London, UK by Kev

9.8.2025. Today we're hopping on a bus and heading for the UK, Via Paris. Well, that's what was planned. We left the apartment at 10, a 40min walk with our bags ahead of us. The kids are so much better with their bags. Yes Emma asked us to slow down at one point, and we stopped briefly for a drink break. We all trooped on, and we're happy to get there. Now we wait for 2 hrs. The bus arrived and we hopped on. Our first stop is Milan for a changeover, then onto Paris overnight. Once again, that was the plan. Plans however, have a way of changing. Ours didn't change, ours openly revolted against us. The driver stopped a few times along the way, for no apparent reason, then when we were about 1.5hrs from Milan, Mel got an email from the bus company saying our trip cannot continue. What? We pulled into a bus station, and got told, by another traveller who translated for us, that we had to get off and another bus would come pick us up. Well crap. Mel asked the driver when the other bus would be here, he didn't know. We only had an hour up our sleeves for a changeover, so we hope the other bus gets here soon. Another email. We're not going to Milan anymore, we're going to Munich. What? We were supposed to get to Paris at 6:30am, now we won't get there until after 1pm. We have the Eurostar booked for 9:30 to go to the UK. So we have to reschedule our tickets. Mel changed them to 18:10, it only cost us $1005 to do so, yep, that's right. Another $1000 to move our tickets back. That's nearly twice the price of the original tickets. This is not the way I wanted to first go to Germany. It'll be nighttime, so we won't see anything. Plus I won't be able to go to any proper beer halls. Alright, the bus is here, let's talk to the driver. This guy doesn't talk English, at all, great. We managed eventually. Though nobody is sitting next to each other. 7hrs later, plus a border/passport check going through Austria, another passport check getting into Germany, and we're at the bus station. It's midnight and we have to wait until 2:45 for our next bus. Once on the bus, I drift in and out of an uncomfortable sleep. We finally make it to Paris, late, after 2 I think, I was pretty fuzzy. We grab our gear and head to the metro. Now we're at the train station and waiting. The Eurostar is running late, ah FFS. Mel's done, ready to tap out. I'm seriously considering taking up drinking as an Olympic event. The kids were great, hardly anything from them. Good travellers those two. We went through security and passport control, to wait more. There's people everywhere, why? The 16:10 hasn't left yet. Hmm, it is only 17:30, that's not so bad, is it? It eventually left a little before 18:00, with the 17:10 leaving just a little after it. Ours wasn't so bad, being only 18mim late leaving. We went through the tunnel and came out in England. We got there with more time, we went back and hour from the timezone. My back knew it was late though. Onto a bus, and finally made it to our next stay. Tiny little room we barely all fit in, oh well it's only for 5 days and for London it was cheap. Shower, because we'd been travelling for over a day and starting to get a bit wiffy. Straight to bed.
11.8.2025. You may have noticed I didn't do a 10th. It disappeared in the travelling that took two days and I wasn't going to split that up. It's now Monday, and we have stuff planned. So let's get that done. We booked a multi pass ticket. First up, Sea Life aquarium. Kids loved it. There's something about watching fish swim around that is somewhat relaxing. After watching fish, turtles and penguins go round and round, it was lunch time. There's not much where we are and we don't have a long time so we hit a fast food joint. Fish n chips, chicken n chips, burgers, all of it shit. Not only that, bloody overpriced shit. £51 for our food, the kids didn't even eat all the chips, they were pretty dodge. If you're wondering, £51 is about $110Aud. Once again, the Centenary comes out in front. I didn't even get a beer. Next activity, Shrek's adventure, or something like that. It was pretty funny and the kids loved it. I got picked out as Cinderella's prince charming, which made the kids, Andrew especially, laugh their arse off. After that, now and then, Andrew would look at me with a stupid grin and say “princey”. I also got picked to sit in Shrek's toilet and look for something while they made lots of farting noises and worse. That made all the kids laugh. It was a great show, all the actors did a great job. It was a huge hit with the kids. Next was the London Dungeon. We figured it might be a little scary for the kids, but thought, eh they'll be right. Emma had her eyes closed for half of it I think. A woman had been pushing and bumping me, but after we were stopped at a doorway and she tried to go around us and started pushing past the kids, I told her how I felt. She went back giving a half arsed excuse of being half blind. You found your way around us, bugger off. Anyway, back to the tour. Yep, it was a bit scary for the kids. Also the actors may have overdone it trying to be as scary as they could be. Not all, some were very good. We skipped out on the last bit, which was a ride, a sudden drop to represent being “hung”. Mel and the kids went out a side door and I did it. It was kinda lame, imo. After the least favourite activity of the day, we lined up for the London eye. Kids enjoyed that, Mel not so much, as it goes very high. Though they are doing better with heights. There was a playground nearby, so the kids played for a while. Afterwards we went to a supermarket and got some food for dinner. Tuna salad for me, which was so much better than lunch. Also cheaper. Mel was getting really tired and it was getting late, we hopped on a bus and headed back. Into bed a bit earlier than we have been, trying to catch up on some sleep. Seeya tomorrow.
12.8.2025. Today we have another booking, Madame Tussauds. But before that, we hit Sainsbury's for some breakfast. I tried these pecan pastry things, eh. Oh well, onto Madame Tussauds. Now, if you don't know, Madam Tussauds is a wax museum. We've done a couple of wax museums on our trip so far. One in India which was, imo, complete rubbish, but they tried. Another was in Roma, a bit better than the Indian's effort but still pretty dodge. Madame Tussauds however, is a different affair. Music, lights, themes and above all else, believable wax mannequins. The first corridor is a stitch up. Here, Mel waited for some people to get their photo taken from a photographer. I had to say “that's not a real person”, it was very believable. We passed the wax paparazzi and continued on. I saw some mannequins of people I knew, mostly of people I don't. The Freddy Mercury mannequin was done really well. At the end there was a star wars section, here is where I got a few photos taken. We all had fun, kids recognised the guy from fantastic beasts. As usual after this sort of thing, when you finish you have to leave through the gift shop. That's where they get ya. Mel got some more postcards, surprisingly cheap. The kids got a slushy each. Afterwards we walked to a big park area and went on a paddle boat. I started getting hungry, and why not! It's almost 2 o'clock. I found a small cafe on GMaps that seems to have a decent menu and prices. We walked the 25mins it said to get there, and were greeted by a nice looking little cafe. With a couple tables outside, flowers and decorations. We went inside, and luckily there was a 4 seat table available. I got told to sit down, then come over to order when ready. Full English breakfast for £8.50, I'll have that. Andrew did too. Emma picked a smaller breakfast and Mel got a vegetarian sandwich. There were several vegetarian options, which was promising. We ordered two coffees and our food turned up pretty quick. Maybe not the best breakfast I have had, but pretty bloody decent. Sausage, tomato, beans, hash brown, mushrooms, bacon, black pudding, eggs and a plate of toast to share. Pretty sure there's a picture somewhere. Andrew couldn't finish all of his, so I had to step up. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make. Four people fed well and two coffees for £30.50, and the people running the place were really nice. Mel said, look who's eating here. Looks like all locals, older people. Yep we found a good one, I even gave them a review on GMaps. We hopped back on a bus and headed back to the room. We stopped at an ATM and did a disappearing trick on our bank account. Got a big bottle of cold water at a little Tesco's, partly to drink, but mostly so we had some change to put in Andrew's collection. Back in our room, time to relax.
13.8.2025. Today we're visiting the city. We started with having a good look at Big Ben. We walked past Westminster Abbey and the house of Parliament. We walked until we found a huge M&M shop. It had 3 floors and who knows how much chocolate. It was also totally packed. After that, we walked across the street into the biggest Lego shop I've ever been in. When we decided to leave we noticed it had been raining. It had almost stopped, so we walked out. The temperature had dropped, it was almost cold. There were lots of bronze statues in the little area outside these shops, we took a few pics. We had a look at all sorts of “squares” and “circuses”. We found a Pandora shop, Emma got another charm. Our next stop was Hamleys Toy store, the biggest Toy store, ever. The kids had a ball. They had all sorts of displays and remote controls set up for them to try. We joked that we could drop them off in the morning with a £20 and pick them up in the afternoon. Andrew said he'd be cool with that. Afterwards, it was time for a treat for the parents. We found a pub and ordered some drinks. Since it was getting late we grabbed some food too. I had a couple pints of London brewed lagers. Not the best I've had, but decent. We settled our bill and walked some more. This time we headed to Covent Square. There are lots of street performers here to watch. We saw a few that were pretty good. One guy sang some of our favourites. We stood there and listened to him until he’d finished. It was starting to get late, so we began to wander back towards our room. We walked along the Thames, with London at dark as the backdrop. It is true, the city can be beautiful. We made it back and went straight to bed.
14.8.2025. Today we're off to see the Tower Bridge and the London Bridge. We walked across the Tower Bridge, then had a walk around the Tower of London. We saw London Bridge, but didn't walk across it. It was interesting to find out that they had kept wild animals in a part of the Tower of London. They had usually been gifts from someone mightily important. We started walking towards Buckingham Palace, finding a huge monument, erected after the fires of 1666 that ripped through London for 4 days. We found a place to get some cheap sandwiches on the way to Buckingham palace. Once there we had a look and sat down near the fountain out the front and had our food. We then walked over to Harrods, another ginormous shopping centre. Here, Emma bought a toy for themselves. Some rope spinning thing that can also glow in the dark. We walked back towards Buckingham Palace, the kids played and we saw some of the guards getting inspected at the barracks. On our way back we stopped at Sainsbury's and grabbed stuff for dinner. We got back and ate, then packed. Onto our next stop tomorrow!
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