London, UK by Mel

Hello from London!
New day, new country. Well, actually it took us 1 days and a half to get here, from Venice…
Slightly longer than expected. I try to avoid taking plane when doable, as it is bad for the planet. So from Venice, we booked a bus to Paris, which was supposed to stop at Milan then Paris. Then we had the Eurostar booked to get to London. We bought tickets a fair bit ahead so the price was reasonable.
Well it didn’t really went that way. The bus from Venice to Milan broke down an hour before Milan. We got dropped at a station, saying that we will get a message. Okay….
We did get a message 15 minutes later, saying that we had a bus coming for us, but it was going to Munich in Germany, then Paris!!!! Originally, we were supposed to arrive in Paris at 6am and take our Eurostar a bit after 9am. Well, the new itinerary made us arrive in Paris around 1pm! I went on the Eurostar website to change the tickets as it said, you can change them until 1 hour before departure with no fee… just pay if there is a price difference. Well there was a price difference of 500ish euros for the 4 of us, which was just under 1000 aussie dollars! We didn’t had a choice as we knew we wouldn’t make the Eurostar we booked. So we hopped in our new bus, and I jumped unto our travel insurance website to see if we could get something out of it. I spent 1 hour on the wifi of the bus, uploading documents and things to their website. We ended up getting half of the money back. It is better than nothing.
We arrived at Munich in the middle of the night, waited for a couple of hours for our next bus and jumped on it. As we were added last minutes, none of us are sitting next to each other. Luckily, I was not too far from the kids. Halfway in the trip, the person next to Andrew left, so Emma could sit next to him.
We arrived in Paris, exhausted, but valiant! Underground it is to get to the Eurostar station. 3 hours to wait, as I booked one a fair bit after the time we were supposed to arrive, just in case something else happened! And we wait. Around 5pm, we lined up, and it is slow!! Check the tickets, pass French border control, pass Uk border control, pass security thingy… Gosh it is long! Then more wait as the 2 trains before us are late… We finally get into our train, only 15 minutes late and we are on our way to the UK. Arrived in London, bus to get to our place and we crashed!!!
We left our room in Venice at 10am on the 9th and arrived in our room in London on the 10th around 9pm.. Some walking, 3 intercity bus, Paris underground, 1 Eurostar, 1 city bus, a lot of waiting, all that for the same price of a 2 hour flight… Gosh I love that planet, but next time I might take the plane!! As usual, the kids did amazing: no winging, they adapted to every situation with ease and while creating games to keep themselves entertained. They are wonderful travellers.
Anyway we arrived in our room, tiny room with 4 bunk beds and that is it as there is no place for anything else! But it was cheap (for London), so there you are! We went to bed and got to sleep very quickly!
The next day, we had a lot booked. Fun activities for the kids, as we did a lot of cultural activities lately, so a change was needed.
First one of the day, London Sea view aquarium. Both kids absolutely love fish, so aquarium is always high on the list of the things they want to do. And this one is a good one. A lot of fish, well organised, different area representing different habitats. It was great. I really enjoyed the ants (I know they are not fish, but they had an area about rainforest): they had 2 ‘aquarium’ type thing a fair bit apart with small see through tube where the ants were moving around and cutting piece of leaves and carrying to the nest. It was fun to see them moving around. The penguin area is always fun of course because they are so cute!
After that we had a disappointing lunch: fish and chip in the tourist area: expansive and not good! But we are feed… ish. That will do.
Then we did the Shrek experience. I am not sure why there is one in London, but there is and it was great fun! You are going from room to room, in each there is an actor who play a part of the story, there is light, sound, water splash effect and it was fun! The kids loved when Kev got picked to be Cinderella’s prince charming, called ‘Princey’ and had to sit in Shreck toilet! The kids loved it! Andrew got picked to hold one of the element we needed for a potion to escape the witches… It was really interactive and fun. A great experience!
After that we did the London dungeon experience: it was a similar experience as the Shrek one, except the setting was in London during the plague and Jack the Ripper and Sweeney Tod… It was advertised for 8 years old plus. Well, the kids didn’t like it too much and spend most of the experience eyes closed, hands on ears and cuddled with us. It was not bad (for an adult) but not as good as the Sherk one.
Then we finished this busy day, but going onto the London eye. It is 135 meters high with a 120 meters diameter. When it opened in 2000, it was the tallest Ferris wheel. Now it is the second one after one in China. Funnily I wasn’t to worried with the height inside it. It feels very steady; don’t get me wrong, I still couldn’t looked down, but I wasn’t too freaked out either! The views are great from there.
We found a playground right next to the London Eye, so the kids had some fun and we got some rest! Then sandwich from a supermarket eaten in the park and got back to our tiny room.
On Tuesday the 12, we visited Madame Tussauds. I was expecting a regular vax museum, albeit a great one, but it is so much more that that! Obviously, you start with celebrities: most of them I wasn’t sure who they were (celebrities aren’t my thing!). We were happy to see Eddie Redmayne, who plays Newt Skalamander in fantastic beast as we are watching the movies at the moment! And we found out, he is born on the same day and same year as I! Then, were the musicians, sport people, the royal family and a few historical figures. You can go into the scary London, similar to the London Dungeon experience. We decided to skip that area, as Emma said: “Didn’t you traumatise us enough yesterday!” Then, there is a ride who take you inside London’s 19th and 20th century history. And you finish the tour with the Avengers area and Star Wars! It was awesome. A must do visit if you are in London.
After that a bit of fresh air was needed, so we went to the park next to Madam Tussauds. The kids saw they had pedal boats, so we had to do some. I refused to pedal, so the kids rose gladly to the challenge and pedal for 30 minutes around the lake.
By then, we were pretty hungry, so Kev found us a small place to have lunch. Kev and Andrew got their first full English breakfast of the trip and I think they liked it! Emma got a smaller version of it and loved it too. Lucky for me, vegetarian options in the UK are relatively easy to find. Then we got back to our place to rest a bit and do some schoolwork.
On the following day, we went to see the sights of London: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the house of parlement, Trafalgar square, Piccadilly circus, Leicester square, Oxford circus. I love London, walking in the street of London is magic. I love the pubs, how they are decorated, often with flowers, the architecture, the name of the streets and shops. There are also art pieces in a lot of places. I really enjoyed Leicester squares with statues of famous film characters (Marry Poppins, Harry Potter, Charli Chaplin, Paddington bear and a few others). There was also a M&Ms shop and a lego shop. I had read that there were worth a visit, so we did. The M&Ms shop was insane: merchandise everywhere, walls with different colours M&Ms, full of people… consumerism at its best! We bought 100gr of M&Ms and that was it! It was eaten very quickly!
The lego shop was great. So many cool creations. The kids could have stay there forever!
On Oxford circus, we found the Pandora shop for Emma. She chose a guard charm for her English one (I preferred the bus with the UK flag on it, but she only wanted the guard. Oh well, it is her bracelet after all!)
We visited one more temple of consumerism: Hamleys. This is the oldest toy shop in the world (according to the Guinness book of Records). It started in 1760 with William Hamley, called “Noah’s Ark” in London. It moves to the current London location in 1851. This shop is over seven floors with more than 50 000 lines of toys and receive around five million visitors each year.
Toys everywhere!!!! The kids were amazed. I felt a bit bad because we can’t really buy anything as we don’t have much space in our bags, but they are awesome and were just happy looking at everything without buying. They got to play with some toys as there are little set ups through the shop.
Dinner at a pub (good food but disappointing compare to the price we paid).
We spend a bit of time in Covent garden listening to singers, as it is an area famous for street performers. It is a great place to spend the evening.
Then walk back to our place, taking on the sigh of London at night time.
Thursday was our last full day in London; we went to see Tower Bridge, Saint Paul cathedral (from the outside as it is pretty expansive to visit the inside and we did a fair bit of churches in Italy, so we are taking a break). Again we walked in the street of London, came across monument after monument. One impressive one, is the one made in remembrance of the big fire of 1666. It is a huge column with golden sculpture at the top and a beautiful carved rock at the bottom.
We went to see Buckingham palace. We missed the changing of the guard as we got there on the wrong day for it. Lack of planning on my part… It is hard to think of checking everything.
After that, we went to Harrods. It had left great memories from my previous visits (many years ago) but I didn’t find it that great this time around. Either it changed since I went, or I remember another place. The food court on the ground floor is pretty cool but the rest is just expansive stuffs. I thought it was prettier than that but maybe I remembered wrong!. The kids still like the toy section and Emma bought herself a small toy which spin a small rope in it and you can do some cool tricks with it. It is small and will fit in her bag! We went to Hyde park next to Harrods to test the new toy. The kids had some fun and then back to our place to pack, yet again!
A bit of tv on the computer then bed.
Friday the 15th of August, we got up early, got to a place to get our rented car and drove all the way to Stirling in Scotland.
See you there!
MelRead more