London - Day 2 - Exploring the City By Foot

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.

 

London - Day 1 - Ferry & Hotel

After we dropped Lorien & Taya off at FSY with their friends for 6 days, we took a short trip up to London.  Cadence leaves on her mission soon & we asked her to pick one trip she wanted to take before her mission.  She chose London, so off we went.

Living in Europe is wonderful.  We can get pretty much anywhere by car/van as long as you're willing to road trip it.  London was no exception.  We drove 6 hours from Germany to Calais, France.  A few days earlier we booked the ferry to take us (& our van) across the English Channel from Calais to the white cliffs of Dover.  I had forgotten how expensive the ferry was!  (Next time we'll be taking the chunnel)

Once we got to the ferry, it took about an hour & a half to make it through security checks, passport control, & onto the actual boat.  It was almost like checking in at an airport.  It took FOREVER.

But we made it.  The boat ride was almost 2 hours start to finish & Canyon & I soon realized we get really really seasick.  The two of us were nauseous the entire boat ride.  We tried to eat at the cafe on board, but that made it worse.  We ordered some fish & chips, nuggets, fries, & veggies.  I could only stomach the veggies.  Canyon couldn't eat any of it.  But the others ate everything & said it was completely flavorless.  They said it was like eating water which made me laugh.  That's what we get for eating food on a boat.

The white cliffs of Dover were beautiful.

Once we docked the boat, it took another 30-40 minutes to get off the boat.  We were SO happy to be driving again.  London was about 2.5 hours from the cliffs so we still had a long drive ahead of us.  We also had to get used to driving on the WRONG side of the road.

They city was crazy to drive in.  Trek is a saint for doing it.  We drove around & looked at all the beautiful buildings.

We even passed the Tower of London

and the tower bridge which was super cool.

We could see Big Ben & Parliment on our drive too.  That made us SUPER excited to be there.

Then we arrived at our hotel.  I don't know why everything has to be such an adventure for us, but it always is.  This hotel was a DIVE.  As we pulled up, we had 3 people knock on our window & tell us to "run away" from this place.  They warned us that the hotel was a scam, that they had taken their money without giving them a room, that the rooms were filthy, & that 3 floors had to share one small bathroom.  They said there was mold, bugs, & disarray everywhere.  I was immediately terrified.

We booked it (Parkside Hotel near Hyde Park) on booking.com which is usually a very safe way to book a hotel.  It was bad.  We booked a room that fit 6 people which we quickly found out doesn't exist at all. . . even though we already paid for it.  They refused to give us a refund, so they offered us 2 rooms in the basement instead.  We got online & started trying to find a hotel anywhere else that available rooms for the 6 of us, but everything was fully booked or WAY too expensive.  We were STUCK with this hotel whether we liked it or not.  We had to take the 2 basement rooms.

As nasty as it was, I considered us lucky because our 2 rooms had their own bathrooms (moldy, but our OWN) so that was a win for us.  All the other 15 rooms in the hotel had one shared bathroom on the 2nd floor & it was NASTY.  Ours weren't super clean either, but I could deal with it knowing nobody was going to walk in on me showering.  The rooms were tiny.  It barely fit one bed (2 in the boy's room) & our suitcases, but it was fine.  We triple checked for bed bugs (because that's how nasty this place was) & then decided we would survive this little adventure.  OH!! And there wasn't a key to mine & Cadence's room.  So basically we couldn't lock our room.  The guy that checked us into the hotel was sweet, but it was his first day of work there & he was ready to quit because of how gross it was.  I felt so bad for him (unless he was part of the con to begin with.  I hope not.  He seemed nice.). He told us that whomever was on duty tomorrow would be able to get us a key for our room.

After all the drama with the hotel, we decided to go for a walk.  We found a 5 Guys & were SO happy to have yummy food for dinner.  This was the first time the boys had ever had 5 Guys, & they LOVED it.

After that we went back to the "hotel" & watched an episode of "Sherlock" so Bladen could see all the London sites we were going to be seeing on our vacation.  Luckily we downloaded the episode before we left because SURPRISE!  Our hotel didn't have wifi either.

We finally just called it a night & decided to make the next day amazing even though we struck out on our hotel.