Day 2

Well, a new hotel is always interesting!  There is the bathroom to work out, the shower over the bath is lovely and strong, but goes everywhere and the shower door is NOT water tight!!!  The toilet, like most toilets chooses when to flush properly...  The bed is nice and firm.  The room is a bit too hot, but has a heat pump, so we can cool it down.   It is not a big room...

Today, Friday 13th Sept, we decided to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was a 2 km + walk thru Hyde Park.  It was a bit wet so we decided to take our rain jackets. We ended up at the Albert Memorial.  Queen Victoria was obviously devastated to loose Prince Albert when you look at how florid this memorial is...  She must have been an "interesting"person.

The Q&A is amazing, so much to see.  I should be taking more photos.  I am caught between the if I take photos I'm not concentrating well enough, but if I don't take photos, I won't have the memory aids!  I've included a couple below of some beautiful blackwork.  I would really like to try some of this at some time.  There was some other lovely embroidery, but I will have to add that photo to this post later as it isn't on my iPad yet.  However below is a fabric sample book from the late 1700s. 

We had lunch outside I the slight damp as inside the cafe was packed and noisy...

There are beautiful dresses with printed designs from the late 1700s and early 1800s I should have taken photos of as the fabrics are so lovely as are the dresses.  Don't suppose we will have time to get back there....

We then had a quick visit to the Natural History Museum.  Their Earth section was excellent.  I love minerals etc.  They have a butterfly exhibit on so we had a visit and in a very warm tent we saw some lovely butterflies - see below....

By the time we left the Natural History Museum, we thought we'd walk down to Harrods and have a look.  The food halls are amazing.  We were getting a bit frazzled by then and it was rather busy.  We checked out the Petland section.  Could have bought an exotic kitten for £1500 or a Bengal kitten for £1000 - my choice, or a hamster - Chinese or Persian... - for £15!

We didn't visit the luxury bathrooms this time, just the daggy normal ones!

By the time we left it was pouring outside and so we had Italian at a nearby restaurant.  And then my husband decided we'd walk back to the hotel in the pouring rain!  Needless to say, we were both very wet by the time we got back even with our jackets.  One of us was NOT wearing water proof shoes!  Me of course.  My shoes still hadn't dried out the next day!

I was rather crabby and pleased to be back at the hotel once we got here.