London: Sunday 7 August

We both slept well last night, and were up early to look at partially packing. We were to check out of the hotel at 1pm and had booked a 3pm transfer to the Crowne Plaza Hotel at Heathrow.

We were out the door at 9:15am, and on the Tube to Barbican station, and then doing the short walk down the road to the Museum of London. It was another hot day (26C) and it wasn't easy to keep cool, even in the Museum. Entry was free, but our London Pass gave us a free copy of their Museum Highlights book (really interesting). We only had about an hour and a half at the museum and could easily have spend a day there. It wasn't too busy, the displays were well organised and interesting. We missed a lot but skipped through the main exhibits that managed to pull together a lot of the history, people and places we had been visiting and hearing about on our travels.

  

  

Then we had a good trip on the Tube (ie - not crowded and both of us with a seat) back to Victoria Station, queued up to cash in what was left on our Oyster Cards, and returned to the hotel to check out by 1pm. Even though we'd organised the 1 hour delayed checkout the night before, with two keys extended till that time, we found ourselves locked out of our room yet again, with David having to traipse back through the long corridors and back down to reception.

When it came to checkout time, we were asked if we'd enjoyed our stay, and so I said that I reckoned they owed us a couple of drinks for three lots of hassle over being locked out during our 8 day stay, and also supposedly not having a credit card listed to our room when we'd left the restaurant the first night we went there and as a result having someone pounding on our door shortly after. Plus the terrible noise all night, every night in our 'quiet room' from the concrete drill outside (except Fridays and Saturdays). Other than that, it had been great! So, ask and thou shalt receive - we got a drink each and I enjoyed another White Russian, on the house, at a value of £9.75!

We had a nice, relaxing couple of hours in the bar, all to ourselves, with excellent service and lunch (a really excellent GF mushroom risotto for me - eat your heart out, Jamie's Italian Victoria). I got slightly sozzled after my second White Russian... I hope Ross can make me these when he's home for Christmas!

Just before 3pm, our transfer car was ready and we were off to the Crowne Plaza at Heathrow. It was actually only just over half an hour - no traffic jams, no crowds! Excellent. Much better than trying to get suitcases on the Tube with the stairs and crowds, or even using the Heathrow Express and a shuttle as originally intended!

Check-in was very good and we got a huge room with two double beds, then headed down to the bar for a couple of hours relaxing, reading etc. We had to relax some time on this holiday! Dinner for me was a GF chicken burger, which they actually split in half using two small GF buns - I was impressed with their effort! An early night tonight, for an early morning tomorrow - we're flying to Singapore! More heat...