Our last full day, how much can we see

We have a big day ahead, lots to pack into it. I thank Basil for the new room and he smiles in acknowledgment.
The Avni Hotel, where we are staying is a 3 star hotel, not far from an underground station. Good value considering the location but probably not a place we would stay at again. One of the daily challenges is opening the body wash and shampoo sachets. We both wear glasses so it is hard to distinguish between the two and it is even harder to tear them open especially with wet hands. Usually we rely on each other to provide an open sachet but even with dry hands it is a problem. The bars of soap, if it is soap, do not lather up so maybe I should have let MDW bring those little bottles of shampoo and body wash she has collected from various motels over the years.
As we have a big day planned we need a full English or the parts of it we will eat. We order our meal me minus the baked beans and no black pudding or sausage for either of us. Well done eggs and crispy bacon plus a pot of never ending tea. Apparently they will continue to replenish our tea pot for as long as it takes to eat our breakfast. We are in no hurry so this will be good value. The food comes with runny eggs, limp bacon and so called toast that didn’t even get close to a toaster. Back we send it and we continue to drink our tea. The food returns in the style we ordered although the toast was really just warm bread. Our tea pots were refilled, food eaten, bill paid and off to the British Museum. We catch the Underground (Piccadilly Line) to Holborn and walk to the museum. Although we haven’t purchased a SIM card yet for our phones, Google Maps has been doing a damn fine job once I work out which direction it is telling us to go. We walk up the museum stairs and because we have had a couple of pots of tea which is a diuretic and we are seniors, the first place we go to is the toilets. Free ones too. There’s a lot of old stuff there, in the museum, and the Egyptian display is amazing. MDW surprised me by her interest considering she is more of a shopper than tourist. She did spend a long time looking at the various ways dead people are disposed of. As fancy as the caskets were and tempting as burial options, none would meet her 3 day rule. But that’s another story, let’s just say MDW would be concerned that no phone signal would penetrate the thickness of the boxes, nor would any sound get out.
Before we left the museum, another toilet break, damn tea! After the museum visit we went to a nearby pub on Carnaby Street and shared a plate of fish and chips. Cod, breaded scampi, garden peas and chips. I wasn’t sure what scampi was, I think maybe prawns but ended up getting fish balls. MDW hit the hard stuff and tried an alcoholic ginger beer which I ended up drinking. There was really only one more place to go to, Abbey Road, and get a photo walking across the pedestrian crossing. We walked to Oxford Circus station and asked for directions from the railway guy. “Abbey Road, is that a station?” he asked. I tried to explain the significance of it but he didn’t even know about The Beatles, before his time he said. He did a Google search on his iPad and provided a station name but suggested we could just go upstairs to the pedestrian crossing on Oxford Street and take a photo. Funny guy but it wouldn’t be the same.
We get off at Maida Vale and start the long trek to Abbey Road. We ask for confirming instruction from a friendly chap sitting outside a restaurant who happily tells us to keep walking, “You can,t miss all the tourists taking photos”.
We get to Abbey Road, see Abbey Road studios, and can’t help but think how annoyed people driving along the road must be as swarms of tourists keep approaching the crossing forcing the traffic to stop. Many are trying to replicate the famous Abbey Road album cover but it is near impossible to get a clear shot of 4 people crossing at the one time. I quickly cross the road when there are no cars nearby then slowly walk back across giving MDW ample time to take the perfect photo. Job done we both walk across the crossing resulting in cars having to stop. Maybe they should avoid driving on this road.
We were ready to sit or even lay down, the iPhone said we had walked up or down 26 flights of stairs, and it felt like it too. The railway underground stairs are steep. We get off at Gloucester Road station, into Waitrose for our nightly feast of raspberries and back to our room, our last night in London. We decide to have a quiet night in, I think we have seen more than half the Monopoly board locations this visit. Thoroughly enjoyed everywhere we went in London, tomorrow Ireland where they have issued a warning about Storm Ali. Hopefully our flight will not be cancelled.Read more