Lovely London!

Both of our families arrived in London about an hour apart and it was a wonderful reunion at our AirBnB full of hugs, a few tears, and gifts of Cheetos and queso from back home. It really was so great to be reunited with friends we love so much. We would stay five days in London before moving to our next destination and we had an absolutely wonderful time together.

Here are some our lovely London highlights.

Battersea Park – 

Holy Moly, this is a park! Considering we were traveling with three kids, we ended up being really lucky to be staying less than 5 minutes from Battersea Park, which we quickly discovered was a great spot for kids. Not only was there a giant, and I mean giant, playground area, but there was mini golf, a treetop ropes course, a zoo, and lots of water activities. The kids had a great time spending their days at Battersea Park and Rebecca and I had even more fun having a few glasses of wine while the rest of the families played mini-golf!

If you take one thing from this post, let it be this – if you are traveling in London with kids, GO SEE MARY POPPINS! I mean, seeing Mary Poppins in London – there’s no better way to do it. It’s iconic. The show was so great. I thought it was something we were just doing for the kiddos, but truthfully the adults were smiling from ear to ear by the end of the show too. When we went to bed that night Paul and I laid awake talking about how glad we were that Rebecca had pushed us to get tickets. Traveling on a budget means we don’t normally splurge on things like shows when we visit new towns. We have to watch our pennies.  But Mary Poppins was worth everyone one of them. It doesn’t hurt that London theaters serve ice cream at intermission!

Paul and I have been wanting to race ever since we left the states (well, technicality a lot longer because of the year+ long hiatus on races because of covid).  Finding races when you don’t speak the language and basically live, when you do stay put, in rural France is near impossible. I miss just googling “race calendar in x” and finding a place to run.  Anyway, once we knew we’d be in London and with friends who could watch Nora while we ran, we found a small 10k race in Victoria Park. Paul and I took an early morning bus to the park (it was over an hour away, like everything) and got there just in time to run our little hearts out. The weather was supposed to be rainy and cold, but it ended up holding just long enough for us to finish. And finish we did! I ended up winning my division and Paul placed sixth in his (still way, way faster than me). The race wasn’t necessarily anything special. In fact, the course was really boring. But, just getting out and racing after so long felt so, so good! You don’t realize how much you miss something until it is gone.

High tea is another absolute must if you’re in London with kids. There are tons of kid-friendly/focused high tea options to choose from. Rebecca and I took the girls to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory High Tea at the One Aldwych Hotel and again, it was a great experience not just for the kids, but for the adults too! Normally when you sign up for a kids event with food, you can expect rubbery pizza and half spoiled fruit (Chucky Cheese, I’m talking to you), so my expectations weren’t that high. But thankfully, our little finger sandwiches were actually very, very tasty. The tea part was not the girls favorite. I mean they are American kids, hot tea isn’t their thing. But all of the delicious sweets were their thing.  And I loved the teas, not as much as the champagnes they also served, but you know, the tea was good too.

Did you know the London Bridge (the one that’s “falling down, falling down”) is not the iconic two-towered bridge we think of when we picture the best London sites? The London Bridge is actually a bit drab. The iconic bridge (pictured above) in London is actually named Tower Bridge and we had a great visit. Anyone can walk over the pedestrian portion of the bridge so if you don’t like heights (and I do not, so do as I say, not as I do), you can still experience the bridge and it’s lovely London view from ground level. We bought tickets though, and took the girls on the hike up the tower stairs.

Just my luck, the two towers are connected by a glass floor walkway. As you can imagine, standing on glass high above a functioning, as in multiple lanes of traffic passing by, bridge was not my cup of tea. The girls, however, absolutely loved the glass walkway, stopping to pose for a a thousand pictures all while I hovered nervously saying things like, “Okay, don’t move so much,” or “Are we done yet,” and “you’re freaking me out.” 

After you do both sides of the bridge you can go down and tour the inner workings of the original steam engine powering the bridge. The kids and Paul were pretty into it, but I was feeling like I had earned myself a post-tower drink!

Obviously you can’t visit London with kids without riding The London Eye. It’s a must. But here’s a tip: SPLURGE FOR THE FAST TRACK TICKET. It’s totally worth it, the entire area near the Eye is super crowded and the lines are really long. It was so, so nice to bypass all of that and just hop on. Once again, Rebecca pushed us a little out of our cheapskate comfort zone and it was totally worth it. The ride itself is about 30 minutes long, but if flies by. The 360° views from your glass enclosed pod are absolutely awesome. You’ll find yourself snappy pictures from all angles. Talk about a lovely London Sky!

I think I’ve written about our favorite adventures, but I thought I would throw in a few honorable mentions from our five days in London. Here we go:

Yup, that’s right. We had a visit from The Tooth Fairy while we were in London. Nora was brushing her teeth before bed one night and she called me over when she saw a bunch of blood in the sink. That’s when we realized another tooth was out. We had to dig around in toothpaste spit, but we were able to find the tooth and luckily The Tooth Fairy was able to find us in our London AirBnB.

It just so happened that one of my cousins and her husband moved from The States to London for a year right around when Paul and I left for France for a year. Must be something in the genes. Luckily, we were able to connect one night in London for wonderful dinner and drinks. We hadn’t seen each other in something like 25 years, but thanks to social media, we’ve been able to keep up with one another and connecting in real life was definitely a highlight of our trip!

We stopped by Westminster Abbey one day while we were just walking around and holy cow, I had no idea the size! I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time now walking around huge old churches, but this one definitely is right up near the top in terms of jaw dropping. 

One of the best parts of the Abbey tour is that they audio/video guides had a separate kids tour and it kept all three kiddos busy and entertained searching for hidden objects and learning fun facts while the adults got to wander around room to room. I am always so happy when tourist spots make themselves kid-friendly. Like, yes, Westminster Abbey is really impressive, but not so much for a six-year-old. Giving them something to do that’s age appropriate makes visiting historical sites so much easier for parents (and kids).

Okay now for a few of the things we didn’t love so much:

Okay, so I am going to be honest here, this is high on almost every “what to do in London” list, but actually, I didn’t think it was worth it at all. First let me admit, I am not into the whole royal family thing at all. I’m not against it, but other than coveting just about everything Kate wears, I just don’t care much about the royal family. Although, as a side note, Paul and I did see Prince Charles and Camilla just randomly driving around and that was kind of cool. But, back to the changing of the guard. I was truthfully, unimpressed. The whole thing is clearly a giant deal. They close off the surrounding streets and people line the sidewalks and parades of soldiers(??) go by in turns. But the actual event is behind the palace gates and basically, unless you are standing right pressed up to the gate with your head between the bars, you can’t see anything. 

And even the stuff you can see kind of makes no sense because it’s far away and you just catch glimpses of the whole thing. Truly, I don’t know why people love the changing of the guard so much. But they do. I honestly enjoyed walking the surrounding gardens and parks much more.

Okay, so admittedly, we stayed a little further out from town, so this one is a little bit our fault, but getting around London was such a slog. I guess I’ve gotten used to fast tram/train travel around France and it was a little shocking when everything took close to an hour to get to. We were talking to someone while we were there and they explained, “Yep, everything in London is 45 minutes away, whether it’s 3 miles or 30 miles, it’s all 45 minutes away.” I remember looking at my phone maps on race day and it said the park was an hour and a half away and I was sure my app was malfunctioning. Nope. It just takes that long to get around London. Thankfully, the kids absolutely loved riding the double decker buses so at least they were happy.

Unfortunately this won’t be the last time that you hear about the tummy bug that accompanied us on our 18-day, three-country, five-city family-friends adventure. London hit the Clarks pretty hard. Let’s just say there are a couple of London cabs that needed some extra deep cleaning after the tummy bug hit the Clark kids. It also took Rebecca out for an entire day and Chris had a rough day there too. At first we were chalking it up to motion/flying sickness, then Indian food and over served drinks, but by the third case we were all pretty clued into what was happening. Thankfully for everyone the bug never lasted more than about 12 hours. But for everyone those 12 hours were brutal.

Something else I want to say about London: It totally felt like cheating! Y’all, seriously, it was shocking. Everything was in English! Everyone was speaking English! We weren’t forced to walk around like mutes holding our translator up to everything and everyone. It was wild. I really felt like someone was going to pop out and be like “You’re disqualified. By entering England you have cheated on your year abroad.” It was just so easy. Now, I’m sure that there are plenty of expats who would be happy to point out to me all of the many and complicated differences between the United States and London. But to them I would say, live in France and then talk to me. London was a breeze. And it was nice to be a cheater for a little while. In an odd way I missed the “hardness” of our normal traveling life but I also knew we were headed straight to Paris from London where we would once again be befuddled my menus we can’t read and lunch and dinner hours we always miss.

A few more photos from London.  Have I mentioned we loved, LOVED spending time with our friends??