Magical Mystery Tour

22 September - Had a not too early start - me, James and Kate (the wonderful giver of musical tickets) decided to jump on one of the big tour buses of the city, it was a tossup between The Original Tour and The Big Bus Tour. The original tour had a boat trip so it was clinched. We split up at various points where someone wanted to see something special and then reconvened at other places - the tour guides on the boat and the buses veered between being very enthusiastic and others who were just going through the motions (... And over there is St Pauls Cathedral where you can get off ... If you like that kind of thing ...) - i'd done a similar tour eight years ago so it was nice to retrace my steps and avoided the crappy sights (see London Dungeon). Highlight was running up the Fire of London Monument - although I have to inform everyone that despite their claims of 311 steps I onlycounted 309 (when confronted with this information the operator told me to climb it again and count properly, I told him where to go).
Afterwards went for a drink in SoHo at The Yard (another thing that hasn't changed in 8 years) and then had a game of Scrabble which only lasted two rounds ...