London, part 1

Scott and I gave Amelia and John airplane tickets to London this year for Christmas. In the months leading up to the holiday Scott and I had lengthy discussions about Christmas, and we eventually concluded that our kids are getting to the age where experiences are more enjoyable than material objects. We decided that we would give them the gift of a pretty big travel experience and that Europe would be the destination of our family's first significant venture overseas. After reviewing our airline miles-award options, we quickly concluded that establishing home base in London made sense since we wanted to use miles to pay for most of the tickets. Plus, Amelia (and John, to a certain extent) have both been mentioning how cool it would be to see London (I credit a lot of their interest to Harry Potter), so this worked well for us.

I am eager to write about our family's travel experiences because this trip was amazing. I want to document my memories and photos so that I can reflect on them with joy later.

The kids did really well on the long trip to London. Total travel time was about 18 hours from the time we left our house and connected through Atlanta with a long layover until the time we reached the London hotel. They handled the plane rides amazingly well and were cooperative despite jet lag. We arrived in the city around 2:00pm and killed time with snacks and drinks at a pub until we could check into our hotel around 4:00pm. We all refreshed with what felt like the most amazing showers ever and ventured out for a short excursion before dinner around 6:00pm.

Our hotel was located in the Mayfair area, which was super convenient to lots of noteworthy London sights. The weather that evening was lovely (about 65 degrees - a far cry from the intense Texas heat!) so we took a 20 minute walk across Green Park to Buckingham Palace. This was our first sightseeing adventure in London and the kids recognized the building from photos. It felt great to walk around and "wake up" in the cool air and Amelia and John enjoyed the pageantry of people milling about around the Palace.

 

After walking around the palace and park for awhile, we looked for a pub for dinner. We used Trip Advisor recommendations to find many of the restaurants on this trip, and this pub was a good find. It was a little more upscale than your regular pub so the food was better than average. It was Sunday - Father's Day - and we all enjoyed a lovely meal. Scott got Sunday roast (definitely a British thing - he said it reminded him of his mom who makes a fantastic Roast Beef) and I enjoyed the best chicken vegetable pie I ate on this trip. The kids had fish and chips and were happy. We went to bed shortly afterwards to overcome the jet lag.

Monday morning we all woke up mostly refreshed and enjoyed a nice breakfast at our hotel before venturing out in the rain (!!). Luckily this was the only significant rain experience we had while in London, but treading around the Tower of London was not so much fun in the rain. The kids enjoyed their first tube ride over to the tower before we got soaked outside. Luckily we all had umbrellas and rain gear, but still we were really wet once we eventually made our way to the entrance. Once we were inside the rain turned into more of a drizzle and we enjoyed an interesting guided tour from a Beefeater.

From Wikipedia - The Yeomen Warders of Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress the Tower of London, and Members of the Sovereign's Body Guard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary, popularly known as the Beefeaters, are ceremonial guardians of the Tower of London. In principle they are responsible for looking after any prisoners in the Tower and safeguarding the British crown jewels, but in practice they act as tour guides and are a tourist attraction in their own right, a point the Yeomen Warders acknowledge.

We learned about how executions used to take place within the tower walls (including several notable beheadings on the green space in the photo below), and about the various royalty who have resided in the tower throughout history.

We also spent some time in the crown jewels exhibit and also in the White Tower, where we saw tons of fancy armour used in jousting matches in the 18th and 19th centuries. John's favorite part was the torture exhibit, where we learned how prisoners were tortured while being kept in the prison. Prisoners' bodies were either stretched beyond reason on a torture device or cramped into metal clamps so that their movement was confined, neither of which sound reasonable.

After a pub lunch in the nearby business district, we took another tube ride to the area of the city south of the Thames to visit the Imperial War Museum (IWM). Scott is a huge history buff so visiting the IMW was high on his interest list.

The museum was fascinating. We all enjoyed learning about the British perspective of WWI and WWII, and even the kids were engaged in the exhibits. It helped that there were large planes and tanks in the museum, as well as interactive exhibits that brought the history to life. I have a terrible memory, so I "re-learned" many facts about the wars that weren't fresh in my mind. 

Afterwards, we decided to walk part of the journey back to our hotel and we stumbled upon Big Ben and Parliament. The sun was out by now!

And then we boarded a double-decker bus (kids' request, sitting on the second level of course) and got stuck in crazy traffic headed back to our hotel. We jumped off at Piccadilly Circus (below), where we enjoyed seeing the huge video screens and traffic nightmare before completing the quick walk back to our hotel.

One last picture from the day, taken after dinner on the walk from the restaurant back our hotel. John was fascinated by the number of fancy cars we saw in London. In addition to the Ferraris, Rolls Royces, and McLarens he saw driving on the street, we passed this Bentley dealership (among others) after dinner. John immediately proclaimed, "please take my picture with this awesome car!" And so I did.

More London (and Italy!) adventures to come...