I've been plotting a shoe shopping morning in London for a good six months. Just a few blocks from Princes arcade and Jermyn St I was all made up. I dragged the family along, can't decide these things without Gab. We window shopped through half a dozen stores I wanted to visit, Barker (my current boots), Church's, etc but it was Loake that won out. I'd had 4-5 people recommend them, I liked them so much I bought boat shoes too. I remember the look on their faces when we boarded our first Disney cruise, I don't think they enjoyed our morning quite as much.

Boo has become addicted to £1 Ham sandwiches from Tesco, I doubt it comes with Mr Oliver's approval but with £6 pints around here economies have to be made somewhere. So lunch was on Tesco's for the second day in a row before heading out for the kids highlight of the day. On the flight over Gab read about a new Google concept store opened in London. Max has been banging on about it since we first discovered it so off we went on the tube for the first time this trip - Love the tube app for line and direction guidance.

Turns out the Google Store is a 50sqm space in a Currys. Still it's fully staffed with Google geeks and it somehow kept the kids entertained for an hour. A crude Rube-Goldberg machine wasn't quite working, but the internal displays of popular current searches this hour had us transfixed in some sort of voyeuristic stupor. There was a giant display with a Google Earth console - Gab pulled up our house and the progressive street view shots showing the before, during and post build images from the street. She did this to a father and son, who were in the middle of their own build. The dad pulled up his house and they compared war stories.

 The big attraction was the doodle wall. You grab a transmitting spray can and tag the wall to make your own Google Doodle - they were at this for nearly half an hour before Fid discovered the Gaming Bunker and his first opportunity to play a game in weeks. We emerged in peak hour but the tube ride back was smooth as even with all the crowds. 

We're also a block away from Chinatown, that Paris-Shanghai dinner was good enough to prompt dinner in Chinatown tonight too. The kids were home in bed by 8pm, a first in about 3 weeks - they crashed so hard, I could hear both beginning to snore as I joined them.