Whirlwind Trip to London

We’re on the train back from London, after several wonderfully busy and exhausting days. We arrived by coach on Tuesday night and settled into a busy youth hostel in the middle of Holland Park on the west side of the city. The hostel was in one wing of the Holland House, which was built in 1605 as Cope Castle for a courtier of King James I. In the late 1700s it was acquired by the family of the Baron Holland, renamed Holland House, and became the social centre of the Whig party in nineteenth century London. The main part of the castle was destroyed by bombing in World War II, and what is left is now a lovely orangery, a café, and the hostel. It’s off to one side of lovely Holland Park, and though it’s a bit inconvenient to walk down a lengthy path through the park to get home at night, having a park at your doorstep is well worth it. On the first evening we were there, David took the students to a pub and then off to a poetry reading at a nearby theatre that is run by the wife of a Colgate alum, so I took the kids through Holland Park for a tour of the daffodils, a walk in the Kyoto Garden, and a bit of time on the adventure playground. There are a number of peacocks wandering through the park, and we were all pretty shocked when we came upon one. Emma said, “Look Leah! A peacock!” Leah stopped dead in her tracks and stared at the peacock slowly walking her way, then shrieked, “That’s a mean guy, and he’s coming to eat me!” We assured her that the peacock meant her no harm, and after a moment he flew away, up into a tree. I had no idea that peacocks could fly, and Leah found this very reassuring since the path to the playground was now clear. This playground ended up being the highlight of the trip for Leah and John, and for the remainder of our visit, they both asked at the end of every museum visit or group meal, “Can we just go back to the playground now?”

Our itinerary for the group trip to London was quite full, and we tried to rearrange our schedule to keep us out of the Underground during rush hour, since it can be difficult to move a large group through the Tube on overcrowded trains. On our first day, we had a guided tour of the Tate Modern and a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral, with a break in the middle for a group lunch. On the second day, we had a tour of the Tower of London, a quick break for everyone to grab some lunch at the Borough Market, and an afternoon visit to the British Museum. I skipped this one because I didn’t want Leah to be a distraction for the group, and instead I took her to a nearby playground called Coram’s Fields. I asked John to come with me to help me find my way and to help keep an eye on Leah. I did feel a little guilty at taking him away from such a wonderful museum, but I assumed he would prefer the playground to the presentation that the tour guide was giving the students. When we first arrived, John took Leah over to a tall climbing structure, and she scrambled right up. John and I stayed on the ground, watching as Leah quickly met a friend who was a bit younger and smaller than she. At one point, the little girl tried to lower herself to a platform below without using the ladder, and she hung for a moment by her fingers. John turned to me and asked if he should go up to help, and I said no…that she would be ok. Just as I said that, she lost her grip and fell down the platform and the one below as well, landing on her head in a heap with a loud scream. The mum scrambled up and rescued the girl, and after about 15 seconds of wailing she recovered and wandered off to play with something else. She was fine, but John was totally traumatized. “I just feel so bad for that little girl,” he kept saying. To make matters worse, Leah later slid into a little boy who was sitting at the bottom of the slide, and the little boy scolded Leah for not waiting until the slide was clear. This bothered John as well for some reason, and for the rest of the playground visit he wanted to talk about whether he should have intervened in either case. When it was time for us to leave and go back to the British Museum to meet the students, John insisted on pushing Leah’s stroller, and taught her that if some little kid on a playground messed with her again, she should say, “Don’t say that to me! I have a big brother and he will fix you if you do!”

That evening, we took the students on a “flight” on the London Eye at sunset, and then to a dim sum restaurant for a group meal. Some of the students were flying out the next day for a week in Paris, and it was wonderful fun to talk with them about their plans. London is a great city, and I love visiting the gardens and navigating the Tube. I find almost everyone who lives in London to be wonderfully friendly and accommodating, and I think it’s a very easy city to visit with kids, though like most other big cities, it’s probably best for those who are rich or young. Since we are neither, we are a bit limited in how much we can do and see, but for the most part we really enjoy London. However, there is simply no city like Paris!

 In the last two days, when most of our students had left, we went with those remaining to the Museum of London and walked through and past some of London’s most notable landmarks: Westminster Abbey, St. James Park, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square. When we had some free time, we made it to the Marylebone area of London, which I have never seen. John was duly impressed with the line of chauffeured Rolls Royces waiting outside some of the townhouses, and spent most of our walk snapping pictures of the various Bentleys and Jaguars we saw along the way. I intended to take the kids to Regents Park, but it wasn’t terribly warm outside at this point so we spent a few hours in the Marylebone Daunt Bookstore instead. This is a great bookstore, with soaring wooden shelves and stained glass windows. They specialize in travel books, and they organize all of their books by country, so interspersed between the guide books to Italy one can find a number of novels set there. It’s a great concept, and David and I took turns in the kids’ section reading books to Leah to give each other a chance to explore. We hadn’t planned any more group meals since some of the students weren’t there, and instead our family ended up finding dinner in a tiny little café run by an Egyptian family across from the Kensington Gardens that was full of photos and memorabilia about Princess Diana. John didn’t know who she was, and it was interesting to tell him her story while in London, surrounded by these images of her throughout her life.

On our last full day in London, we were fully museumed out. Instead, we did what all London families do on a Saturday and headed to a playground. I had intended to take the kids to the Diana Memorial Playground, but after John’s experience at Coram’s Fields, he was a bit reluctant to try out an unfamiliar playground so we stuck with the known at Holland Park. After a few hours, we followed the crowds to Portobello Market, which is a street market full of antiques, food, vintage clothes and jewelry, and a random collection of all kinds of other stuff. We almost bought a small phrenology bust for David, but we weren’t sure we would be able to get it home without breaking it. Instead, we just bought food: falafel, fruit, and some delicious beans and rice from a guy from Ghana. The market was so crowded that it was a bit of a trick to get Leah’s stroller through the streets, and the crowds and excitement kept her from falling asleep so she started to get a bit squirrely. Emma and I did a bit of shopping while David and John tried to keep Leah buckled in, and once she got too frustrated, we let her out and took her to a nearby toy store. The toy store, like all British toy stores, had a substantial line of stuffed Peppa Pig characters. We told Leah she could choose two of the smallest size, and after a bit of deliberation, she decided she wanted Peppa and Peppa’s brother George. However, the store seemed to have only the larger size of George in stock. We dug through the pile for a bit looking for a smaller one, but couldn’t find it. David said he would find the shopkeeper and ask, and John turned to me and said, “You know what’s great about this? Dad is going to have to say to this guy: (in a British accent) Pardon me, sir, do you have a small George?”

The market took quite a bit out of Leah and the boys, so we swung by the hostel to let them have a nap. Emma and I weren’t interested in wasting a minute of our time remaining in London, so we walked to the Kensington High Street to do some shopping. My criteria: if I had seen a photo of Kate Middleton shopping there, I was going to pop in. So, we stopped at Top Shop, Zara, and Uniqlo. We didn’t find anything, but it was possibly because I had only one eye on the clothing, while the other was busy scanning the crowds for royalty and other famous faces. When the boys called to say that Leah was awake, we returned to the hostel to meet them. We also saw one of the remaining students, and asked him to come with us for dinner. We walked to a pub in Earl’s Court to meet David’s parents, who were in London and had just come back from a day trip to Hampton Court Palace.  The pub was brimming with people and it was quite a squeeze to get our whole party of eight through the crowd of rugby fans there to watch Six Nations and into a table at the dining area in the back of the pub. But we made it and had a lovely pub meal…a great way to celebrate a last night in England.

This morning we had quite the journey to get from our hostel, through the Underground and to the train station with a fair bit of luggage and Leah’s stroller. Some of the Underground lines were suspended for repair, so we had to take an unusual journey to King’s Cross. In addition, we were traveling with David’s parents, who were going to come back to Scotland with us for a few weeks. In all, we made quite the spectacle moving through King’s Cross station with all our luggage! Fortunately, we gave ourselves plenty of time to get there, and made our train, with time to spare, for the five hour trip from London to Leuchars. There will be a fair bit of laundry to do when we return, and the kids will have some catching up to do for school in the next few days, but overall our week-long journey was time (and lots of money!) well spent!