It's Sunday, and a long sleep in was had by the both of us, our main focus today was to take the underground to Kings Cross/St Pancras station to book our tickets for Amsterdam on Tuesday, all done, where to go next and breakfast was needed, so it was decided to go to Green Park, breakfast over and done with we just started to take a leisurely wander down the streets and through the arcades, not all shops in London open on a Sunday so the crowds were not so large until we got to Piccadilly Circus, on we walked with the crowd stopping and watching the street performers, and before we knew it we were in Leicester Square, on and on we wandered and finally we were in Convent Gardens, crowds were getting bigger and bigger due to a lot of outside markets and street performers, and then on to Charing Cross, time to go back to the hotel,

Monday 25th

Woke up to rain, rain and more rain, today is a bank holiday in UK and at home a bank holiday is exactly that, a bank holiday, but not here, Government offices which include the Post Offices are also closed and we had planned to send stuff home instead of carting them around, now just imagine this, it is raining, I have just found out the Post Offices are closed, and all of a sudden my mind clicks in and I have in my mind that I think I have made a big Boo Boo and we were probably meant to check out today, quickly get dressed and rush down to reception and explain what I think has happened, yep she confirms, today is check out day, Please can I extend another night, after a quick look, yes not a problem, big sigh of relief,
Our last tour that we had wanted to do was see Kensington Palace, so off we go in the rain and although it had eased up a bit, there was no break in the clouds and it was not going to go away, one good thing, it kept the crowds away and we were able to enter Kensington Palace and have a look around at the rooms and exhibits comfortably, I liked Kensington Palace a bit more than Buckingham Palace, I can' t quite put my finger on it and why but Buckingham Palace showed the opulance and Kensington was not over done, in fact but for the ornate paintings on the ceilings and staircases, the art work, a lot of the rooms were quite bare.
At the moment they have an exhibition of dresses worn by the Queen, Princess Margaret and Diana, both the Queens and Princess Margarets dresses were stunning but I was dissappointed in the selection of Diana's dresses, only 5 or 6 in total and not really her best I reckon.
Once again if you do the tour properly and take your time it will take you nearly 2 hours to complete. After we headed to the building called the orangery which is a building that was built to store the orange trees in winter, bit over the top but heck whatever rocks your boat is OK for me, had breakfast/lunch there and had my first taste of a dessert called Eatons Mess, delicious,
You are able to then walk in the gardens, they are beautiful and well laid out, we had a quick quick look around but it was still raining so headed on out of the grounds, we did see the gates that all the flowers were laid out at when Diana died, impressive,
So then headed down on High Street Kensington to just have a look around and visit a few shops but rain was spoiling the day so headed back to the underground and back to the hotel, to sort out the packing and rest up as we are up early Tuesday morning to catch the channel train to Amsterdam.