London Explorers: Part One
We kicked off the first leg of our farewell tour with our arrival in London on Monday afternoon, where we had about two and half days to explore the city. After spending so much time in Amsterdam – and despite my quick visit in October with my friend Samantha – we were a bit overwhelmed by London’s size and London’s crowds and London’s prices.
Our personal Tube navigator.
So, we tried to take this into account, along with our kids’ interests and attention spans, to decide exactly where to spend our time. These are some of the highlights.
On Tuesday, I took the kids to the Natural History Museum which features an enormous blue whale skeleton in its atrium and has an excellent dinosaur exhibit.
Two other surprises at this museum were the Moon Room, where you could sit and even lay down under an enormous, illuminated moon, which proved to be a nice place to relax and regroup for fifteen minutes and the 2019 National Geographic Wildlife Photography Winners exhibit, which was astoundingly beautiful.
In the afternoon, I took the kids to ice skate in Hyde Park. The seasonal rink was part of an enormous winter carnival. I hadn’t been planning to buy ride tickets, but a family handed us their extra tickets as they were leaving and that gave Ben and Norah the chance to jump in the bumper cars.
That evening, we took the kids to the Harrod’s food court where we put together a dinner picnic that we brought back to our apartment.
The next morning, we set out to see the Tower Bridge, which was probably our favorite tourist attraction of the visit.
For a relatively small entrance fee you can see the engine rooms, learn the history of the bridge, take an elevator to the top of the towers, and cross the bridge using an interior walkway. The walkways even had glass floors so you could see the traffic below.
From the bridge, we caught a ferry and walked over to the London Eye. This was ridiculously expensive but still fun. We took a lot of selfies to get our money’s worth.
After the Eye, we walked past Big Ben, Parliament and Westminster Abbey before going to the National Gallery. Ben was especially excited to track down the exact Van Gogh sunflower painting that he had studied in school this fall. But, once this was spotted and the thrill wore off, both kids were not particularly keen on spending much more time in the museum.
I call this “Another Country, Another Boring Museum”
We left Eli to explore the gallery and to go on to the British Museum without us and I took the kids to afternoon tea at the Woseley. Norah loved it and ate her weight in scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream. Ben ate one piece of chocolate cake and declared himself over the whole experience.
Fortunately, a young American woman sitting next to us struck up a conversation and we learned she was heading to Amsterdam from London. So, Ben proceeded to tell her many, many suggestions of things to do (the Nemo Science Museum, of course) and also things to look out for (be very careful you don’t walk in bike lanes or get hit by trams), which bought us more time to drink our tea.
The biggest hiccup in our London experience was that our apartment was not really as advertised. There was the broken toilet (we had two – not the end of the world) and a shower that seemed to have a single setting (Scalding! The landlord’s son came over and showed us how to change it). But also, our biggest issue was that the second bed was not a sofa bed (as advertised), but a slowly deflating air mattress.
Our first night in the apartment, by around midnight, I had sought refuge on the love seat (feet hanging over the side) and by morning, Eli had been swallowed whole: his body was on the floor, but the mattress consumed him on both sides. We were both pretty tired and cranky that next day. The landlord was able to provide a real mattress, so we got this resolved, but our feelings on the apartment as a whole were a bit sour.
Still smiling at least…
