Ryan had Monday off work, so we decided to do a short trip up to London. We left Sunday morning and got back Monday evening. We decided to drive and take the Eurotunnel (staying just one night make the tunnel cheaper than if you stay more than that and if you take the tunnel it only takes 35 min to cross the channel).
Ryan did ALL the driving...driving on the left side of the road made my head hurt. I found it interesting though that every crosswalk tells you which way to look. It's like they know it's strange they drive on the opposite side on the road. Anyways, we drove straight downtown and parked in the Marble Arch underground parking garage.
Since it was our first time in London, we chose to do a 24hr hop on hop off bus tour. I enjoyed it, however it did rain the whole time so that kinda stunk. The bus tour came with a free river cruise which was excellent. It gave us a chance to get out of the rain, nurse Kevin, and let Kherington use the potty. Kids under 5 were free which suited us perfectly. We had a little bit of an issue finding the stops to get back on because buses were on 'diversion'. Apparently 'diversion' is quite normal with all the events going on in London which cause roads to close.
Back to nursing...public nursing is not really my thing, but I was pretty discrete and it worked. The only really weird time was when we were on the top of the bus (part of it was covered) and another bus pulled up right next to us so even though I was facing away from people on our bus, I was right next to the people on the top of the other bus...yeah, good times.
Kherington got to enjoy some ice cream after the cruise and we tracked down Chipotle for lunch which was tasty. Both Kherington and Kevin were champs. It is definitely more work traveling with 2 kids, but we had a good time.
The next day we took our time in the morning getting ready but were still our the door around 9am. We stopped at the grocery store to grab some breakfast then drove down to the Temple. The London temple grounds are definitely the most beautiful temple grounds I have ever seen. We enjoyed wandering around and taking some nice pictures.
Next up was Costco :). I LOVE Costco. Costco in London was very similar to the US, however when you do the price conversion (pound to dollar) it was WAY expensive. With that said we did stock up on diapers and wipes (both of which were on sale), ordered some pictures and had some hot dogs and pizza. I had hoped to replenish my all-purpose flour, sugar, brown sugar and powdered sugar supply, but those supplies were just different/expensive so I opted not to.
It was a fun, short trip with two kids that travel great :).
So what would we do the same/differently?I am torn between driving vs. taking the fast train (brussels to london). For the 4 of us to go it was cheaper to drive, but if Ryan and I go I think I would try finding a decent price for the euro train (we want to do another overnight without the kids and go to Wicked and a night bus tour). It was nice to have the car to go to other places (costco & temple)
We did like the hop on hop off bus, but I think next time I would just buy an all day bus/tube pass (fyi: apparently if you get the Oyster card it is cheaper) that way we'd have complete access to go anywhere and London's buses are double deckers anyways so it would just be a matter of finding the right one to ride.
We stayed at a hotel out by the Heathrow airport which was nice since we had a car and weren't planning on going into the city again, but if we took the train I would look near a stop on the Tube.
Ah yes, and I need to remember to change Kevin's diaper...when we got to our hotel we found he had completely pooed and peed out of it...oops
