Goodbye London
It’s going to be hard to leave tomorrow. We have found our groove here and made ourselves quite comfortable at this apartment. It amazes me how we have one suitcase (carry on size) and one backpack (school size) each, yet after we unpack it looks like we’ve lived in whatever space we are in for years. Where does all this stuff come from?!
We’ve had full days these last two days here. There is so much to see and do here. We know we won’t be able to do everything on our growing list, so, we’ll just have to come back.
Monday: Bill had work meetings all day so the kids and I headed out around 8am and headed over to the Sky Garden. For those of you fellow world schoolers who are traveling with your families and who read my posts, this place is GREAT! And to think we almost missed it! It is a huge glass dome on the 35th floor (3 floors actually) with a garden/viewing/restaurant space. It’s free to go in but you do need to book a ticket in advance. Or, you can do what we did and see if there is “walk in” space available. We went early and I sent Zach up to ask about walk in space. It was no problem and there were no lines so we went right in and up the elevator. It’s beautiful—you have a 360 view of the city. We loved it so much that we decided to go to one of the restaurants. There is a dress code, so again, I sent Zach up to ask if we were dressed appropriately enough. Thankfully we were. We ate with a view of the HMS Belfast for Zach and Tower of London for Melina. When we left (around 10:45) there was a long line at the bottom. So if you go, make a reservation or go early!
From there we went to the Tower of London (take 2). It was great, so glad we got to go back. Spent over 3 hours there. Kids did their tour guide reports, wasn’t crowded at all. And, weather was still good. We left and planned to head over to Harrods (via the tube) to check it out. My friend Katie had said it was worth checking out if we were in the neighborhood so since the kids wanted to take the tube off we went to a new neighborhood. But, we got sidetracked. . .rain when we got off the tube, a bookstore, hunger, etc. We got off on the wrong stop anyway so we decided to postpone Harrods and hit the Natural History Museum. Cafe for lunch first and then off to explore. WOW—-that place is incredible. We were there for about 2.5 hours and saw only a fraction of it. The earthquakes, volcanos, dinosaurs—there was so much more. We will definitely go back on our next trip. And it is right by the Victoria and Albert Museum which I wanted to go to but no time this trip. Added it to the list! We took the tube home and it was rush hour—ugh, super crowded and I quickly remembered why I don’t care for underground transportation. It is fast though and we weren’t getting wet.
Tuesday Bill joined us and we headed off around 8:30am. It was a beautiful day! No rain, cold but crisp and clear. Walked from our place over the Kensington Gardens and explored a bit before going into the Kensington Palace. One of the perks of having to get the membership was this is included—yah! I am a huge Queen Victoria fan (if you haven’t watched the mini-series on PBS—Victoria—it is so worth it!) so it was fun to see where she was born and grew up. We headed to Harrods afterwards and Katie was right—what a place. Definitely the fanciest store I have ever been in. We had lunch on the 2nd floor which was a treat, and then headed off to catch the bus to Oxford Street. It was really just for the experience to sit on the top of the double decker bus. It was short lived as somehow we all misunderstood each other, and thinking we were going the wrong way, we got off after 2 stops. Oops. Walked the rest of the way to Oxford Street and then walked over to Soho, Cecil Court and Chinatown. We planned to catch a bus home, but another glitch—road construction—so we walked. Thankful for no rain! Home to pack and head to bed. Goodbye London, we will be back!
