We awoke this morning and had a stellar breakfast included with our hotel reservation at The Bailey's Hotel. Amazing bacon, sausages, chocolate croissants the best I have eaten in my life and on the list went. Delicious!
We checked out of our hotel but left our small little pieces of luggage with concierge. We had a plan to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum at 10 am as soon as it opened, located 750 metres from our hotel. We walked there and saw across the street a huge line of people for the Museum of Natural History. The V & A museum had no line whatsoever and we were unsure where to enter. In both cases the museum admission was free! Clearly we entered in a side door to the V & A museum but we had an American staffer/volunteer that cheerfully provided recommendations of what areas we should visit given we had 2 hours to view it. We went straight to the cast room (JG and I both thought this would be caste - you know first class versus steerage - but no this was cast as in plaster) Stunning recreations of artifacts from around the world! Like Michelangelo's David for instance!
We then visited the jewellery exhibit on the second floor - fascinating, then spent timing viewing British Artifacts. We had a quick snack and drink on the ground floor cafe.
We had time slot tickets for 12 noon across the street at the Museum of Natural History. This was clearly a big draw for families with children as there were many interactive exhibits. Tickets were free, but they made it more obvious that they were collecting and would appreciate donations here. (We did donate!)
The most interesting part of this museum was the recreation of an earthquake in Kobe Japan. You felt the floor shift and saw store shelves collapsing around you. Of course having two engineers and a geologist go through this museum meant the other three in my family all had detailed conversations about topics above my pay grade!
We left the museum and walked back to the hotel and stopped for a delicious meal at Baba Ganouj - across the street from the hotel! We had mostly cold appetizers and salads that we shared and it hit the spot!
We then collected our luggage and walked across the street to Gloucester Road tube station. We wisened up and spent £2 on our underground ticket to Waterloo Station (we each had to swipe a credit card at the turnstiles rather than buying tickets in advance like we did yesterday - that forced us to buy Zones 1 to 6 and cost £15 apiece. We then transferred to the National Rail line where we purchased tickets to Haselmere where R lives. Our timing was perfect and we had 10 minutes to get to platform 14 and catch the 4 pm train to Haslemere. R was waiting for us at the gate when we arrived about one hour later!
Haselmere is located about halfway between London and Southampton, where we will board the ship tomorrow - so it is perfectly situated for us. R has us bunked each in our own room in his Father's apartment that has recently been vacated and he has a unit right next door. We enjoyed tea, ice cream, walks on his amazing property a walk into town and a wonderful supper at a pub.
Here we are pictured out for a walk on Ray's beautiful property!
We then returned and played some boardgames. Tomorrow R will drive us to Southampton to catch the Norwegian Prima! Our family is in heaven for the royal service!
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