LONDON – England - UK (Sun 22 Nov)

Our ‘Free’ breakfast this morning, ended up to be what ever we could scavenge out of the kitchen, which was essentially a few slices of thin, white bread, and a 3kg tub of cheap strawberry jam. The bench load of breakfast supplies that we had been introduced to last night, as it transpired, was whatever previous guests had left behind over the previous three years. This consisted mainly of large bottles of cooking oil, several half finished bottles of Coke, a congealed part bottle of sweet and sour sauce, and several jars containing substances that defied description. Oh for a jar of Marmite. We always wondered what created the expat’s obsession with Marmite, and now we know.

We caught the tube to St Paul’s this morning, as we considered that the appalling weather was a good opportunity to visit the Museum of London. Aside from all the wonderful displays and information that they had, we hadn’t considered that a wet Sunday afternoon would mean that half of London was there with their kids doing ‘family day’. At times it felt like we were in an infirmary with kids all around us coughing, sneezing and otherwise expressing themselves all over us. In some cases we felt like telling their parents “For God sake, take your child home, can’t you see that he is sick?”

The way that the family units were behaving, it seemed that they thought that they were under the watchful eye of the selection committee for the annual ‘Mum of the Year’ award. There were so many mums taking a family day out, way too seriously, giving their kids question and answer sessions around every display case. Turning little two year old Johnnie’s, fun Sunday out with mum, into a School trip. Maybe they were doing their allotted ‘Quality Time’. What happened to just letting them have fun?

Anyway after wandering through the beginnings of London, the bronze age, Roman times, the Great fire, and the Black Plague, and lots of other ‘old stuff’, we decided that it was time to get back in touch with the present. We studied our maps to try and formulate a plan on which direction we should go in, and the more we looked at our maps, the more they looked like Monopoly boards. Waterloo, Park Lane, Pall Mall, Mayfair, oh the choices. We ended up going for a casual stroll down Oxford street to admire the Christmas lights. They really come into their own when it gets dark at 4:30pm. The lights were pretty cool, with many departments stores having their whole frontages covered in displays, and side streets having themed displays running down their lengths.

Whilst walking down the street bundled up with jackets, boots, hats, scarves, and gloves (we suspect that we look like right wusses) we discussed the merits and otherwise of being cold, versus rain. We wondered what it would be like up in Edinburgh at this time of the year. Not sure if we could cope with the four hours of daylight though. We continued our ponderings within the warm confines of one of our local pubs, whilst enjoying a Christmas dinner, Turkey, potatoes, Brusselsprouts, peas, Yorkshire pudding, gravy, cranberry sauce … and a pint. Brilliant!