A Couple of Days in London

 and this is the only picture I have  from then

The garden at the V & A. 

We've wanted to visit the V and A for ages, and in fact have made two previous attempts; on both those occasions it was closed. This time the museum was open but several of the galleries  we might have liked to see were closed. So no textiles, then. 

We did look at mosaics, some C19 stuff and the jewellery gallery. The items were overwhelming but the museum as a whole was underwhelming, which seems counter intuitive, but basically there were too many things to look at but not enough of the sort of thing I wanted to see. However the garden was lovely and the coffee and breakfast pain au raisin were acceptable especially as the sun was shining. 

The next day the sun was not shining and we had decided to got to the revamped National Portrait Gallery. This was almost as crowded as the Musee d'Orsay was earlier in the year, and not so well signposted. The signage for Sir Walter Scott and the person whose portrait was next to him were the wrong way round so if you wanted to know what WS looked like and relied on the NPG you wouldn't know. Also the tube was riddled with problems that day, which meant packed trains, packed or closed  stations, long waits and longer than anticipated walks in the rain. None of this did anything for my mood. 

When we'd thought about it before we went away two days in London at the end of the Finnish trip sounded like an excellent idea, since otherwise it's a place we never get to,.  In the event it was a bad, and expensive,  one. But we've learned, and we won't do it again.