Thankfully, we got an early enough start this morning, because of the fact that I seemed to be on my “normal” schedule now of getting up in the middle of the night.  Can’t remember if I mentioned this earlier or not, but I actually fell back asleep while trying to write again.  Oh, well.  I caught up.  Ernie woke me up so I just hopped out of bed and did my thing.

First stop of the day – Abbey Road!  And yes, I crossed it.  Multiple times.  I even wrote my initials and a peace sign on the wall outside of Abbey Road Studios.  I almost cried – I was in Rock ‘n’ Roll Heaven!  Ernie let me spend a little bit of time there and endured taking pictures of my many crossings to get it just right.

From there, we went in search of Baker Street for two reasons. One was to see 221b Baker Street (Sherlock Holmes).  Never found it but found the museum and I wasn’t interested in waiting in line at the time.  The second reason was to go to the Beatles Store, which ended up being just steps away from the museum.  And, of course, I bought a bunch of stuff for myself!  (Well, Ernie did, technically.)

Afterward, we went on to find the British Museum.  We didn’t see all of the exhibits but it was fascinating nonetheless.  Stopped at the gift shop for some stuff for the in-laws and Marci.  (By the way, Marci wanted a rock from each city.  I got one near Abbey Road that I thought I lost, but found it in my purse.)

After our quick walk-through, we hailed a cab to Harrod’s.  Yay!  We rode in a black cab!  Another thing off my list.  Anyway, being in there was as depressing as going to Bond Street.  It was Ernie’s turn this time, but I got a little myself.  We did end up dining in The Champagne Room (or Bar; can’t remember the exact name).  Ernie wanted or expected the food to be terrible.  We sipped away at our champagne until the food came.  Absolutely delicious!  He got some chicken dish and loved it.  I got a crab cake and I only wished I had gotten one or two more.  Superb.

We quickly left Harrod’s after lunch to avoid more disappointment but it was too early to call it a day.  I had to set foot in a McDonald’s – only to use the bathroom.  No American chain fast food for us!  We’re in a place to try new and hopefully extraordinary things, me especially since I’m so damn picky.

We looked at a map at one point and decided that we weren’t too far from Kensington Palace.  And Ernie was willing to go!  So we hailed another black cab (!) and set off for it.  The grounds around it were beautiful.  When we got closer, we realized we could go into part of the house, so we did an impromptu tour.  It was lovely, but man, did I wish to run into Duchess Kate!  Ha!  I, of course, did some shopping at the gift shop and we started to make our way back to the hotel.  As we were walking toward the next Tube stop, Ernie wanted to eat.  We ended up at this place – I think it was called Zizzi – and had dinner.  The food was pretty good there – dipping oils and bread, calamari – yum!  That was it after that, except for a stop in a chintzy little store for souvenirs.  We made our way back to the hotel and started packing for the next leg of our trip – Paris!

So (almost) packed and ready to go, I started to write about our day before my words became illegible and I fell asleep

4;00 am came around and it was time to get up and get going.  Did my usual – smoke, coffee, shower, more coffee, another smoke, etc.  My anxiety was starting to rise about going to Paris and I didn’t realize it right away to nip it in the bud.  We had our breakfast after Ernie got up and showered, finished packing and went for a stroll down to Westminster to kill some time.  We came back, grabbed our bags, checked out and we went off in another black cab for our next adventure…