Friday morning, Trek & I woke up early to run. This time Cadence stayed behind so she could let us back into our hotel building because once again NOBODY was working there. It was fun just running a few miles through Hyde Park. I especially enjoyed Kensington Gardens where Prince William & Duchess Kate live. That park is so beautiful. I love that our hotel (even though it was awful) was right next to the park.
Trek was awake until 2am the night before trying to book us a ferry home. NOTHING was working. We tried booking from Dover to Calais or even Dover to Dunkirk , but we couldn't get any of his credit/debit cards to work. So after running, we tried using my cards. NONE of mine would work either. We tried calling the ferry & sat on hold for nearly 2 hours trying to get a hold of someone, meanwhile trying to book our van what felt like a thousand times. . . nothing worked. We finally were able to get through & talk to someone, but she couldn't get our card to work either. She told us we'd have to try for another day. That was a problem because we had to get back THAT DAY so we could pick up the girls from FSY Saturday morning. We were panicked. After 2 hours of stressing about it, we decided to pray about it. As soon as we did that, I reloaded the website, went through the process of booking a ferry for our van from Dover to Dunkirk & by some miracle, it allowed me to use my paypal account to pay for it. It truly was a miracle.
We were SO happy we had a way home! We got everyone ready for the day, packed up, & got ready to leave this monstrosity of a hotel. But of course nobody was working so we wound up just leaving our keys on the front desk.
After we loaded up the van, we drove about an hour outside of the city to surprise Bladen with something "out of this world." Bladen is obsessed with all things Doctor Who related. We found this amazing little shop called "The Who Shop" just outside of London & decided to take him there. There is also a "secret" museum here so I called in advance to book us a time slot for the museum without Bladen knowing. He was SO excited when he saw the shop.
It was a fun shop. There were 2 TARDIS machines inside, a few life size Dalek's, & TONS of Doctor Who merchandise. We spent a good hour just looking at everything.
Bladen even spent his allowance & bought some fun action figures of some of the bad guys in Doctor Who.
When it was time for our museum tour, they gave us a key & had us unlock one of the TARDIS'. It was "bigger on the inside." We all piled in as a family, took a picture, & then walked INTO the back room which was a whole Doctor Who Museum. We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the museum, but it was SO cool. There were costumes from several seasons of Doctor Who, tons of props & creatures, & then photos & autographs from cast members. Bladen was in heaven. It was pretty cool.
I highly recommend stopping at this shop if you're ever in London & have a Doctor Who fan with you. It was a blast.
Next to the Who Shop was a great little Fish & Chips shop called Mother Hubbards.. Their meals were HUGE. The kids loved it. Bladen & I got huge chicken sandwiches & Trek & Cadence had some good fish & chips. The boys got chicken nuggets & fries. It was yummy. Their cream soda was VERY good.
After lunch, we drove about an hour & a half to Dover to get back on the ferry. Everything went smoothly which was such a blessing considering how hard it was for us to book. We were there early, so we wound up sitting for a good 1 1/2 hours waiting to load the boat, but other than that it was great. Dover to Dunkirk is 2 hours instead of 1.5 like Calais, but we were just happy to have a way home.
We said goodbye to the UK (& the white cliffs of Dover), then unloaded in Dunkirk at around 7:30pm. We then drove straight home & arrived at about 1:30am. We were happy to be home.
No comments:
Post a Comment