Martha Stewart's Hog Heaven

After dumping our bags in our room and grabbing our guidebook and camera, we set out to see one of the many attractions we just couldn't get to back in 2006 even though we spent eight days in London. But
first, we had to "top off" our Oyster Card passes so we could easily zip beneath the city in the "Tube" trains whose lines criss-cross the town.

Rick Steves says that "Martha Stewart types will be in hog heaven"  visiting one of London's finest museums, the Victoria & Albert. Even though unlike Ms. Martha, neither of us can singlehandedly repave the driveway, hand-plant a half-dozen new trees on our property (while turning the old ones into cordwood), in the midst of cooking a nine-course dinner for 50 guests, we decided to spent the afternoon checking out the place the locals simply call "The V&A".

The original building is a pile of Victorian red brick with some Romanesque architectural features, and its tour de force (that is, what they force de tourists to look at, mon) is a huge collection of decorative brick-a-brac, from metalware, to china, to woman's fashions, with stuff from all around the world thrown into all of the "Made in Britain" gee-gaws. It probably would take weeks, if not months or years, to look at all of the stuff. We enjoyed a lunch with a Middle-Eastern flavor in an ornate room that is part of the museum's indoor-outdoor cafe, then spent a couple of hours or so browsing the collection.

Remembering a hard-learned lesson for our 2006 trip, we left the museum a little after three to avoid being jammed like sardines into the underground railway trains during the evening rush hour. Besides, by mid-afternoon we had been up for over twenty four hours (it seems like more) with only a few fitful hours of "sleep" on the plane. When you're a hard-working, pavement pounding tourist in Europe, you've
gotta know when to say "No more sightseeing, that's enough for today!"