John Soane museum

T has been going on at me about visiting here for years now. In fact, when we finally made it there a month or so ago we wondered if it would mean that we could no longer be friends - what else would we talk about now we didn't have the prop of planning a visit to this ace museum? Well - it seems to have worked out ok, and we had a really excellent time at John's house. He was quite a dude, this guy: an artist, architect, thinker, collector, general polymath. Things I was stunned by: the passion of the museum caretakers; the queues outside (the place is only open in the evenings once a month, on the first tuesday, and clearly time out readers have decided it's cool); and the sheer quantity of crazy stuff on show there. Great. Go when it gets dark in the evenings so that they light the candles. But be prepared to be patient to get in.