At about 10:55 the next morning I checked the phone wondering what time it was… I quickly woke up Sarah and we dressed, ran downstairs to check out (and leave our bags with the porter again) and run out to the tube station where we caught a train heading in the direction of The British Museum.
We stopped at a little shop and bought sandwiches on the way which we then ate on a bench outside the museum on a nice lawn. After brunch we were ready to face the museum. We headed inside, were immediately overwhelmed by the choices of place to 
go, paid 1 pound for a map, and wandered into Ancient Rome. We walked right past a big rock tablet, did an about face as we recognized it, gawked at the Rosetta Stone for a bit, saw some interesting bits of sculptures and continued into Ancient Greece where we looked at jewelry and armor and pottery before 
rounding a corner to be greeted by a large Greek building. It was quite impressive and we were rather amused at the notion that the brits had made off with an entire building. It turned out that they had asked and been granted permission to save the thing from destruction by natural forces by Turkey.
We then headed upstairs to Ancient Egypt for a free tour, which turned out to be 
cancelled, so we wandered around and looked at mummies and pottery and carvings and scrolls on our own. It was really cool. The level of preservation on these artifacts, and particularly the mummies is pretty astounding. It was really fun reading about the techniques and seeing all the bits of this ancient civilization. We even got a selfie with Cleopatra!
At this point it was time to head out to Hackney where we were staying with a couchsurfing host. So we headed back to the hotel to get our bags, took the tube to Liverpool Street station, got on a train from the National Rail Service and got off at 
Clapton Street in Hackney. We walked a few blocks, turned onto a cute little street and rang the doorbell. We were welcomed into the home of two very nice people and their three roommates/lessees. The roommates weren’t around, and the main host was out, but is girlfriend got us into our room and made tea. Moments later our host arrived from the market where he had purchased (in his words) mystery fruit, tons of aubergines, dead animals, and other odds and ends. We all tried mystery fruit, which was good, Sarah and I determined that aubergines were egg plants, and dead animals were lamb cutlets.
We helped make dinner (fish pie!), had a nice meal and then headed out to a local pub where we had a pint and played Scrabble. It was a really nice evening in a cool neighborhood.