Job's done...

So I did what I should have done, last time I was in London...

...I went to the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221b Baker Street. Cost me 8GBP to get in and check out a rather sad little setup. The bobby at the front door checks your ticket and lets you take a photo with him...which I wouldn't do because the plastic shiny material on his hat was peeling and looked decrepit. I should've put aside my scruples; he was a doll.

 You go upstairs to a number of little exhibits, spread over 3 levels, of details about the Holmes stories and mythology. I actually enjoyed the one from The Hound of the Baskervilles. Little Ken dolls dressed up as Holmes, Watson and Sir Henry Baskerville, with what looks like a china dog as the hound.

Holme's violin and chemical workspace. This was the coolest part of the exhibit and seemed most honest.

I hesitate to share the photos I took of the mannequins dressed as characters in the books; they were so cheesy and expressionless...

 At least this gets the atmosphere right -- the silhouette of a bobby in the doorway. I'd talked myself into taking a picture of him, despite the hat...but it was a different guy; bobby #1 had popped out for dinner.

After that, I toodled over to Canary Wharf, a huge complex of new office towers and residences right on the Thames, that looks like a new office complex in every other big city in the world. But it did provide me with a different view of London, looking up the river.

You can see from the Gherkin to the Shard...and I don't know what that Cartoon-building in the middle is called, but it's the one that supposedly melted a Jaguar thanks to the reflection from the sun via its windows.

Tomorrow it's off to Belfast.