Benicia... I Just Met a Town Named Benicia...

When I told most people that I went to Benicia over the weekend, the first thing they said was, “Where?” And then I excitedly told them how Benicia was the third state capital of California! (Mark: “Stop saying boring facts in a voice like they’re interesting.”)

Basically I was just planning our day around visiting a new tea place. The Camellia Tea Room was lovely, housed in an 1897 building with beautifully wallpapered tin ceilings. (Mark: “Yay, more history.”) The kids cracked each other up with haughty expressions while doing “fancy pours” of lemonade from their teapots, which meant they held the pot up high above their glasses. Somehow we got through this without spills.

Julia clinks teacups with me.

James's haughty tea expression

I do my traditional "attack the tea tray" pose.

Julia does a fancy high pour of lemonade.

Tea family portrait

And while we didn’t enter the State Capitol (that would have been a whole $10 for the 4 of us and this was no Sacramento capitol building), we did pass by it on our walk through the historical downtown on our way to the waterfront. I have to say Benicia is really an overlooked, charming little town.

Julia and James in front of the Benicia Capitol Building.

We made our way to the beach at Elan & Cove Streets to check out Benicia’s little known sea glass beach. (Most websites mention a different location but a few people said this spot was the true sea glass beach.) We descended some steps in between houses to a deserted little cove. The kids enjoyed playing in the water and climbing on the rocks, and when we looked closely we saw a little sea glass. Definitely more than I’d seen before at a beach, but still disappointing.

Taking the hard-to-find public stairs on the way to the sea glass beach.

She wrote "J M" in the sand for me (M = Mommy) and decorated it with sea glass. (This was before we found the true sea glass beach so there were only a few pieces of sea glass here.)

This girl. She pushes my buttons but also so much of the time melts me.

But then a family came down the stairs. They led us to the real sea glass beach - I just hadn’t followed the coast far enough to the west of the pier - and there we found another cove and it was FULL of sea glass. I have never seen a beach basically paved in sea glass before - it was pretty magical. Julia got to work beachcombing and oddly enough we took fewer pieces back here than from the other beach simply because there was so much it wasn’t special any more. It was nice just to enjoy it. For some reason James enjoyed picking up big handfuls of sea glass and dumping it into the water to be “cleaned.”

Sea glass looks prettier when it's wet, but this is what most of the ground of the sea glass beach looked like.

Wet sea glass

James holds some sea glass... before dumping it into the Bay.

Then after a full day of Benicia-ing we were tired and drove to Berkeley to visit our friends, Kelsi and Drew, and marvel at their 14 month twin girls and in Mark’s case, play hide-and-seek over and over again with their 3-year-old son who kept negotiating for more.

Kelsi and Drew's daughter, Simone, finishing up a good cry.

Day 7: The Best. Tea. Ever.

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.

View of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben from the London Eye

Julia and Kathy on the London Eye

Julia and James in front of Big Ben.

James and Julia at Hamley's toy store. Monarchist Julia liked Lego Queen Elizabeth. James liked her corgi.

I'm guessing that if you're not allowed to steady the queen by the elbow, you're definitely not supposed to sit on her lap.

James and Julia with Lego Queen's Guards.

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.

James with our dapper Claridge's server and their bow ties. This tee shirt is James's dress up outfit for tea.

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.

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.

Kathy wants to attack the desserts.

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...

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.

Britons are very polite.

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.

(For the record, Claridge’s beat out the London Eye and Hamley’s toy store.)


Day 6: Windsor Castle
Day 8: Ropes Course, V+A, and Harrod's

Day 5: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Tea & National Gallery

Two whole days have passed so it’s time for another tea! This time we check out the One Aldywich Hotel’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tea. The sweets include chocolate caramel milk, lemon meringue pie in glasses, and gold dusted chocolate eggs filled with cheesecake and mango. One highlight of the experience is candy floss, which is what the English call cotton candy. They have you try to guess the flavor of the candy floss, and we are unsuccessful in our (many) guesses. Our server reveals that 70% of Brits get it right and 0% of Americans. (I don’t want to give it away lest someone decides to go here - Do it! It’s awesome! - so I’ll obscure it at the bottom of this post.)

Julia and candy floss

James and candy floss

Kathy and cake pop

The trip has really made Julia obsessed with tea (and salmon sandwiches and - believe it or not - CAVIAR since the first place for tea served it on top of their salmon), and she declares that she wants to go for tea with just me and Gaga one day. Mark assures James that they will go for a See’s lunch. The concierge at our tea hotel asks if we enjoyed our tea. We tell him we did, and he responds not with “very good” (or even “jolly good”), but with a “tip top!” which is my new favorite British-ism.

Kathy and Julia

Julia and James come from the future to ride the elevator to have tea.

We explore the Covent Garden Piazza, and since it’s sweltering we walk to the air conditioned
National Gallery. I am blown away at how close I am to famous paintings, and Julia studiously
takes lots of photos of her favorite ones, prompting many visitors to smile. James is bored but
then asks Julia to take pictures of the dogs that often show up in the corners of paintings for
him. Then they take pictures of naked butts in paintings and laugh and laugh. I’m so proud.

Julia, Mark, and James view "The Ambassadors." I wanted to go to the National Gallery just for the moment where they see the skull pop out of the painting from this angle.

Julia is very serious about her photos.

"Photos of butts are HILARIOUS!"

Julia breaks out her British accent on the subway, telling one woman she almost stumbles on, “If I fall on you, don’t be cross.” She responds, “I won’t be cross but I may have to take you home with me.”

Julia's still raising her fist at the British the day after July 4th.

Julia and a Peter Rabbit British 50 pence coin. (She loves rabbits.)

Julia’s favorite thing of the day: Tea (Which part? All of it.)

James’s favorite: Tea (again, all of it)

Spoiler alert. The answer to the flavor of the candy floss can be seen here. Incidentally,
just after tea we see that flavor in a candy display in the Covent Garden Piazza. You
Brits and your wacky flavors.

Day 4: The Cotswolds
Day 6: Windsor Castle

Day 2: Tower of London & Science Tea

We walk through the crowded, but charming, Columbia Road Flower Market, and enjoy
listening to the flower market barkers: “Three for a tenner!” (That would be a ten pound
note).

Next we visit the Tower of London. At the Crown Jewels exhibition, I keep finding James
climbing things (an ongoing theme of the trip) or sitting on a bar in front of a display,
not looking at it, and obliviously scooting along while blocking people’s views.

James and Julia with a Beefeater at the Tower of London.

And who doesn't want to see King Henry VIII's armor?

We walk across the Tower Bridge and take the Underground to The Ampersand Hotel’s
Science Tea (my full review is at the link). It’s one of several surprise teas I have
planned. (We end up not doing the Moroccan tea or the “High Chai” Indian tea, but we
do go to three full afternoon teas.) The Science Tea looks better than it tastes, but it
does look pretty cool. There’s dry ice causing smoke to pour down the tiered tea tray,
beakers of juice, syringes of raspberry jam, test tubes of sprinkles, and chocolate
mousse shaped like a planet with a chocolate spaceman. There’s even an
archaeological dig for a dino cookie and a chocolate fossil hidden under chocolate soil.

At the Tower Bridge Mark drinks outside The Bridge Master's Dining Room. (We have no idea what this is either.)

The kids try to lift the Underground sign on our first trip on the Tube.

Julia at the science tea. Check out the smoke from the dry ice.

Kathy uses the syringe to squeeze raspberry jam into her sesame macaron.

Julia LOVES tea.

James is in a chocolate coma after tea.

Julia’s favorite thing of the day: Tea.

James’s favorite: Jumping down the stairs of the hotel where we had tea.


Day 1: We Arrive in East London - July 2017
Day 3: Indian Food, Greenwich, and Mark's Cousin Shelby