On the advice of a large number of people, we bought tickets to the War Rooms, the tiny rooms and and tunnels that Winston Churchill and the British government used as their operations headquarters in WW2.

After a breakfast at home we caught the tube to Embankment and then walked via St James Park.

The War Rooms were very interesting, even for someone like me, who will actively avoid war-related things. We got audio guides and then walked through the narrow and dim corridors, peaking into rooms and trying to imagine what the space would be like when full of tobacco smoke and people rushing around.

In between the historical sections is a large room with lots of detail about Winston Churchill’s life. When buying tickets they said to allow 2.5 hours, but if you really wanted to see and read everything I’d say 3 hours minimum. Unfortunately, in the past I’ve found those sort of estimates usually overdo it and I’d booked a table at 1pm at a nearby pub. Lea and Pete had to rush a bit, which I felt bad about, but it’s hard to predict these things.

We had lunch at the Blue Boar, a pub not far from the War Rooms. It had recently been voted the best pub in London but, being in an office area, was quiet on Sunday.

I left before everyone had finished eating as I was going to meet a friend and everyone else was going to see The Play That Goes Wrong. Luke and I saw it on our last trip but he wanted to see it again.

Luke and I had met Patrick on our Haggis bus tour last time we were here and added him on Facebook. He’d offered to come meet up in London as he only lived an hour away so we arranged to meet at The Crosse Keys.

The Cross Keys is one of the Wetherspoons chain of pubs, which are somewhat notorious for being downmarket but this one was in an old bank building and quite grand.

Patrick hadn’t changed a bit and we had a good catch up about all our travels then headed to the London Mithraeum, which was just around the corner.

Patrick had said he’d wanted to see it so I invited myself along. It’s a Roman Temple that was unearthed by developers and remained a mystery until the last day of the excavation when the head of a statue of Mithras, a Roman god, was unearthed on the site. Not much is known of the cult except that it was male-only (I have no idea how they know this) and there would have been a statue of the god slaying or wrestling a bull at the alter.

The exhibition was in the original location, under an office building. Before going down to the site we looked at an installation of urns, all suspended from the ceiling by rope and fitted with microphones. As we walked around them the microphones picked up the vibration of the urns and each one had a different note. Two of the urns were from Roman times.

Downstairs, the temple was in a dark room. Once a group was in they lowered the lights and played sounds of people speaking Latin and the atmosphere became a bit smoky. There was an outline of the god statue and it was all very evocative. Apparently the cult lasted around 400 years.

Next we walked to Postman’s Park via St Paul’s Cathedral and the ruined church park.

The park has a very sad memorial to everyday heroes who died trying to save someone – a mosaic wall with names and short descriptions of what they died doing. For example, people who died trying to save someone who was drowning.

After that we said goodbye and I caught the tube back to the flat, where Luke, Lea and Pete had just returned. They enjoyed the play a lot and reminded me of many of the funny scenes I’d forgotten.

We all had a rest before finally heading to Dishoom for dinner.

We arrived at almost 10pm and, unsurprisingly, were seated straight away. We shared some rather spicy curries, cheese and chilli toast, broccoli salad and naan. It was at the high end of our spice tolerance but we all coped and no doubt it made us stronger.

We walked home, glad Friday and Saturday nights were past and our noisy neighbourhood would be a little quieter.