We had planned to catch a train to Bath today, anticipating that it would cost around £22 pounds each. We got to Paddington Station and found that a day return would cost £97! Apparently if you buy online, days before, etc. there are discounts, but not on the day, at the station. 
We decided instead to explore more of London, spending most of the time in Hyde Park, the Natural History Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum where we had lunch in the overly ornate tearooms. On the way we passed the Albert Memorial and the Albert Hall, both very dramatic and impressive structures. I lost my cool this afternoon, and got a bit cranky and grumpy, which was a unfair on Frances. I think I'd reached satuation point with museums and galleries and just wanted to have a time out. We'd been travelling now for 60 days and the amount and variation in what we'd seen had probably filled all of my available short and long-term memory. I've found that I need time to process what we've seen, heard and done, otherwise it just becomes a blurr of experiences that can't be differentiated. If only it was possible to just plug a memory stick into my head to store the data overflow it probably would have been fine. Earlier in the blog I'd mentioned the need for flexibility and patience when traveling. Travelling is stressful, because we're out of our comfort zones. We need to handle the large amount of information that has to be absorbed in a day, and manage the arrangements to keep everything on track - it takes quite a lot of effort, much more than what's required during daily life at home - or maybe it's just beause it's a different type of activity?
Anyway we headed back to the hotel, and after a rest I felt a bit better, but it was still a bit tense. I know I'm a bit difficult at times, and it's not improving that much with age.
For dinner tonight we decided on a local Italian restaurant, Caravaggio. It was reasonably priced for a licenced restaurant and had an interesting menu. We ordered a bottle of Prosecco and for entrée a dish of mushrooms stuffed with spinach and ricotta with a tomato sauce. It looked good, however the ricotta seemed more like fetta and although tasty was a bit too salty. The tomato sauce was delicious, and we soaked it up with the fairly ordinary bread.For mains, Frances had a special, Involtini Di Vitello con verdure and I had Tagliatelli.con Gamberi. The Involtini looked good, veal wrapped around ham and mozzerella with small boiled potatoes, broccoli and carrots. However the sauce was quite rich and a bit salty and overall the meal was a bit too rich.
The Tagliatelli also looked good, with lots of vegetables, finely sliced zucchini, chopped tomatoes, artichokes and fresh parsley in a white wine, garlic and olive oil sauce with quite a few small shrimps (of the frozen variety). The smell was good and there was a strong seafood flavour, however many of the shrimps were dark grey and some almost black which I found a little disconcerting. Nevertheless I ate the meal, discarding the darker prawns just in case they may have been a bit off. The last thing I wanted was a dose of food poisoning the day before we left for Abu Dhabi and the return home! I’m glad to say, that I suffered no ill effects (so far), and maybe the shrimps reacted with something in the meal that caused the colour change. As with Frances’ meal, the sauce was a bit rich because of the amount of oil used. Overall, it was not the best meal we’d had, and a bit disappointing – this may because of the menu choices we made, but did confirm for us that Italian restaurants outside of Italy can be very variable and the food with tendency to be a bit too oily. However the Prosecco was great.
Tomorrow evening we head off to Abu Dhabi, and say farewell to the fantastic little Church Street Hotel in Camberwell and the very friendly and helpful people working there.
