We arrived in London tired after our long flight and basically went straight to the hotel room to sleep.
The following day, we stumbled our way to the nearest tube station with our luggage and then to the apartment that we had rented. We stayed in Kensington which is a short tube ride to the city centre and near a little reminder of home.....Westfield London! (Yes, we spent quite a bit of time cooling off here!). Our apartment was small but clean and serviceable and thankfully on the ground level so we had no nasty stairs to climb!
London itself was busy, smoggy, noisy and full of people. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen so many people in my life. Thanks to our common language though, we had little trouble finding our way around and did manage to see quite a lot of sites.
Our first day of sight-seeing was spent on an open-topped bus...worth the money and helped to orient us. We also went to many other landmarks including Madame Tussauds, Harrods, London Tower, Buckingham Palace and the London Eye. On one day we hired a car and drove to Windsor Castle, Bath and Stonehenge. Having our own car space was a delight after a few days of crowds. We all loved Windsor - I can understand why the queen prefers it to Buckingham Palace. We arrived at Stonehenge as the sun was starting to drop from the sky and thought that it was just beautiful.
Our impressions of London were mixed. We really liked the people and loved that we could manage our way around it so easily. The weather was hot which surprised us as we'd heard the it wouldn't be. We found costs not unsimilar to ours....some things cheaper and some more expensive. We did, however find the air there not so great....the poor Superteen had terrible asthma there that stopped almost immediately after we left!
BEST SIGHT-SEEING EXPERIENCE.......I loved our car hire day. The English countryside is just beautiful and we wish we'd seen more of it. We drove through towns that looked like they were out of Hansel and Gretel!
OTHER THINGS WE DID.......Buckingham Palace, London Tower, London Eye, Madame Tussauds and we rode across the Tower Bridge on an open-topped bus.
CULINARY DELIGHT.....We ate at a London pub. The food choices are so typically English. DH, however did insist on having the cold beer....he wasn't game to try the luke-warm stuff!
THE KIDS RECOMMEND......Madame Tussauds. They loved it! They particularly loved getting their photographs taken next to famous people and I blushingly admit that Miss Ten and I paid for an official one next to Robert Pattinson. Pity they weren't real though!
BEST TIP.......Morrisons grocery stores are much cheaper than Waitrose!!!
NEXT TIME.....We would stay in the country! It is so gorgeous.
