We have one more day before we fly out in the morning. We have a late lunch planned at a spot unknown to me celebrate my retirement but the morning is free to wander. We decide to go to the Elizabeth and Albert Museum which is my favorite. We intend to only buzz through and see what is in the shop but decide to do the Schiaparelli exhibit. I had no idea how fashion forward she was. She started designing in the 1920s and went on through the 70s. I have been following the new line for a few years now. Schiaparelli is led by Danial Roseberry a Texas boy whose sister creates earrings here in Austin. I bought some of her earrings (and if you haven’t checked them out you should lizfoxrosberry) and following her led me to her brother and Schiaparelli couture. I thought his designs were a little out there but now I see he is just following her lead. She had some beautiful things as does he but then there was some crazy stuff. She was friends with Dahli and they worked on some things together. It was a fun exhibit to see and I am glad we did it.

After the exhibit we stopped for a pastry for breakfast. Since I am a member we went up to the member dining room however I think the general cafe is in a nicer room and wish we had just done that.

We bought a few things in the gift shop. The E&A has a great gift shop. Then headed off to Harrod’s. It is just a few blocks down from the E&A. We mainly shopped the Christmas and souvenir sections. You walk through all the high end jewelry on the main floor but even if I had not already bought to much there wasn’t anything to tempt me. They should have you walk through more moderately priced things. I could have been persuaded to buy a new purse or another scarf but I couldn’t even considered the diamonds. Waste of opportunity in my opinion. I guess they want to still look super fancy. Not sure why since most of what I see is people buying the Harrods bags. I did buy a few of those.

We made it back to Fortnum & Mason and I got the bag I had been looking at. I was ever hopeful that it would go on sale. It seems like a pretty summer bag to me so I thought they might need to move them out to bring in more fall and winter things but no such luck. I wanted it so I paid full price. For those of you thinking I bought a purse at a tea shop, Fortnum’s is so much more. It is 5 floors with only the ground floor sealing tea, cookies, jams and stuff like that. The basement has food and I definitely recommend their bagels. Floors 1- 3 have Christmas, dishes, women’s accessories, jewelry and random other things. So there is some good shopping to be done.

We dropped off our purchases and headed back out for our lunch. Val had picked a place over in SoHo called Flute so we knew how to get there and it was an easy tube ride. It is a very cute bar. It is in the theater district with both light snacks and full meals. It is a little hard to find. It is in the seventh floor so on the street all you have is a glossy pink door which opens to the reception of a boutique hotel. They take you to a special elevator that goes up to the bar. Pretty much everything is pink and glitzy. So of course I loved it. I even had a pink drink so that I fit in.

We shared several of the small plates and had delicious lobster rolls and fries. we also had dessert. Sadly I didn’t take any photos to show how pretty the dessert was. It was a great place to celebrate my retirement and a great place to end our stay in London.

We had a lot of packing to do so we headed back to the hotel. Neither of us were feeling the best so we didn’t get back out that evening and just snacked on the cookies and things we had in the room.

I can’t believe we head home tomorrow.