Day 1 - London

Hello everyone!

Welcome to Day 1 of our honeymoon. We have had a very busy day travelling from Durham to London.

It was very miserable, cold and wet when we left and although we got up early, somehow we were still rushing out the door at 10am to make the train. Eddie kindly dropped us off at the station.

 

This will definitely be the worst photo of the holiday.

The rain was pretty heavy, as you can see from all the leaks in the roof at the station!

Durham station

The train journey was uneventful and the weather had completely changed by the time we arrived in London. I had time to snap a quick photo before we checked into the hotel. Proof that we did have sunshine for at least a short time.

Outside South Kensington Subway

It's great to be back at the Ampersand in London. We stayed here last year for our mini-moon and it is just the most wonderful place. It's very, very nice, but without any sort of arrogant or exclusive feel to it, just a relaxed atmosphere. As you can see, the room is just superb. Very spacious for central London, so that we can relax and unwind over the weekend.

Our lovely hotel room

Kathryn had arranged a wonderful surprise for me in the form of flowers and cake!

We thought we'd make the best of the sunshine and ditch our gear and head out straight away. One of the great things about the Ampersand is the location. It's just opposite South Kensington subway station, and virtually around the corner from all the museums. The Science Museum took us about 5 minutes to walk to from the hotel.

I hadn't been to this museum for at least 15 years or so. It was pretty good, although like some comments on trip advisor, it's little too orientated towards children and definitely very difficult to find your way around. The space section was excellent, lots of exhibits, diagrams, models etc., but very little  detail or further explanations of anything. You had to read the very small print to even see how a liquid propellant engine worked, which could have been much better with a video or animation. I can't think of many more exciting aspects of chemistry than this type of reaction, so that was a real shame.

J2 Engine

However, we kept looking around and eventually found on the upper floors the Wellcome Trust Medical History section. This was a bit more like a traditional museum, but a much better narrative and a fascinating overview of the development of all aspects of modern medicine. There was everything from pharmacy, to dentistry, anaesthetics, surgery, imaging and even a replicate open heart theatre! I'm definitely easing myself into life after the Freeman slowly! There was even a Taj Mahal made out of tablets! (Although I still prefered the cake Catt made.)

After we'd done as much as we could manage, as we had travelled a lot today, we walked back to the hotel and passed a nice little ice rink outside of the Natural History Museum.

First Christmas tree of holiday.

We had made a reservation for the small restaurant on the ground floor at the hotel. They have a themed afternoon tea on the menu, and we had already researched that this week it was a "Science Museum" theme (in between Halloween and Christmas ones). We had seen a photo on the website, and it was just as good, if not better, seeing it with our own eyes. It took us about an hour and a half to make it to the end. But by the time we were finished, we were just about  done for the day.

Science Museum Afternoon Tea

So that just about does it for today, tomorrow we are planning a quieter day, to just rest and get ourselves together for the long journey ahead.