On Friday morning, after gasping at the price of rail tickets and underground tickets (& giving up trying to work out cheap deals) we arrive in London.  We go first via a walk along by the Thames to The Tate Modern and admire their crack (https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/salcedo-shibboleth-ii-p20335).  We decide on an early lunch in the museum Café 2 where we, from indoors, smugly watch everyone walking around outside getting sodden.  They have amazingly tall metal vases topped off with Singapore orchids on the bar, which look very classy.   We have fried broad beans and bread with olive oil as snackrell-type starters and I opt for a quiche while Steve opts for a mezze plate for mains. 

Then to our Radisson hotel near the BM.  This strikes me as disappointing; I know it’s London but why can’t it be a larger, nicer room for all those points?  And the lift is so slow, too, and the breakfast not included but £16 each extra.   

Amazingly, Steve has spotted a Jessops nearby and we end up in there and he gets a discount off a Tamron 18-250 lens and is exceedingly smug and announces he can sell two of his existing ones. 

We visit the close-by British Museum and admire the wonderful hall, which always impresses.  We have cake & tea and watch the visitors. But we are here To See Things not just Eat Things, so we visit the Lewis chessmen (having seen the Edinburgh based ones we feel we should complete the set) and I end up drooling over the jewellery.  However, one piece of pure Victoriana is so frightful it makes me squeak out loud – a necklace made of the mounted heads of hummingbirds.   

In the evening we finally see “The Mousetrap” in a minute theatre with many empty seats near us (which was just as well cos I swapped at the interval so I could see the whole of the stage).  Very mannered and of its times and I guessed The Murderer, but an experience. 

For some reason, as we walk back, Steve wants more food, so we eat in an Italian place (although The Ivy was opposite!) and both decided we cook better than at home, but the staff are more pleasant.