Arrival in London.....

We arrive in London. The bags aren't lost. I am tired and the lack of the fabled showers of Bangkok has led to me being an orfactory insult.

We make our way to customs. Of course, we Australians, despite sticking with HRM ERII, are placed in the All Others queue while all the EU buggers fly through. Even the french, and heck, didn't we save those guys in WWII. It is OK, I forgive them, Allo Allo was just so funny.

We are met by a man at the customs desk who looks disturbingly like David Suchet from the excellent BBC Hercule Poirot series. He is not as engaging as the David Suchet version. We indicate that we are travelling all over Europe. He asks us where and even when Jane rattles off about 13 countries he simply says - 'That is not all of Europe.' Well, frankly, he can stick it as he looks a Belgian detective and he is a pom.

We escape via the tube and find the Hotel. We dump the bags and I manage to avoid the Portobello markets and persuade Jane to go with me to the British Museum. This is the best place in the World and it is full of things that you would not get to see accept the British recovered them from countries who our tour guide Jenny tells us 'Didn't really want them in the first place'. I particularly liked the word 'recovered' Call a spade a spade - they were nicked but thank goodness.

You can't touch the rosetta stone anymore as they have stuck it behind glass. Rameses II is amazing and the guide actually helped me find the Portland Vase which I had never managed to locate previously. The Elgian (sic?) marbles are still fantastic and thank goodness they were recovered too.

By the time we leave the British Museum, we are fading. However, Jane manages to get us to Trafalgar Square and into the National Portrait Gallery. Here Jane sees a lot of people she knows and I get to sit down a lot and look at paintings pretending to be enthused but really staving off tiredness.

We discover that Coca Cola is 80p but it is comes in 190 ml cans. Has the world gone topsy turvy. We make it back to the Hotel. We recover out bags from the Concierge and Jane is convinced that they have cracked her bag code as it no longer will open. Daniel spends the next hour entering every code into the bag until he discovers Jane had the bag the other way when she put the code in and 526 was 625. We laugh, we chuckle.... not.

We crash out. It is 3.00 pm and we manage to sleep unil 6.00 am the next day.