London, United Kingdom

Up early, leisurely breakfast then off again. Our first port of call was the Imperial War Museum, which is a short walk from the B&B. This museum comes highly recommended…..and is closed till July! Bummer. Shopping time, off to Oxford Circus and Carnaby Street. Success for Rachael on the shoe department, success for us both on the coffee front. Found a great coffee shop in a lane off Carnaby…..at last.

Groovy spot, Soho. Carnaby St reminds me of a scene from an Austin Powers movie, very hip and paisley. Expected Elvis Costello to round the corner, bursting into song… Loved it. Had lunch in Leicester Square, which was very much a peaceful oasis in the middle of mayhem. Speaking of mayhem, and the bizarre, M&M’s have their own shop.

4 FLOORS of chocolate, merchandise fun and frivolity. The smell as you walk in is overpowering, sweet sugary yuckiness(?). Photo op, fridge magnet…..out of there! One of Rachael’s bucket list items was to go to a show in the West End, so off to half tix. “A Chorus Line” tonight. Another bucket…..Wimbledon.

So, off we go, tubing it to Southfields which is the nearest station to the tennis. Arrived at the non ticket holder entrance and was confronted with a queue the length of the Flemington straight!!!

Spoke with a lovely attendant who informed us it was one out and one in, that’s how the ‘tight ****’ process works, expected waiting time…….9 hours. NINE hours!!! Suffice to say we took the obligatory photo of Hugh and I at the entrance and proceeded to walk into Wimbledon Village which was 5 minutes away. What we didn’t realise was the queue we had seen was merely to get into the queue for the Wimbledon tickets. The entire length of the queue was actually 2km and that was at 4pm!! We put the whole experience down to a lovely day in Wimbledon Village enjoying a coffee and pastry with all the other losers.

Headed back to Central London for a quick bite and to watch A Chorus Line.

It took all my strength not to sit there and sing every word of every song but I felt Hugh was already suffering enough without my singing as well. I have watched the movie at least 50 times over the years on the VHS recorder to the point that the tape simply snapped and A Chorus Line was no more, family seemed pretty happy at the time.

After the show we ventured into Westminster to take some night photos and I must say Big Ben, Parliament and the London Eye look spectacular at night.

Our last item on our list of things to do was catch a London Cab which we did for a whole 5 minute ride. Got out at our local pub and decided to have a half pint of beer to farewell the city of London. What we didn’t expect was for the barmen to pour us 2 full pints of beer, which is the equivalent of just under a litre, which we knew would probably take us half an hour to drink.

The night was already getting late as we actually saw the sun go down for the first time whilst in London. Off home on a full stomach of beer with a promise to each other that we will be running in the morning!!