You can go your own way

We have a regular breakfast table at the hotel, complete with one “Queen” chair that my mother and I take turns claiming. Breakfast has become the planning forum for the day. Luckily Cam, who breakfasts later (at his leisure) is perfectly happy to fall in with whatever we have scheduled.

Today we agreed to split up. My mother made for  the Victoria and Albert, and the other three of us headed off to the British Museum. 

The Museum is full of beautiful things and you could never hope to look at everything in one visit, so we focused on the Greek galleries for my Dad, the king of ancient history. Unsurprisingly, he struck up conversations with the museum staff about the collection and couldn’t resist gently baiting them about the controversial ownership of the Elgin marbles. We also spent quite a while in the gift shop. I LOVE museum and gallery shops but happily for my wallet, my suitcases are very full. 

My mother had gone completely dark and was not responding to messages, so the three of us took ourselves off to lunch at Brewdog, a Scottish startup that went spectacularly global and then went broke. Cam and dad happily tasted beer and chatted away. The surprise hit was the Beer Float - a stout collaboration between Brewdog and a Scottish ice cream brand (Mackie’s), served over two scoops of honeycomb ice cream. I was dubious, but it was delicious. I have no idea how they thought of it, but going off the expected path has produced something fantastic. 

We put the approved blazer to good use in the evening, dressing up in our glad rags for dinner at the Reform Club. I wanted everyone to see inside and it didn’t disappoint. Amazingly, they recognised me from last week and looked after us very well, sorting seats in the bar, a table for dinner, and even graciously taking a family photo for us (something frowned upon in club land). Campbell, predictably, took covert selfies throughout the evening, but thankfully didn’t get caught. 

I always travel with the principle that we don’t have to spend every minute together to travel well but my favourite part of the day was converging together as a family again at dinner, where even the blazer was in the right place.