Diana's 45th Birthday ‘enjoyed, in a very crowded fine if cold London queuing for breakfast and admission to Madame Tussauds. The new feature of a historical ride was welcome but brief and trivial in its aim of trying to capture "The Spirit of London.
A good night's sleep, catching up on some of the rest that I needed. Time for Diana to open her cards and presents and she did quite well. Down to breakfast with the tourists after a lay in and found it crowded with a queue that we had to join. I always think that it is uncivilised to queue for a meal when you have booked your room and breakfast. Then, to make matters worse, they only "had us down" for two breakfasts and I had to sort that out with the reception afterwards otherwise we would have been charged extra!
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A nice sunny day and, after we had packed up checked out and put the luggage in the car, we walked through Regents Park to Madame Tussauds. We rested on a bench and let the girls play on some play equipment, but poor Debbie was turned off by a stroppy attendant for being too old and was upset. Once we had got to the attraction, we found immense queues again. London seemed to be full of tourists taking advantage of the lower Pound Sterling after some years of over-valuation. Of course the owners of Madame Tussauds had attendants pacing the queues offering immediate admission to those who would see The Planetarium as well for an extra £2 but we avoided this bribery.
Once inside, it was still queues everywhere and so crowded you could hardly see the exhibits. The new feature of a historical ride was welcome but brief and trivial in its aim of trying to capture "The Spirit of London". The ice cream vendor reinforced this latter-day spirit of London and I had to get into an argument with him as he was trying to take advantage of Debbie. As he advertised ice creams for 70p per scoop, I sent Debbie for three small ones for £2.10 but he took the £2.00 and wanted 70p more, refusing to serve single scoops and thus having a minimum price of £1.40 each! I refused to give him more money and, when he would not take the other ice cream back, I stuck it in the rack and walked off with him mouthing threats and obscenities.
A small blow for fairness as he was obviously too bent to be straightforward and advertise ice creams for £1.40. After all this, we were too tired and, although Diana wanted to go to The Science Museum, we settled for the drive home. A little upset with Daniel today. He had only got up at 3.00pm and had not given Sam his morning run. I made up for this with an extra-especially long run and then made Daniel clear out the garage of his junk so that I could put my car away. A quiet evening making notes for these last two days journal and then tired again to bed. The London weather had been fine if cold.