Girls’ London Day

The boys were off on their own adventures on Tuesday, so Anna got to choose what the girls did. She chose a more leisurely start and we didn’t get to breakfast until after the boys had left the hotel. The breakfasts here have been great, a good hearty start to the day makes all the difference and gives the energy to walk those miles.

We started the day with some culture, visiting the National Gallery. It was a fairly quick tour of a few famous paintings, but that suited me fine. The paintings were impressive but I was more taken by the actual building of The National Gallery, it is beautiful. We got to see Monets, Renoirs, Van Goghs and also some older stuff like Botticellis.

We headed back up to Oxford Street and checked out a couple of the department stores. Selfridges was nowhere near as impressive as Harrods, but it had gorgeous window displays. One of our favourites was the “Builders Tea Party” window display. Anna decided she needed a change from “normal” shops so I took her up to Camden Markets in North London. It is certainly a colourful part of the city with all sorts of interesting people and sights. It was fun wandering around the various markets and looking at the alternative fashions, great for people watching too. One of the markets is down by Camden Locks and we timed it right to see a holiday canal boat going through the locks. There were food stalls at the markets with cuisine from every country you can imagine. The seats where you ate the food were all motorbikes. We weren’t brave enough to sample the market food (some of the hygiene looked a but suspect) so settled for the safe and boring option of a panini from Costa Coffee.