We normally plan our bigger trips out a year or so in advance, but around mid-June, things just fell in to place, and we booked a Fall Break trip to London! We were all so very excited to get back across the pond. We flew out on Monday evening for an overnight flight.
It's never easy to fly overnight; rest simply isn't easy. It's pretty exciting when you start to see the beautiful and familiar landmarks though.
Thankfully we had no trouble retrieving our bags, or taking the Heathrow Express into town. We decided to walk the couple of blocks with our bags to our hotel, the Marriott Kensington. This was a great choice for a hotel. First, it's in a perfect location, right between the Glouster Road tube stop (from our Samford study abroad days!) and Earl's Crossing tube stop. It was nice to have a tube choice depending on where we were going. Second, Kensington is a lovely area, so it felt clean and safe the whole time we were there. Third, we had booked a family room which was perfect for us. It's a little bit bigger than a standard hotel room which we appreciated. Ryan took one of the queen size beds, Lily and I shared one, and Mia took the pull-out sofa bed. Housekeeping left us new bottles of water and biscoff cookies each day too which is always a plus. We were glad to get there.
We didn't want to sit too long though because we knew we needed to stay awake and moving, so pretty much dropped our things off and headed back out. First priority was finding lunch as it was a little after 1. We found our way to Orjowan which was a fantastic authentic Lebanese restaurant. It was so delicious and exactly what we needed right then.
Feeling a little more refreshed and energized after lunch, we walked down to the Museum of Natural History. This is such a beautiful museum, inside and out. It was a gorgeous day too. There were so many interesting exhibits to see, including lots of different fossils and crystals. I love that all the museums in London are free, so everyone has a chance to enjoy these incredible artifacts.
We stayed until the museum closed at 5. It was our goal to stay awake until 8pm that night but we were all fading. None of us were particularly hungry so we decided to make a stop at Sainbury's grocery on our way back to the hotel. It's always fun to walk in other country's groceries and see what kind of goodies they have. We bought a few small items for dinner that evening along with some breakfast items for the next day.
We got back, unpacked our things, ate our little dinner snacks, showered, and realized that the next episode of Only Murders In The Building had dropped that day. Our family loves this show, so it made the perfect excuse for staying up a bit longer as we enjoyed this episode together.
The show ended, and we realized it was about 9pm. We had hit our goal plus some! We all headed to bed and slept pretty soundly that evening. We all needed it and were glad to have a lovely place to rest.
Wednesday morning we all got up, ate our little breakfast, and then headed over to the Cabinet War Rooms. We were thrilled to meet up with the Corley family here! They were also in London for Fall Break, and this was a place both families wanted to visit. It was really cool to see how Prime Minister Churchill led his country to victory in WW2 from these underground control rooms. We didn't realize until after the fact that Ryan, Susan, and I actually took a wrong turn and missed about half of the exhibit which was all about Churchill. Whoops. At least we saw the fascinating info about his war leadership.
As Ryan, Susan, and I were waiting outside for the rest of the group (who did not miss the Churchill exhibit), a car with two police escorts came driving by. There was a tour group nearby, and the guide said that based on our location, that was most likely a senior royal or the prime minister. We three decided right then and there it simply must have been King Charles. How cool that we got to see him pass?!
Our families decided to have lunch together afterwards at the delicious Pizza Express to continue our fun. As we walked towards the tube stop, we passed some of the famous red phone booths with Big Ben in the background. How can you not stop and take a picture? Even better that a big double decker bus drove by right then; three iconic London items in one shot. Perfect!
Approaching train and Lily with Addison; fun times!
We said our goodbyes to the Corleys after lunch, and we headed over to visit Old Baileys. Unfortunately, my bag wasn't allowed in at all because our four cell phones were inside; apparently, cells are not allowed anywhere in the building. That was a bummer. So, Lily and Ryan went on in to watch a case for about 30 minutes, while Mia and I headed up the road a bit and sat outside the beautiful St. Paul's Cathedral to wait. It was a lovely day which we were thankful for. When they met up with us a bit later, we decided to go inside the Cathedral. However, they let us know it would be closing in less than 30 minutes; it didn't make sense to stay given the large price we'd have to pay, so we headed on out.
We went on back to the hotel to rest for about an hour as we were still getting over the jet lag. Then we freshened up and changed clothes to head back out. We went to the Adelphi Theater to see Back to the Future the musical. We only bought these tickets a week or so ago because we'd heard several reviews talk about how great this show actually is. Ryan and I love the movie, but we were having a hard time picturing it as a musical. It turned out to be really fun; we all absolutely loved it! There were some pretty cool special effects, especially around the Delorian time machine. I'm so glad we decided to give it a try!
It was after 11pm when we got back to Glouster Road. The only thing open was a KFC, so we stopped in there super quick to grab a little bite. We took it back to the hotel and took turns eating, showing, and getting ready for bed. What a fun day!
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