Day 85: Birthday Celebrations

An important day today - my wife Shandos's birthday! I'd managed to sneak out a couple of days earlier to a bottle shop where I'd bought her a nice bottle of rose wine and a cute card with a dachshund on it. I gave these to her first thing in the morning, which went down quite well!

No time to lose though, as we had another busy day planned - all stuff Shandos wanted to do, of course. First up was breakfast with her brother Joel, who had arrived from the Middle East the previous morning. He's been travelling for most of the last 18 months as well, and tends to move around a bit more than us, covering more ground but in less depth. It was good to see him and catch up, as we hadn't seen him since he left Australia in January.

Breakfast was on the 36th floor of the "walkie-talkie" building, in the Skygarden restaurant. It's a beautiful spot, on the top of a tall building but with a glass ceiling and lots of plants around. Great views, and good food too. And to our surprise, Shandos's parents and Joel picked up the bill as a birthday present - nice!

Next stop was the National Gallery, where we spent several hours looking at the fantastic art on display. Lots of famous artists including Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Turner, Bosch, Rembrandt, van Gogh, Monet, Pizzarro, Gaugin and many many more besides. Since we didn't have a huge amount of time, we picked through a brochure and went for the highlights tour! Very efficient.

Up next was the British Museum, where there's an extraordinary collection of objects and artefacts from across the globe. Again, it's somewhere you can't possibly do justice to in a short couple of hours, but again we followed a recommended "short-visit" itinerary. Highlights included the Rosetta Stone, Elgin marbles, Egyptian statues and ruins, samurai armour, ancient chess pieces and several other things. It's somewhere I could've spent ages exploring, but time was pressing and we moved onwards.

Back on our Boris Bikes (we'd been getting around today on the bike-sharing bicycles scattered around the city, as they're quick, cheap and fairly safe), where we rode all the way up to Angel and our apartment. It was now late afternoon, so we crashed for a little while before heading back out for birthday drinks.

Lots of people there, including Sean and his girlfriend Suey, Joel and a childhood friend of the Cleavers named Annika, a good friend of mine named Cameron who'd moved to London 6 years ago, and several of Sean and Suey's friends (they had met over here after all). Schnitzel came with us and seemed to the be the highlight of everyone's night! His first time in a noisy pub, which I think was a bit eye-opening for him! Many beers were had, before a late-night Uber home and a midnight stumble into bed. Long day, but a fun day!Read more