There are several shops on the programme today. We start at Selfridges and find a car park to the north of the department stores’. Here Gabi buys another selection of perfume and I find a pair of Lego road plates from the 80s in the vintage toy corner, still in their packaging, and a three-dimensional castle plate. Apparently Lego employees also like to come here because old sets with boxes are always on offer. And we marvel at the Jellycat section, where an enormous number of people buy the cute plush sandcastles, plush palm trees and, most recently, a plush sausage.

I think it’s a shame that there are hardly any Donald Duck items in the Disney Store, while Mickey Mouse is omnipresent. The collaboration with Karl Lagerfeld, with the fashion designer who died six years ago as a duck, has just come out. Would he have liked it? Yes, he probably would have!

Now we are heading for Dyptique. Gabi wants to buy more perfumes here. And the shop is really beautiful. And has several floors! There’s a lovely room on the upper floor where you can try out the fragrances in peace.

We can’t make up our minds about lunch. We weren’t hungry at Selfridges, but now we are. What do we discover? A ‘Joe and the Juice’ right next to ‘Five Guys’! So Gabi picks up her newly discovered favourite sandwich with tuna and avocado and a juice, and I get a hearty burger with ‘all the way’ ingredients. We eat both in the car and are glad to be in the dry: A heavy downpour has just started.

After lunch, we drive to Liberty and are delighted to find a car park nearby. The beautiful department store is celebrating its 150th anniversary with an exhibition on the history of the company. Arthur Liberty began selling ornaments, fabrics and decorative objects, mainly from Japan and the Far East. The shop in Regent Street soon became too small. Arthur bought the current building in 1885 and had it remodelled in Tudor style in the 1920s. The striking wooden beams come from two sailing ships, which the golden ship on the roof is reminiscent of. We are always amazed by the lovely selection of beautiful things and, of course, the fantastic Liberty fabrics.

We park again for a visit to Fortnum & Mason. Wow, this department store is currently being remodelled and everything is quite cramped. Nevertheless, we find everything we are looking for and are soon out again. Now we head back to the hotel. I get Thai food for dinner: a Pad Thai with noodles for Gabi and a Pad Metmamuang with rice for me.