London 2017

London 2017

The trip started on July 22, leaving Newark and flying overnight to London, UK.  Actually, the trip started with a first - we hired a taxi/limo service to drive us to the airport.  The car, a large Ford Explorer was a few minutes late, but did a great job, taking us on route 22, but it was fast - as fast or faster than on I78.  We got to the airport about 2 and half hours before the flight was to leave, and managed to check our bags and get through security in 15 minutes.  So we sat at the gate for an extra hour.  Oh well, part of travelling these days.   Currently, we are about 30 minutes from landing in London and trying to convince our confused bodies that it is really 5:30 am and not 12:30 am…..Ahhh, the joys of jet lag.  We will  be meeting up with Sarah at the airport; she is flying in from Boston and joining us for the entire 9 day trip.

It’;s going to be marvelous and already, work seems like it is thousands of miles away!  I am actually feeling like I slept a few hours and that I might manage the day alright.  Just a note, though, the food on Swiss air when I flew to Zurich last year was much better, both dinner and the morning breakfast.  Here we got fruit bars, on Swiss air it was a big basket of croissants, and I took two.   I think I need to take Liz to Zurich sometime, maybe we can work in a visit to Italy as well.  

So, the first orders of business are to find Sarah, get our luggage, take the Heathrow Express to Paddington station, and finally then on to our hotel, the Park Grand London Hyde Park.  Then I think we are riding the double decker tour buses today!

Sunday, 7/23

Rode double decker tour buses much of the day.  Breakfast at a little shop near our hotel in Paddington, almond croissants and cappuccino.  Lunch at a M&S grocery - cold sandwiches, but good and cheap!  Dinner at Porcupine, near Covent Garden.  I had curry chicken pie.  Mike and Liz had fish and chips, Sarah had a vegetarian pie.  Subway back to Paddington.

Monday 7/24

Breakfast at the hotel, it was good.

Subway to Tower of London - got in using London Pass, easy.  Saw the Crown Jewels, then wandered all over the tower, on the wall, on the White Tower (the armoury was awesome).  Then did a Starbucks.  Next did the Tower Bridge tour where we got to see how the drawbridge was operated with coal burning steam engines.  Up in the elevator to the top, great views, hated the glass floor section.  Finally, walked around Bond Street, a lot like being in NYC, and ate dinner outside at Cote Brasserie.  Great dinner - Mike had his first beef and we all ate, drank, and had dessert.  A very good meal for all of us.  Subway back to the hotel.  An exhausting day with all of the steps at the tower and bridge.  Lots of good pictures.

Tuesday  7/25     

We did the National Gallery in the morning and  into  the afternoon, with lunch there are the  gallery cafe.  My favorites were the dutch 1600’s (Vermeer) and the impressionistic stuff.

Lots of Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, and so on...Lunch was mostly  sandwiches.  After leaving the gallery, we hiked down thru St James Park to Buckingham Palace, then thru Green Park and up Piccadilly, with a stop at the Royal Academy and then onto the Piccadilly Circus area which was a lot like Times Square in NYC.  We had  coffee at a small coffee shop to kill an hour, then to Jamie Oliver’s Italian, which was a let down, but then to see Book of Mormon which was fabulous!

Wednesday, 7/26

British Museum.  Spent most of the day there - it was a rainy day, and the museum was crowded, but we saw the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin Marbles (stolen from the Parthenon in Greece), the Lewis chess set, and lots  of  other antiquities.  

Had lunch there, again, just bought some sandwiches, drank our own water and cookies and nuts and dried apricots.  At 4 pm, we had tea and  scones - I learned that I love Earl Grey tea above all others.   When we finished the museum, we went back  to the hotel to rest a bit, then to dinner at Dishoom, an indian restaurant.  We had to wait an hour to get seated, but it was very good, and we had a nice table outside.  Very good day!

Thursday  7/27

St Paul's Cathedral in the morning - actually until  about 1:15, then we walked across the Millenium Bridge to the Globe theater, where we saw a thoroughly modernized version of  Twelfth Night that included disco numbers with dancing.  

It was fun, although I had trouble following the language and hearing the actors.  Everybody else loved it more than I did.  Back to the hotel to rest a bit, then to dinner at The Port House, a spanish tapas place.  The food was good, the atmosphere was extremely loud, mostly due to a table near us of 20 somethings that were drinking and loud!  

Friday,  7/28  

Today, we are heading to Windsor Castle, which is out in the country, about a 35 minute train ride.  Even the train ride is supposed to be covered by the London Pass, and we are traveling on a train not the underground,  This should be an interesting day!  More as it develops…

And, indeed, it was a delightful day.  The train ride out to Windsor was crowded, but also covered by the London Pass, so we got there about 11:00.  We had to wait in line for nearly an hour to get into the castle, but once we did, it was very good.  We did the outside tour, then the Staterooms, which were opulent and wonderful, lots of coats of arms and heraldic stuff….lots of paintings hanging in the king and queen’s quarters.  Very nice.  Especially interesting was the Waterloo Room which commemorated the victory over Napoleon.  Very moving.  Next, we went outside and down the  hill, still in the castle, to St George’s Chapel, where King Henry the VIII was buried.  Seeing his tomb/vault marker was awesome.  Also, Catherine of Aragonne and one of  their children are also buried there.  Finally, after leaving the castle, we walked around the town shops a bit, had tea and scones at a little tea shop and bought some loose tea at another shop.  Then back on the train to London.  After resting an hour or so at the hotel, we went to dinner, just around the corner from the hotel at an Italian place, Bizarro, which was very good.  Then back to the hotel for some rest and we ended up watching Thunderball and falling asleep for the  night.  A good day.

Saturday 7/29  

Today we have an appointment for cheese tasting at 11:30 at Leadenhall Market.  After that, we plan on going to Westminster Abbey.  And  finally, a Thai restaurant for dinner.  So, we did go to the cheese tasting at Leadenhall Market, which was used for Diagonalley in the Harry Potter films.  The cheese tasting was a blast, we tasted 20 different varieties of cheese and were just stuffed by the end.  Goat, sheep, and cow milk, pasteurized and unpasteurized, aged and fresh, there were a bunch of different cheeses.  

Next we rode the underground to Westminster station to see Westminster Abbey.  That was a blast - the architecture and building are fabulous, but the  really amazing thing is seeing the tombs of  all the famous people.  We saw Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Wm Thompson Lord Kelvin, Robert Hooke, Paul Dirac, James Watt, Joule and George Green in the scientist group and for the arts, we saw DH Lawrence, CS Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1400!), W. H. Auden, Keats, Shelley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, George Eliot, TS Eliot, Laurence Olivier (actor), Charles Dickens, George Friedrich Handel, and  finally, for the royals, Mary I, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Edward II, Edward III, Henry III, and Henry V.  No doubt I missed some, the that is quite a list.

Sunday  7/30

The plan on this day is to go  to the Greenwich  Observatory and Maritime Museum.  To get there, we are planning on taking a Thames riverboat cruise.  We are up a bit earlier than normal to make this happen - I was up at 7am.  Liz and I get up, shower, and go to breakfast while the kids get up and shower.  Then they do breakfast while we are in the room getting ready for the day.  

So, the riverboat ride down the Thames took about 45 minutes and it was great - lots of scenes of eastern London that we had not yet seen.  Greenwich itself was awesome - a nice outdoor market where we bought street food  for lunch.  Next  we headed  to the Royal Observatory where we saw the house that 10 Royal Astronomers had lived in, including Edmund Halley and William Herschel.  Great exhibit on time keeping and how  it relates to navigation, and how it was such a problem for navigation in the 1800’s.  Learned all about the improvement in clocks over the years and the standardization of  time to what we used to call Greenwich Mean Time and now  cal Universal Coordinated Time.  Then on to the Maritime Museum with had a outstanding exhibit on Lord Nelson’s victory over the French and Spanish combined fleet at the battle  of Trafalgar.  Nice mix  of paintings and exhibit items - that even had the socks and breeches (pants) that Nelson wore during the battle.  Also much about the significance of the battle.  Great stuff.  Finally, we took the boat back up the Thames, now much more windy and a bit rougher, and colder.  Still great to be out in the sun rather than riding  the underground.  We went straight to dinner - we did Dishoom again, where I had chicken curry with basmati rice.  yum….Finally got back to the hotel around 9:30 pm, and just relaxed and went to bed.

Monday 7/31

Last full day of the trip.  Today we started  the day by heading to Buckingham Palace thinking we would see the changing of the guard.  We even checked the website, which said they were doing it everyday in July.  After a quick subway ride, we were there, with lots of other people, about 10:50, expecting the guard change to start at 11:00.  We even got a decent spot at the gate….and then, right about 11:00, a man on the other side of the gate came around stating that the guard changing was only being done on Wednesday and Friday this week...so that was a bust.  

Next, we walked thru St James Park a bit, which was truly beautiful.  Sarah’s contention is that London is “fancy New York” - that everything in London is like that in  NYC, but cleaner and nicer in London.  Anyway, after a short walk  we came to the Churchill War Rooms, and entered.  Wow, it was awesome - we spent nearly 3 hours learning  about how Churchill ran the war from the underground bunker, as well as a very nice museum devoted to Churchill's life.  I was especially interested in the Gallipoli offense to open a second front in Turkey during WWI.  Apparently it was a significant failure that nearly destroyed Churchill’s career as well as losing the lives of some 11000 british/ANZAC troops.  ANZAC being Austrailia/New Zealand Armed something beginning with C….    Anyway, we had lunch there at the cafe and finished up about 2:30 in the afternoon.  We had planned to go next to the Imperial War Museum, but decided it would be too much, so we headed to Hyde Park and Kensington Palace.  We saw some exhibits of William and Mary and of Diana, walked around the gardens a little and had tea and scones with clotted cream at the cafe’.  

Having discovered how much I love Earl Grey at an earlier tea on this trip, of course I had Earl Grey again!  Wonderful!

After tea, we walked thru Hyde park to the other side, then into the part of town just north of Hyde park to an underground station that was just one stop from our beloved Paddington on the Circle line.  We rode, we walked, and then we were back at the hotel.  We rested about 20 minutes, then spent some time packing up, for it was our last night.  Then we went back out to Oxford Circus again, to a Cote Brasserie we had not been to prior, for our last dinner.  French again.  Then back to the hotel for the last night.

Tuesday, Aug 1

The last day of the trip finally arrived.  Sad that it was coming to an end, but also ready to go back home, we got up a bit earlier than usual, me at 6:45, so that we could get out of the hotel by 9:00 or 9:15.  We had our usual breakfast - Liz and myself first, then Mike and Sarah would come down after they showered and dressed.  Today, though, we had to check out too.  We did, getting completely out of the room by about 9:05 andd checking our bags at the front desk.  We checked out, then headed back to the underground 1 last time - we still had enough time to spend a few more hours finishing the British Museum.  

So, we did  medieval Europe, Japan, early middle east (Babolonians, Asyrrians, Ur, etc….We saw a couple of bowls that were about 8000 years old!  We saw things that were as old to the Romans as the Romans are to us….incredible.  Then we had lunch, some sandwiches at the cafe’.   Finally, we looked at some of the last most outstanding Egyptian things we had missed, spent some time in the gift shop, and called it a day and a trip,  Then, we took our last subway ride back to Paddington, walked back to  the hotel, gathered and re-packed our luggage, then walked back to Paddington to the Heathrow Express train, then to the airport, where we said goodbye to Sarah after getting thru security together and finally onto our plane.  We have been in the air about 4 hours at this point, with another three to go, we have eaten, Mike and I both watched Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and now we wait…..

Summing up, though, here are some thoughts.  This has been the longest I have ever lived in a city and it went well.  We covered a lot of London - not all by any means, but a lot.  And as Sarah hopes, it makes the idea of traveling  to other European  destinations very doable.  I am thinking Italy with some Spain and possibly some Zurich or other Switzerland thrown in.  And I am, for the first time ever thinking that going to Croatia might be something I actually want to do.

As for London, well, the underground was terrific!  We used it mostly,but some form of public transportation every day.  Mostly we used it to travel down to the center of the city from Paddington.  We spent about  £55 each on subway riding for the 9 days.  Had we stayed closer to the center of the city, how much time and money would we have saved and how much more would the hotel costs be?  Something to think about.  Also the London Pass was great - we spent about £160 on each and used it for about £200 worth of entries and train rides.  And honestly, there were things I would not have down if we had to pay cash - the London Tower Bridge, would i have paid £8.50?   Probably not, but I certainly enjoyed it.  I think it helped give  London some of that all-inclusive feel.  As for the food, we had a lot of fun, and Liz worked hard to find good places - we ate French twice, Indian twice (probably the one we enjoyed the most), Jamie’s Italian, which was a real disappointment, a real italian restaurant in Paddington (Bizarro), a pub, a Thai place, and a Spanish Tapas place.  For lunches, we mostly did sandwiches at cafes - which was nice because that kept the costs down for lunches to typically £20 to £25.  We had tea three times - once in Windsor, once at the British Museum, and once at the cafe at Kensington Palace.  I liked the British Museum tea the best, but Liz didn’t like the clotted cream there.  I thought they had the best Earl Grey.  This is a tradition I hope to continue back home - the 4 pm tea.  Also, we ate dinner many times at or around 8pm.  It made dinner the highlight of the night and that worked very well.  All in all, it was a very very good trip - maybe the best trip I have ever taken.