Byzantium or bust ...

Well, the Byzantium exhibition was really good as expected. Our helpful coach driver had downloaded a podcast of a talk on the exhibition which he played during the trip up to London. A bit long as the expert was still talking when we arrived an hour later! And the fact that it was an audio podcast and the speaker kept referring to images, meant that quite a lot was lost ... but it was a thoughtful idea and and we did gain quite a lot from listening.

I made a mistake afterwards, however. I persuaded our son that we didn't really need a big 'proper lunch' and we could 'manage with a snack, couldn't we ... and enjoy dinner in the evening when we got home?'

That would have been fine, except that we found ourselves with a lot of extra time on our hands and spent most of it just wandering aimlessly, filling in time until the coach was due to pick us up.

With hindsight (a marvellous thing, if only we had it!) it would have been much better to have lingered over a proper meal in the warmth of a restaurant. Never mind, I've learned that lesson and next time, that's definitely what we'll do.

Mind you, we did take advantage of our early arrival in Picadilly to treat ourselves to a drink in the very superior cafe and patisserie, 'Richoux', not far from Fortnum and Mason.

See what I mean? I could quite happily have lingered here for an hour or more!