London Day 7

Today was started with a quick phone call to Emirates to see if we could snag a last-minute points upgrade on one of the legs on our homeward trip, and YAY even though they weren’t available on the online upgrade, they had two available on the phone. Goodbye frequent flyer points, hello business class on the A380! Back to economy for the long-haul leg, but I’m happy to get part-way there.

The rest of the day was spent being extremely touristy – we started out walking through Green Park to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guards, would you believe! It was packed out, and people kept trying to squeeze in closer to the walls, even though when they were squeezing in front of us, all they could see was a better view of the pillar in front of the wall!

Even so, the ceremony and music and excitement in the air made it a fun occasion. We weren’t intrigued enough though, to hang around for the band’s third track after all the ceremonial walking around a lot, so we said hello to a few police people on horses and wandered off again.

Next destination of all true tourists – Harrods. I was pretty impressed. They had sports cars (of course), lots of big name stuff, and an entire hall devoted to chocolate and tea. Plus a chocolate cafe! What’s not to like? Well, the prices were certainly astronomical on some things – a pineapple for instance, was 14 pounds. Hmm. On the other hand, I cast my eye over the MAC cosmetics and I thought I saw that the eyeshadows were only 12 pounds – less than $20 when here they’re $32!

In any case, I picked up a few suitable “harrods” emblazoned gifts for people back home, and also found a set of the placemats from the gorgeous designs I mentioned the other day, at half price! They are the cheese-themed ones (not on the website – must be old stock) rather than the personality-plus-plus cows and pig ones I adored, but they’re still great! And heavy, as I found out after schlepping them around all day.

Next stop: The British Library to have a look at some cool books. We certainly found them – another Shakespeare First Folio, one of Jane Austen’s notebooks, the Magna Carta, one of the first Gutenberg bibles, some amazing old illuminated texts like more bibles and other sacred texts, and even the words to The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” as first written by John Lennon on one of Julian’s first birthday cards! No photos allowed unfortunately…

We headed back to the hotel to dump my Harrods plunder, then headed out to Fleet to visit cousin E again. After braving the commuter trains at rush hour, we met at a lovely pub, The Heron On The Lake, which unfortunately had only two ciders, both of which I could get at home. Nevertheless, a salubrious spot.

E took us back to her place for dinner, a yummy risotto. It was SO nice to have a home-cooked meal after eating out for so long! The bottle of red we shared also ensured a voluble evening, especially from me. I was particularly amazed at the treasured to be found in the Argos catalogue. Who would have thought you could get a Nerf automatic machine gun?? Three rounds a second! Pity you’d need a good few of the “dart” belts. I can just imagine someone with a bandolier-style belt filled with Nerf darts. Go ahead, make my day!

The trains were a lot quieter on the way back, but we managed to share a carriage with a drunken party of darts-players, strangely enough, who were waving a poster they’d nabbed stating “Go on, play darts!”. We all arrived back in London safe and sound!