Laundrettes, Lifts and Legging It

Day Seven – London

Today was a slower day thankfully. Yesterday was a bit wearing with all the excitement and travel so we were happy to keep today simple.

We got up late and went down to breakfast about 8:30am. The line was enormous, much longer than we've ever seen. Even so we were sitting down within about 15 minutes. For once I gave the kids a run for their money and ate more.

After breakfast we had to face the inevitable. We'd pretty much run out of clothes so it was laundry time. The prices for hotel laundry are MENTAL. I'm not kidding, one complete change of clothes for one person (socks, underwear, pants, shirt and handkerchief) costs GBP17.50. How can they justify that??? Even if we could afford that it is rude and we wouldn't pay it so off to the local laundrette we went. It's only a few hundred yards away so we just dragged the bags down there. It gave us a chance to knock off some postcards and we also met another two sets of Aussies. In some ways we might have well have stayed home...

Lunch was a quick salad or sammo from a local shop and then we were ready to do something interesting. For a change we decided to split up and go our separate ways. Jenni and Anna went back to Hyde Park to photograph the Peter Pan statues (again, my bad) and James and I went off to the Imperial War Museum.

The IWM has some great exhibits. In particular they have a good collection of WWII tanks – a Grant, Sherman V, Matilda II in caunter colours, Panther, Daimler armoured car and more. They also have a neat, original Chev truck used by the Long Range Desert Group (LDRG) in North Africa. James and I spent a fair bit of time wandering about, looking inside stuff an taking photos. From there we checked out some of the permanent exhibits – WWI an WWII galleries, the (small) art collection, the "Trench Experience" and the cover operations exhibit.

Having said all that, we'd pretty much seen the whole place in about 90 minutes. I may be a bit predjudiced but I think the Australian War Memorial is a much better museum. The IWM was "good" but things like the AWM's collection of Victoria Crosses blows them away. They do have some neat stuff at the IWM to be fair, including a gold wreath nicked off a Sultan's tomb by Laurence of Arabia, some post-Enigma German cypher gear and the engine and fuselage of the Messerschmitt BF-110 flown to England by Rudolph Hess.

There *was* one moment of comdey gold that I have to relate. I'm standing in the lift, not 10 feet from the Holocaust exhibit entrance and look up and see the following on the inside wall. Think about it... I'm near busting trying not to laugh, James is looking at me like I've gone bonkers and the American older couple in the lift are wondering why some crazy guy is taking photos of the lift. I finally got a decent photo on the third go.

On the way back to the hotel James and I (literally) ran into three youngish Italian blokes as we got off the Tube. The one in front was pretty rude and tried to force his way on before we could get off. I was already stepping down so I basically put my hand on his chest and shoved him back into his mates. The three of them looked at me like they couldn't believe one guy would take all of them on. Between that, worrying about missing their train and deciding what to do James and I were halfway up the platform before they made any decision at all which was to get on the train. Thinking about it I would probably not have gone that way with a chance to think but it happened to quick to decide. Maybe they'll learn something.

Over to Jenni...

Anna and I decided to go to Kensington Palace as there was a special exhibit there called the Enchanted Castle. We had to go through the castle to find the names of seven princesses and the entire palace had been darkened and decorated a bit like an enchanted wood. Anna was much better of finding the names in the eerie light.

Some of the rooms and decorations were down right weird, and others were delightfully mysterious. I especially liked the dream-like sculpture over Mary the Second's bed.

It was quite difficult to get to the palace as the trains had been cancelled from Marble Arch in the direction we needed to travel. The Underground buses were packed so Anna and I decided to get a taxi there but we walked half the way back and took a bus the rest of the way. Anna spotted bikes for hire and was quite annoyed when we discovered that they were for Barclays Card holders only!!! The rest of the afternoon is ours to relax ... and I'm looking forward to a bit of time to put my feet up. Back to Mike...

We spent the afternoon reading, watching TV and checking out places we're going down South. Dinner was a quick visit to a pub/club place with a good cheap menu. Tomorrow is our last day in London and we've plenty to do.

Edit: It occurred to me last night that the Italian I ran into is quite possibly the first one ever to get bumped and stay on his feet... Lucas Neil should have been so lucky ;-(

Cheers,
Millsy