Highlights of the day: Bournemouth Beach

Friday, June 14th – During a long trip like this, it’s a good idea to schedule an off-day, with no big plans. Ours was a day-trip outside of the city to Bournemouth beach.

We took the tube to Waterloo station and hopped a train to Bournemouth (2:10 hours).

Once we arrived at the Bournemouth station, it was a 30 min walk to the beach through the town.

We passed a lot of shops, but in the morning most businesses were still closed. It was difficult to find a place open, but we were able to locate a pizzeria.

Extra bonus, they had ice cream with pop rocks.

Most of the beaches in southern England are covered in pebbles, but Bournemouth has plenty of wonderful soft sand. They also have a ferris wheel and a pier (pay to enter) with a zip line.

It was windy and the water was freezing. But that didn’t stop the local Rugby team from throwing on their banana hammocks and going for a dip (background in pic below).

Once we got our fill of sand and ocean, we walked up the hillside through the town to the Westbourne shopping area.

There were only a couple shops worth visiting, not worth the hill-side walk in my opinion.

On the way back, we took the path through the central gardens, which was very much worth the walk. Since this was the first day all week without rain, it was muddy off the path.

The kids raced from bench to bench and even stopped to help a kid that fell off her scooter.

We stopped at the playground for a few hours. I guess there are fewer lawsuits in England, which makes for much more exciting playground features.

We tried not to be the typical “loud Americans” on the playground, but…. well, I guess at least we tried. Fortunately, some local high schoolers came by that were much louder than us.

On the way back to the train station, we walked through the town. The shops that were closed that morning were now bustling with shoppers. But since it was 5pm, they were already closing down for the day.

Kate stopped at a Claire’s and picked up some earrings. Since we walked so much on this trip, we figured this meant that we earned at least one or two ice cream stops (per day).

Finding the bathroom here was quite a challenge. We tried to stop in the Anime store next door, but they had already closed. The only thing still open was a grocery store, so I grabbed some drinks for the train ride.

Once back at the train station, we tried to scan our train tickets from the app, but couldn’t get it to work, so the staff just let us walk through. There were not many people in the station.

Half of our train had arrived, but apparently they had to wait for the remaining half to connect and head back to London.

On the train ride back we met a very “happy” (drunk) guy that had alot to say. There must have been a game nearby since there were many “happy” people on the train.

He talked to us for a bit, then passed out. When the conductor came by, the guy couldn’t find his ticket or remember where he was going, so he pulled out his wallet, bought another ticket and then passed back out.

At some point he must have woken up and wandered away, but left behind his glasses and loose money. Some of the other “happy” people on the train picked it up for him.

That night I went out and grabbed some Mediterranean food, brought it back to the flat. More laundry, then sleep. The next day, we head for Paris.

Highlights: St. Paul’s Cathedral, Tower of London, Crown Jewels, City Cruise Boat Tour Big Bus, Hyde Park

Thursday, June 13th – We decided to use the tube as our source of transportation today, since traveling on the Big Bus meant sitting in traffic for mulitple hours.

Our first stop was St. Paul’s Cathedral. We took the Red/Central line from Queesway to St. Paul’s station (20 min – 9th stop). It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the beauty lies within. There are chairs in the middle where you can rest and admire the cathedral.

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It was fortunate we sat for a while because we needed all of our energy to climb the 500+ stairs to the top.

But once you get to the balcony, the view is totally worth the climb.

You never know what you might see around London. We spotted a double decker bus full of women in their skibbies! It was a cold rainy day, but that didn’t stop these Curvey Kate advertisers.

When Connor made it to the top of the cathedral, he remembered that he’s not too fond of heights. Fortunately there was a staff member there to talk him through it and share his stories about how he conquered his fear of heights.

When you head back inside, the climb continues to the very top, where you can look down through a window and see the tiny people in the cathedral below.

From St. Paul’s, it’s a short 20 min walk to Tower of London. In case you were wondering, it is still raining.

Once we arrived at the Tower, it was time for lunch. There are not many food options nearby, so we chose a cafe called EAT. The cafe was full, no seats, and the food was nothing to write home about. Now, on to the Tower.

Once inside the kids needed a quick break from the rain.

As you walk around inside the Tower, there are plenty of small exhibitions to tour. You can try on a hat made of solid brass.

Or, you can get caught taking pictures with the royal crowns (no pictures allowed) and get scolded by the security officer for “disrespecting the Queen”.

There was an extra special longer line for the official crown jewels. We had seen our share and decided to skip.

There is even a small guard shack out front where you can witness a smaller scale version of the changing of the guard. Kate had to get a picture with the guard.

Our plan for the day included the ArcelorMittal Orbit Slide, but be sure to call before you go. Each day that we called, the slide was closed either for rain or a malfunction.

Since we had purchased a 2-day Big Bus pass, it included a ride on the City Cruise boat. One of the pickup stations was outside of the Tower, so we rode it down the river to “Big Ben”.

You can see plenty of sights from a distance on the boat; The Shard, Tower Bridge, Shakespeare’s Globe, Millenium Bridge, Egyptian Tower, London Bridge (apparently the original was disassembled and moved to Utah) London Eye (which we deemed too expensive to ride), St. Paul’s and “Big Ben”.

There are also Lion busts along the river wall, which inspired the saying “When the Lion’s drink, London sinks”.

Unfortunately, our view of the House of Parliament/Big Ben was primarily blocked with scaffolding.

After disembarking, we walked along the water toward Trafalgar Square, passing a very nice palace right on the water.

Next stop National Gallery. Admission was free, although they do ask for donations. There’s also an optional audio tour you can purchase.

We encouraged the kids to get their picture in front of the lions.

However, the older kids just wanted a selfie in front of the Lion’s butt. Connor decided that the rest of the trip, he was going to cover his face for all my pictures.

It was after 6pm and most of the sights were closed, so we headed home for dinner; pizza and Amorino gelato.

In order to pack light for our 16 day trip, everyone had 3 days of clothing. This meant it was that point in the trip where we started our nightly laundry routine. We learned two important things. First, do small amounts of laundry often, because the washers are very small. Second, dryers are rare, so be sure to have something to lay out your clothes for overnight drying.

I made a grocery run while the kids enjoyed a movie. Good opportunity for them to get some rest from the very active days of walking.

Since we had arrived back home very late the night before, Kate hadn’t had a chance to try out her new skates from Hamley’s. Fortunately Hyde park was walking distance away. She wanted to wear them around the city all day, but glad we were able to avoid that.

Hyde park also had bikes to rent, but we didn’t get a chance to take advantage of them on this trip.

Highlights of the day: Big Bus, Tower Bridge, Borough Market, Southwark Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, St. James Park, Buckingham Palace, Hamley’s Toy Store

Wednesday, June 12, 2019 – The plan for the day was to roll out of bed once we felt rested from the flights and jet lag. That happened somewhere around 10am and by the time we got out of the apartment, it was close to noon.

It was going to be a lax day, just hop on the Big Bus (£40.5/adult, £31.5/child – 2 day pass) and grab whatever sights seemed the most interesting. Big Bus had a very user friendly map and easy to understand route. Station #30 Blue was just next to our Airbnb at the Thistle hotel. This was a shared stop with the other two bus companies (Original and Golden Tours) and they all had an employee waiting at the stop, which allowed us to buy advance tickets for Tower of London and St. Paul’s Cathedral without having to pick a day/time slot.

We must have just missed the bus because we waited at least 25 mins for the bus to arrive. The Big Bus app is also helpful to track the stops and the live bus locations.

Our bus had a live tour guide and you could listen through the free headphones on the bus.

The downside was the traffic, but this gave us plenty of time to take silly pictures.

We started on the Blue line, but needed to transfer to the Red line. Most people were trying to do the same thing, so we let the crowd get off at stop #5 (which had a longer line for the red transfer) and we continued on to stop #4. After some quick shots in the smelly phone booths, we hopped on the Red line, which is the route with most tourist sites and busiest buses.

By the time we reached Tower of London, stop #16, it was well after 14:00. This would mark the first and last time we used the bus to get around the city. The tube is much more efficient.

We were all starving, so we decided to save Tower of London for the next day and instead head toward Borough Market for lunch. On the way, we stopped at Tower Bridge. This would also give us a chance to get out of the rain.

We purchased these tickets in advance (£24.5/family ), but the line wouldn’t have been long either way. You enter near the Tower of London side of the bridge and upon check-in you are loaded in an elevator and taken up to the top. There’s a quick 5 minute video about the history of the bridge and then you can walk out onto the glass floor, which is where the kids spent most of their time laying down on the glass and taking pictures.

After spending our time up top, we were off to the engine rooms below, which included a kids area where they could draw their own bridge designs.

The rain was still coming down pretty good, so we bought a couple umbrellas in the gift shop before heading out.

Connor and Kate were having some challenges sharing the umbrella, so we bought connor his own british flag umbrella at one of the nearby markets outside. I guess we got what we paid for with the £7 umbrella since it only lasted a few hours before breaking.

We were all starving, so we quickly headed over to Borough Market, which was a little bit of a walk (xx mins). It took some time to find a booth with food we liked as well as seating so we didn’t have to stand up and eat. We settled on Porteña, which had either the best empanadas we’ve ever had, or maybe we were just really hungry.

There was a German tour group beside us while we ate, so the kids got their first dose of a foreign language on the trip as we tried to pick out any words we might recognize.

Southwark Cathedral was nearby. It wasn’t very crowded and it was free to enter (they do accept donations and a “picture tax”).

We went through the cathedral in about 15 mins and then spent the rest of our time meeting Doorkins Magnificat (the cathedral kitty).

Not very friendly, but the kids were having cat withdrawl since we left home, so they forced in a few strokes of the fur.

There were a few employees throughout the cathedral that were happy to answer any questions (plan a few extra minutes for the answer because they like to talk).

We hopped on the tube at London Bridge station (Jubilee Line) for our next stop, Westminster Abbey, which is open late on Wednesdays (Wednesday Lates – 16:30 to 18:00) and it was already too late to hit any of the other sites that closed at 16:00.

We did not buy Westminster tickets in advance (as we didn’t want to be locked into a specific time/day) but the line was only 5-10 minutes long.

They also ask you to refrain from taking pictures in most areas. It was rather busy inside, so it took 25 mins to walk around through all the people.

I had visited before, but had not been inside, so I was suprised at how many famous people were buried there (C.S. Lewis, Darwin, Isaac Newton, etc.).

From Westminster, its an easy walk to Buckingham Palace through St. James Park, which had plenty of ducks, squirells and other animals to keep the kids entertained.

The flag was up at Buckingham, which meant the Queen was at residence and we couldn’t go inside, so we admired from a distance.

We left Buckingham Palace and walked toward Jermyn St. (a great place to shop if you have an extra £1M laying around) on our way to Hamley’s Toy Store. It was also time for some food and coffee (jet lag still in effect) so we stopped off in a Costa Coffee before making it to Hamley’s.

To understand Hamley’s, try thinking of a high-end Toys R Us on crack with 6 stories of pure entertainment. Each floor had its own theme (Harry Potter, Lego, young kids, dolls, etc.).

We let each of the kids pick one toy, which took some time to decide. Cohen got a really cool penguin that swims in the bath. Kate chose roller skates that attach to your shoes. Connor couldn’t find anything small enough to travel, so he saved his purchase for another store.

It was time to hit the sack after a long day, so we jumped on the Tube again and headed toward our Airbnb. And since the tube was so clean, the kids decided to touch as much of it as possible.

We didn’t have a proper dinner, so I grabbed some kebabs from Taza just down the street. It was a quick meal and off to bed. Tommorrow would be an earlier day (fingers crossed).

Highlights of the day: Windsor Castle

Tuesday June 11, 2019 – We were all fairly exhausted when we landed in Heathrow Terminal 2 at 5:55am, fully expecting to spend quite a bit of time de-planing from the United flight and going through customs. Since it was so early, the process went quickly. We were a family of five (two adults, three kids; 5, 9, 12) so the customs officials pulled us through a special line and we breezed right through.

I didn’t want to feel rushed when we arrived, so our driver from Windsor Cars wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 8am. Rather than waiting two hours, we called and they arrived 30 mins later. While we waited, Connor (12) and I worked our way toward the tube station to buy his child Octopus card. Danielle and I had already purchased our Visitor Octopus cards online. Kate (9) and Cohen (5) were free, so they would enter the tube stations with one of the adults through the handicapped entrances.

We met the driver and loaded up in the van for our short 20 min drive to Windsor (£34). The kids found it very cool that his driver’s seat was on the opposite side. He took us to the Mailboxes Etc. on St. Leonards Rd, which also doubles as a Stasher location. Windsor Castle would not allow our bags during the tour, so we had to find somewhere to “Stash” them. It was reasonably cheap, £6/bag. Even though the location wasn’t supposed to open until 9am, the store manager was already there at 8:30 and let us come in.

We had packed light, trying to minimize the amount of items we would have to drag through Europe for the next 2.5 weeks. Each of us had one carry-on (international sized, except for one that would create an issue later) and a backpack, except for Cohen (5) that only had a backpack. The lack of checked luggage and flying direct out of Chicago had kept our flight prices low ($510 each).

Windsor is very walk-able (I had to do some of it twice as I forgot our castle tickets in our stashed luggage and had to go back), but does have some elevation change throughout.

The castle didn’t open until 10am, so we needed to find something to do for the next 1.5 hours. Our Airbnb host had recommended a location for breakfast, Cote Brasserie, just on the other side of the river Thames. We walked there, greeting some ducks and swans along the way.

The coffee was good, and mandatory at this point.

We still had some time to kill, so we strolled down the streets of Eton. There wasn’t much to see, as most of the shops were still closed. Upon arrival to the castle, we were grateful that we had purchased our tickets online, as the ticket line wrapped around the building and out of sight. With our pre-purchased tickets, we walked past them and right in. The security inside was reminiscent of TSA.

The audio guides were included with the tickets and picked up after walking up the hill, just before entering the castle walls. There was a kid-friendly version that kept the children entertained. There were two main sections of the tour, the state apartments and St. George’s Chapel. We started with the state apartments, which had a separate queuing line of 15 mins. As is typical with most castles and palaces, there were no pictures allowed inside.

The chapel area had no queue and only took a few minutes to walk through, which was good because we wanted to see the changing of the guard at 11am (which actually started a little earlier than scheduled). Most tourists lined up near the chapel at the bottom of the hill and you can hear the band playing while walking up the hill outside of the castle wall. I started with a front row seat, but quickly realized that the areas behind and up the hill are just as good due to the elevation allowing you to see over everyone up front.

The spectacle took a while and we were fairly bored with it after about 25 mins, so we made our way out of the castle and across the street to our first of many souvenir shops. The kids were excited to buy things, because well… they’re kids I guess. Connor picked up a “Big Ben” (I know it is really the houses of parliament and Big Ben is really just the bell, but for simplicity sake in this article I’m going to refer to it as “Big Ben” anyway) and Kate got a stuffed animal with I “heart” London on it. Cohen was falling asleep at this point, so it was time to head toward the train to London.

We took the train from the Windsor and Eton Central station, which had a connection in Slough before connecting to London’s Paddington Station. We weren’t sure how to work the automated ticket booths, so we just went to the ticket booth and asked for a ticket to Paddington. Connor ran off to find a “facility” and almost missed our train. Most everyone took a quick cat nap during the train ride.

Our Airbnb was just down the street from the Bayswater and Queensway tube stations, which made it very easy to get around the city and access Hyde park. We were on a 2nd floor (1st floor in Europe) apartment just above the Moor and Hitch restaurant (which had great burgers, along with the aroma of mary jane in the air).

Bedtime came early our first night. No alarms were set for the morning. We ended the day with a glass of wine and off to dreamland.

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

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