Day 10: London

Picadilly Circus
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Today we started very early again, and had breakfast in the hotel basement (Billy had cornflakes which is a step up from his regular consumption of junk n’ chips lately).

We caught the train from Paddington Station to the Natural History Museum, however, this wasn’t open until 10am (it was nearly 9am). We decided to wander up to Harrods which was a few blocks away. It was also unfortunately closed until 10am, however, we window shopped until then. Harrods was very impressive, the layouts and presentation of their merchandise was excellent. We spent about 45 minutes and probably saw about 1/8^th of it. The food section was awesome, everything looked fantastic, from 20 flavours of ‘made on the spot’ gelato, chocolate sardines and green tea ‘detox’ lollies. There was a major sale on which unfortunately still didn’t mean that our Aussie dollar went anywhere. A Harrods Bag, a Homer Simpson Rubiks cube and a Krispy Crème Donut would do us. Kim was going to ditch us for the day and sacrifice the Museum (way better than LegoLand she said), however, with no way to contact each other she was forced to leave – without venturing to the shoe section (apparently we could have picked her back up on our flight back from London to Melbourne in a few weeks).

There was a major sale on which unfortunately still didn’t mean that our Aussie dollar went anywhere.

Blue Whale at the Natural History Museum
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There was plenty of extremely expensive items and we noted that you could buy a gift card to 10000 pounds…hint hint, if anyone is looking for a Christmas present for us!

We then headed back to the Natural History Museum, which had a major Dinosaur exhibit. This was fantastic, with plenty of Dinosaur bones and casts, moving life size Dino’s including the T-Rex and Dino information overload. The other sections were impressive too and we only covered about 30% of the museum, catching the Dinosaurs and the Mammals.

Krispy Creme and Harrods
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The weather was very warm and muggy, very humid. We made our way to Mary Poppins at the Prince Edward Theatre on the West End, which we were pleased was air conditioned (not very many places seem to be). For a matinee performance it was packed. The show was fantastic, full of catchy songs (which of course everyone knows), Mary and Bert flying around on strings, and great choreography. The costumes were spot on and the set was amazing, with huge sections constantly moving around, and breaks whatsoever while the sets were changing. We all loved it although by the end the little guy had fallen asleep.

Kim at Harrods
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A 45 minute train back to our hotel, and we were all exhausted, by this time it was 7pm. Billy had slept and been carried the entire length of the trip back to the hotel, and got his second wind. I was wrecked and did a few things before passing out on the bed. Kimmy got some take away for herself and Bill and that was all she wrote for the day.

Tool of the Day

Us, for sitting at the food court in the wonderful Natural History Museum, ignoring the great exhibits around us and taking turns trying to figure out a rubiks cube of Homer Simpson’s head (we failed).