Tuesday 10th June                         Woolwich - London

Robyn writes: We slept until about 8 which was a lovely sleepin. Cait called on Skype so we had a nice chat to her, then quickly got ourselves organised to go out for the day. Breakfasts here at the Travelodge are 8 pounds each, but we'd noticed that our favourite Weatherspoon pub has a range of cheap brekky options, so we headed for there instead. I had a bagel and cream cheese and Lex had pancakes. All very nice and they came with a cup of tea or coffee included. Then we headed off to the train station for the day's adventures. We'd decided to go our separate ways for the morning, as Lex wanted to go to see his great-grandfather's cousin's grave in St Mary's Catholic Cemetery at Kensal Green and I wanted to go to the famous Harrod's.

Graves of Sir James and Lady Charlotte Connolly

Lex had a good trip out to the cemetery and found Sir James Connolly's grave without too much trouble. He had a distinguished career - was a Western Australian MP and Minister, then became the WA Agent General in London and was knighted in 1920. He obviously liked it here as the family remained here and his daughters both married Englishmen - one to a Peer. He died in 1962 in his nineties.

 Harrod's

 Amazing escalators

Iced chocolate for Sniffley the red dragon and I!

We travelled together as far as Bank station, then I headed off on the District line to get a connection to Knightsbridge. The train was really quite crowded but I noticed that there was a school group of Year 1s in the first carriage, so I got in there - worked like magic as the general travelling public gave them a wide berth. I even got to sit down! The tube station was right at the very front door of Harrod's so I walked straight in. That shop is amazing! The opulance of the decor makes Myer look like a corner shop. My favourite was one luxury accessory room which was all Egyptian in theme - more like a museum than a shop! They have everything, from luxury items, makeup, furniture, books, clothing etc to several food halls where you can get your (very expensive) everyday grocery items. I wandered happily around for ages looking at all of the things that were far too expensive for me, though I did buy myself a tin of Harrod's English Breakfast tea bags (the tin will make a great souvenir) for 8.50 pounds. I decided to treat myself to morning tea so had a delicous iced chocolate in their Chocolate Cafe. Yum!

 The garden area inside the V&A courtyard

 Some amazing displays

 Incredible fashions of the 1700s - fitting through doors must have been difficult...

The suit of clothes James II was married in

Having thoroughly over-indulged and having had enough of the high life, I headed up the road to the nearby Victoria & Albert Museum to meet Lex. The museum is free admission, which is wonderful (London is usually so expensive) so I gratefully checked my backpack in (it gets so heavy) at the cloakroom and headed for the medieval hall. The V&A focuses on design, and has some marvelous things on display. I happily wandered through several centuries of English fashion and design, while Lex looked at Asian art and Islamic history. We met for lunch at 1.30. We had a lovely lunch in the cafe there before going off again to our favourite interest areas (Lex back to the Islamic and iron work, art and me to the fashion through the centuries). We met up again for afternoon tea, then had the last hour and a half until the museum closed at around 5.30.

Rather footsore, we headed back to the tube and DLR to head back to Woolwich. The good thing about the DLR which starts at Bank is that you can almost always get a seat on the train for the half hour trip home. We got back here around 7 and went straight to the Weatherspoon for tea (it was "Steak night") so both had lovely sirloin steaks for tea and an apple crumble to share for dessert - all for under 20 pounds. Very satisfying! Another big day.