is sitting there, black and snug, on the top of her head as she powers up and down, up and down, her head held firmly above the water.
As I pass a solidly built middle-aged man in swimming briefs walks towards the edge of the water, pulling his goggles onto his head.
"You're a braver man than I," I tell him.
"I haven't done it yet," he cautions, before easing himself into the water with a shiver.
Park life.
It's good, all this green space. A few yards away cars are beginning to snarl and rush their way down the Brompton Road and Knightsbridge, through London's prime shopping district. This is London at its richest.
If Soho is the capital's equivalent of your dissolute uncle, Belgravia and neighbouring Knightsbridge are the well-heeled cousins. You come to this part of London to shop or gawp. To walk around Harrods, Europe's largest department store, and gasp at the prices.
Originally a grocers shop, Harrods moved to Belgravia in 1849. At the start of the 20th century it installed Britain's first escalator. When it was installed an attendant would stand at the top offering a brandy and smelling salts to anyone discombobulated by the experience.
Neither are on offer now, alas. Instead, there's the chance to lose yourself in its capacious interior, surrounded by all that commerce has to offer. We buy a book mark.
Five minutes away in our hotel in Lowndes Street, the quietness almost matches the park's. The only noise is the occasional skateboarder rolling by outside.
The hotel operates both a bike lending service and a library. But we're most taken with the fact that our room has a balcony.
Around the corner there are high-end clothes shops and high-end eateries. There's a queue out the door at Ottolenghi when we pass.
Never mind Jewish cuisine. London's internationalism is on show at every turn in this part of the city; from the French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Arabic voices you hear on the street to the Georgian and Romanian staff who serve you breakfast. The area has a village atmosphere but it's clearly an international one.
Walk ten minutes on from Harrods and you'll get to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the design museum that is currently incubating a Scottish offspring on the Dundee waterfront. Famously, back in the 1980s, an advertising campaign for the V&A caused uproar when it ran with the strapline "an ace caff with quite a nice museum attached".
To be fair to the V&A the cafe is still worth a visit.
But not everything comes with a price tag in this richest of London's corners. Back in Hyde Park an old couple walks by as I cross the Serpentine (too early for the gallery to be open yet). They are holding each other's hands.
The man points to the swans. "They find a partner and stick with her for life," he says to her. "So do I." he adds leaning in for a kiss.
As J-Lo once sang, "love don't cost a thing". Probably just before she checked out the Harrods sale, right enough.
Teddy Jamieson was a guest at Jumeirah Lowndes Hotel starts from £239 per double room, per night, including taxes. To book, call +44 (0)207 823 1234 or visit www.jumeirah.com/jlh.
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