This is a long post, probably with more detail than most want to read. The purpose of this blog is two fold: to serve as a way to update people on our travels, but also as a travel journal for us. So, read if you choose, or just scroll for pics.

The flight from Toronto was a fast one thanks to a strong tail wind, only 6 hours. Normally I would think this is great, but really it just meant that we got less sleep. We arrived at Gatwick at 9am London time (4am home time). We were tired but the excitement kept us moving along just fine. I’d done some research ahead of time to figure out what would be the fastest and cheapest way to get from the airport to our hotel in downtown London.

(Side note: our budget for the trip is $200/day on average. Europe will be a challenge, but Asia will help make up the difference. There is no way a family of 4 could manage this budget in London unless you just walked around and looked at things from the outside.)

The best way for us to get where we needed to go was by train; just a plain old commuter train, not the Gatwick Express (which is over $25ish). In London you can get these cards (Oyster Cards) that you can load money on to and use for trains, tubes and buses. It cuts the cost of the ride in half or more (public transit in London is not cheap!!). The train ride was interesting and a little cumbersome as we each have a backpack (mine feels giant) and Mark and I also have a daypack. In the end we made it to Victoria Station and our hotel was about a 10 minute walk from there.

I booked and paid for our accommodation in London back in February and was able to get a room for $200/night!! The same room was booking for over $300/night when we arrived. This place was in a great location, but…..it was a dump. Our kids are seriously so awesome though, they thought it was cool, and never once complained about it. They actually liked it. So, Mark and I kept our opinions to ourselves and tried to channel their positivity. We checked in, dropped off our stuff and headed out, no napping.

We pre-booked one of those hop-on/hop-off bus tours for a 24 hour period(saved %15 and it only starts when you take your first ride). We were’t sure about it, but I had read a few family travel blogs that recommended it to get your bearings and as something easy for the first day with little sleep. We ended up loving it. The main route has live guides who give tons of historical info, interesting facts and have tons of personality. We were able to get off where we wanted, look around and then get back on and continue. It also included a boat tour on the Thames. We used this to get us back to a stop close to our hotel.

We had 4 days in London and we managed to walk across Tower Bridge, take in Speakers Corner at Hyde Park on a Sunday, tour the Tower of London (crown jewels etc) with a Beefeater guide, visit the British Museum (Rosetta Stone, mummies, and the Lewis Chessmen), tour the National Gallery (Van Gogh, Monet, Rubens and many more that were probably famous. We really wished Auntie Robin were with us to help us appreciate it), hang out in Trafalgar Square, visit Abbey Road, picnic beside Westminster Abbey and parliament, watch the changing of the guard and tour Buckingham Palace. We walked no less than 10km a day! It seems like a lot as I type it here, but we never felt rushed or like we missed things at the places we toured. We obviously had to prioritize what we wanted to see and mix up free things with stuff we had to pay for. London is EXPENSIVE!!

Guided tours are probably the best thing we’ve discovered. Sometimes the guides are better than others, but the information you get far surpasses any reading you can do before, after or during a visit. When we toured the chapel at the Tower of London (you can only go in with a guide), the guide let us in on a secret….Grace was sitting where the Queen sat the last time she was in church there a month earlier!! Grace thought that was pretty cool.

One thing that helped out budget was buying food in the grocery store near our hotel and eating in the park or hotel room (if it was late). It had a hot food counter (like Sobey’s or Independent). The price of groceries is comparable to home and less expensive in a lot of cases. Breakfast was included at the hotel and was pretty good. So, we ate a few meals out, but tried to save our money for seeing the things we wanted to see.

Overall, I feel like London was a perfect introduction to travel for the girls; there are enough similarities for the experience not to be too overwhelming, but it’s definitely not home. Navigating is fairly easy, the MAPS.ME app works really well for walking, public transit and driving routes (more about driving in my next post about leaving London).