Okay, let's first get the moans out of the way: We didn't sleep well. The hotel is chock-a-block full of Contiki tours.  It is exceedingly noisy. Breakfast was grim. Okay, moving on!!

At this point the girls and I tried in vain to persuade the men to head off on their own. Today was a day set aside entirely for shopping – this was my promise to Rox when the trip was still in the planning stages. We were quite convinced that the men would be a whole lot happier doing something else, but they were adamant that they were coming with us…..(personally I think they were scared about exactly how much shopping we might do without their calming influence!)

We set off for Piccadilly Circus, clearly it was rush-hour, the tubes were packed. Seems like London wakes up a lot later than we do – we got to Oxford St and all the shops were still closed. So we popped into Starbucks for coffee. I, of course, had to have a pain-au-chocolat – clearly the inventor of these delicious morsels knew the makings of a good breakfast!

The we shopped, and shopped and shopped some more. It was of course the July sales in London and when they say “Sale” in the UK they really mean it. Frankly, I could have spent an hour or two in Debenhams and been done with it, but the girls had other ideas!

Within half and hour the two men had long faces, but we used them as “beasts of burden” and we didn’t feel even slightly sorry for them – they knew what they were letting themselves in for when they chose to come with us…. By the time we were done we were fainting with hunger. We hopped on a tube to Covent Garden, where we had a really nice 2 course lunch in a little bistro and gave the men some beer to cheer them up.

After a half-hearted wander around Covent Garden we headed back to the hotel for a rest.

We met Charlie for a drink in the evening and then had a quiet dinner at a little Chinese restaurant before bed.