The High Life at Harrods

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Another late start again, but damn these sleep ins are great. There's no way we'll catch up until well after we're home again, but at least a little extra now and then will help us in the immediate future.

Anyhoo, we started the day at Westminister Abbey and it was great. The stained glass windows and chapels were lovely and the royal tombs more than impressive. It felt really odd to stand beside the tombs of figures such as Mary, Queen of Scots realising she once was a real, living person and not just a character from my history textbooks. We also managed to wander past a priest giving a guided tour and got a little extra background on the place: good to see that the Queen still shows Charles who's boos - all her flags, crowns and lions are much bigger than his, go Liz!!

Finding all the stones in rememberance of famous figures was pretty fun, my favourites were those to Shakespeare and the other literary giants in Poets corner. Of course Newton has one of the more impressive plaques and some quite fine statuary which seemed a fitting place to end our tour of the nave.

The garden was really green and peaceful, so we took a seat and admired the houses of parliament with the Union Jack fluttering in the brief sunshine. It was a really neat place and well worth the admission fee (though we did get in two for one!).

From there we had planned to tube our way across town, but the Circle was again experiencing severe delays (and it's still better than Auckland's public transport system!) so we decided to walk, heading through Regent's and Green's Parks and past Buckingham once again (and the guards had their fluffy bear hats on, hurah!).

Our destination was Harrods and it was like a wonderland of shopping. Of course we didn't buy anything but could have spent much longer than we did in the speciality food halls (oh so much fine fine chocolate!), the toy department or the Borders size bookshop. It was fantastic. We did do a tour of the fancy watch area - so many shiny things I almost needed my sunnies. Awesome.

Another walk through Hyde Park and some squirrel spotting to finishing off the day, then cooked dinner with Matt and Jacinta and settled in for a quiet evening of DVDs and chatting. We watched 'The Squid and The Whale' which we had never heard of but which had apparently had good reviews. It was about a couples' divorce, and though randomly humourous, basically reminded everyone that when a marriage breaks up, it's not just the relationship that breaks down.

Only a couple more days here and still so much to see and do!!

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