GB, part 4: V&A

Thursday had been quite the success, and we felt like we had seen everything we wanted to while in London. So, on Friday we headed out to the Victoria and Albert museum. Happily for Jim, it was free. We spent a few hours wandering through the displays, mostly giving everything a quick look. If we had looked at everything in detail we would be there still! Being the nice guy he is Jim didn't put up a fuss when I wanted to go through the special exhibit on fashion, which was centered on a collection of clothing from Queen Mary of the Netherlands (Victoria's granddaughter). We walked through the European collection, and paid special attention to the Tudor, the Georgian, and to the Victorian periods. They have a lot of amazing items there! Things I had read about, things I had seen in history books were there on display. (Imagine owning something that old, or being able to touch it and take care of it!) Things were starting to blur together again, and our feet were really tired, so we sat for awhile to rest. Eventually we started off again, and looked at a lot of ironwork - beautiful, but you can appreciate only so many window grills. After that we headed down to the cast courts - plaster casts of all sorts of different items - Michelangelo's David or Trajan's column, for example. It is a wonderful room to walk into, where you can be overwhelmed by so much history and beauty. However, by this time we were getting hungry, and a little tired, so we left the museum and headed back toward our hotel. I stopped in a tea shop to buy some rose tea and amaretto tea (and green tea for mom), and then we walked up to Harrod's. I probably couldn't afford much in the department store itself, but the food courts were irresitible. We ended up buying a few scones and a bacon-and-cheese baguette. Yum. Slowly we waked back to the hotel, and just rested for a few hours. Later, just before dinner, we went to the two local charity shops, but didn't find anything we wanted. We ate in a pub for dinner - they had a restaurant in the basement which had very good fish and chips - made to order!
Saturday morning we headed out for our very long trip home. After way too many hours sitting in trains and planes, we arrived in DC, where Mom, Dad and the kids welcomed us home. We were exhausted - it was the middle of the night for us! We let the kids open the Christmas crackers (I knew that would be the perfect souvenir for them!), look over the leftover coins, and then finally put them to bed - so we could collapse! What a trip!