Trek woke up early the next morning to go out for a run. Our hotel was right next to Hyde Park so he ran through the park & through Kensington Gardens.
He ended up running past all sorts of fun sights like Buckingham Palace,
the London Eye,
Big Ben, & Parliment
After running, Trek came back to the hotel only to realize that he couldn't get back inside. The front door was locked & no matter how long or hard he knocked on it, nobody answered. He called me (I was in our room) & I walked upstairs & opened the door for him.
There was literally NOBODY working in the front area of the "hotel." At about 8:00 am a maid came into the building to clean, but she didn't speak any English. We all got ready for the day & started to leave. I was nervous about leaving our room because the door didn't have a key so we couldn't lock it. Right before we left, a man showed up that "worked" there & he told us that he would find the key for our room (he pulled out a literal BUCKET OF KEYS) & lock it for us, then give us our key when we got back. We moved all our suitcases & valuables to the boy's room (which did lock) because I just didn't trust anything about this place. The man working told us to leave a few things in the room on the bed so that they didn't "give our room to someone else" accidentally.
What?!?! Don't you know who is in your rooms? Do you not keep a record of which rooms are occupied each day? This place was insane! We left the towels we brought from home, our shampoos/soaps, & our pillows on the bed to "show" we were still staying there. Then we left.
We walked down the street to the Royal Albert Hall, & then entered Hyde Park.
Hyde Park reminds me of Central Park in New York. It's huge, beautiful, & there are so many different trails you can take to so many different things. Along our route we ran into a really cute statue of Peter Pan. There was even a "phone number" for him on the plaque. So we called him & while we walked through the park, Peter Pan narrated his story to us over this phone call. It was super cute.
The Italian Gardens in Hyde Park were my favorite part. They were absolutely beautiful.
Canyon loved the park. He was collecting rocks & sticks & leaves the whole time.
We found a cute little bakery as we were walking & stopped by for some breakfast. We got cinnamon rolls, cheddar & chive scones, & a pistachio raspberry pastry of some sort. We shared them all together so we could try each thing & they were all delicious.
After breakfast we continued to walk through the city & came to a Hard Rock Cafe. Trek loves getting pins from all the Hard Rocks we visit to put on his German Walking Stick.
We walked for a few miles until we hit Baker Street. . . 221b Baker Street to be exact.
We didn't go inside the Sherlock Holmes Museum, but we did get pictures in front of his house. The kids thought that was pretty cool.
Then we walked several more miles to find Abby Road. We were following google maps & it took us to the middle of nowhere. Luckily a local saw us looking around & asked us, "Are you trying to find Abby Road?" I guess google was wrong & several tourists wind up on that road every day. He pointed us in the right direction & told us where it really was.
So we found it, & walked across it.
Our next stop was Kings Cross Station, which was another few miles. At this point the kids had blisters on their feet (we had done 7 miles so far). They were near tears, so we decided to go on the tube instead of walking.
We found the nearest tube station & about died at the prices! We only had one more place to go & it was going to cost us 50 pounds to get there. A day pass for the tube was 66 pounds (that's the total for 6 people) so we did that instead so we could take the tube all the way back to our van. My kids LOVE public transit. They were very excited to ride the tube.
In one of the stations, we found this poster which made us laugh. Cadence leaves on her mission in a few weeks so technically, this poster was very fitting for her.
We got off at King's Cross Station so we could find Platform 9 3/4. Being Potters we had to do EVERYTHING Harry Potter this trip. We waiting in a HUGE line just to get a photo of us pushing a cart through the wall, but the kids loved it.
There was a cute little store right next to platform 9 3/4 so we looked around & then headed back to the Tube.
We took the tube all the way back to the area our van was located it. Our Harry Potter Studio Tour started at 5 so we wanted to leave at 2 to give us plenty of time to get there. It takes an hour to get there, but with traffic it's closer to 2. We tried to find some food for lunch/dinner, but everything in that area was way too expensive (& sit down places rather than grab & go) so we found a grocery store & bought some sandwiches there to eat on our way.
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