We start the day on the London Eye. (It was in Julia’s "A to Z Mystery: The Castle Crime," so we have to do it.) Next we visit Hamley’s (suggested by Hannah), which, between the six floors of toys, employees running demos of the cool toys, and the high prices, is reminiscent of the Toys R Us in Times Square (R.I.P.). I feel bad dragging the kids away but the next stop ends up being everyone’s favorite part of the whole trip: Claridge’s for tea. (It’s been a whole two and a half days since our last tea!) It was a tea that my friend Suzanne originally suggested, and I thought she was just mentioning a random tea place in her hotel until I researched teas in London and this was on the top of every list.
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| View of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben from the London Eye |
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| Julia and Kathy on the London Eye |
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| Julia and James in front of Big Ben. |
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| James and Julia at Hamley's toy store. Monarchist Julia liked Lego Queen Elizabeth. James liked her corgi. |
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James and Julia with Lego Queen's Guards.
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The kids get special menus that are basically coloring books with boxes of colored pencils.
Because they’re not fans of chocolate milk or sparkling lemonade, they somehow end up
with (virgin) strawberry daiquiris.
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| James with our dapper Claridge's server and their bow ties. This tee shirt is James's dress up outfit for tea. |
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| And Julia pounds down another strawberry daiquiri. |
I go with Julia to the Claridge’s bathroom and there’s an attendant there, so I quietly try to explain to Julia how bathroom attendants work. She has lots of questions, most not said very softly: “So you pay her for a towel?” “Is there something special about the towel?” “Do you get to keep the towel?” Personally, I think they’re all pretty reasonable questions. Questions done, Julia muses that after she poops it’s nice to just sit in peace for a little bit. Meanwhile, I’m still standing in her stall waiting for her to finish already.
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| Mark at tea |
Each of the desserts in the sweets course are on par with Alexander’s Patisserie, the splurge-worthy dessert place near us, AND they bring extras of anything you want. But sadly by then we’re full. As we leave there’s a sweets trolley full of candy canes, lollipops, hard candies, and mints, and the kids have a ball filling their to-go containers. The entire tea takes three hours, and we trek a mile afterwards to Buckingham Palace (again, featured in "The Castle Crime" so a must see!) so I’m sure we walk ALL of it off.
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| Kathy wants to attack the desserts. |
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| About to eat dessert at Claridge's. I didn't see until later that James had an "attack the desserts" pose. I wonder where he got that from... |
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| Mark said this scene with the doting adults at the sweets trolley totally reminded him of "Annie" when she arrives at the mansion and learns (through song, of course) that all the adults are there to serve her. |
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| Britons are very polite. |
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| James pretends to be mad at Julia for trapping him inside. |
Julia’s favorite thing of the day: Tea at Claridge’s and joking later that the bathroom attendant should have wiped her butt (she keeps giggling at that idea)
James’s favorite: Tea at Claridge’s, especially the brownie.
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