Day 8: Ropes Course, V+A, and Harrod’s

We finally relent and buy the kids fidget spinners. At least Julia’s has the Union Jack so it’s kind of a souvenir, right? Right? We have to confiscate them when walking around because otherwise they would never look up. They try to do tricks with the fidget spinners so all we hear is the sound of the the spinners hitting the ground on buses and subways over and over again.

Julia and her Union jack fidget spinner (and matching bracelet)

Doing tricks with their fidget spinners. This time they're balancing them on their knees.

We follow the lead of Hannah who just visited London, and take the kids to the Go Ape ropes course in Battersea Park. Even though it’s the Junior course, it’s surprisingly high and tricky to negotiate. When I make the mistake of trying to race across one of the crossings, I end up slamming my leg against the wood support and struggle to regain balance. Mark tells me that Julia laughed while James said, “I hope Mommy’s OK.” Reportedly, sociopath Julia also laughed when she saw two people collide on a zipline later.

Showing off our muscles after completing our ropes course. See those people high in the air crossing bridges and stuff? Yeah, we did that.

 Most British ice cream truck ever.

The harness guy hears Julia’s British accent and laughs and laughs. (The Brits seem to really enjoy hearing American children attempt their accent.) He tells the harness lady (but imagine in a slightly cockney accent), “Listen to this one. She sounds more posh than you, you street urchin!”

Kathy and Julia trade sunglasses.

A sign you will only find in Britain.

We visit the Victoria and Albert Museum and I wish I had a month to see the whole thing. It’s like the Louvre of randomness. For instance, when we follow a medieval-themed treasure hunt through the museum, one highlight is Leonardo Da Vinci’s 2 ½ inch high notebook penned in mirror writing. Another cool thing is seeing playing cards and stencils, and a video of how they were made in the 1400s.

James models a medieval burgher's hat similar to the ones on the tapestry behind him at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

It's not a trip to a museum without James and Julia giggling while taking pictures of butts.

We keep the tradition alive of losing a kid while on vacation by losing James in Harrod’s. He’s upset but when he calms down he wants to show me the path he took through Harrod’s food hall, retracing his whole adventure.

Having a snack of chapati (honeyed flatbread) and karak (tea that's similar to chai) at the aptly named Qatari tea room, Chapati and Karak. We took off our shoes to sit in the pillowed booth.

Julia is excited about the caviar counter at Harrod's. She only thinks she likes caviar because there was a little bit on her smoked salmon savory at a tea. Give up, Julia. There's no way we're buying it.

Julia’s favorite thing of the day: Harrod’s, especially a savory cake made of layers of salmon
and crepe (which she didn’t eat, and I’m not even sure she would like).

James’s favorite: Being found at Harrod’s.

Day 7: The Best. Tea. Ever.
Day 9: Taking the Train to Paris

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 6: Windsor Castle

Julia happened to read the A to Z Mystery: The Castle Crime, before we announced our vacation destinations, and she viewed the places the kids in the book visited as a checklist for our trip. Therefore we HAD to go to Windsor Castle, and I’m glad we did since it was one of my favorite parts of our trip. Julia asked if we’d run into the queen like the kids in the book. Sorry, Julia, no.

Julia jumps down our apartment stairs. (Yes, those are pom poms in her skirt.)

By order of the queen (seriously! I inquired!) no pictures are allowed inside the castle. Methinks the queen wants us to buy the souvenir books. So you’ll have to take my word (and the pictures I found online) that the state apartments were amazing. There are paintings by Rubens and Van Eyck that no one even notices because of all the awesome stuff in the room: so many weapons that they’re displayed in patterns and shapes, and of course more of King Henry VIII’s armor. There are halls of heraldic banners, and Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, an intricate, several story dollhouse that fascinated the kids.

Windsor Castle

Why have guns unless you can display them in patterns and shapes on the wall?

In front of Windsor Castle's Round Tower.

We end up having four problems with trains getting back (among other things whole systems
are down and a tree falls on our alternate route), so it’s good that we stick around to eat
dinner. We sup across the Thames in Eton, and finish with yet another sticky toffee pudding.
On trains and subways I have been teaching the kids the hand slap I learned in the
mid-1980s to the McDonald’s jingle of the day, “Big Mac, Filet of Fish…” and Julia in
particular is enthralled. If you start hearing it at school, you know whom to blame.

The Thames as it flows between the towns of Windsor and Eton. We would have liked to take a boat out on the river, but discovered them too late.

Julia attacks her third sticky toffee pudding of the trip.

James has fun climbing on the London subway and Mommy's lap.

Sorry, America, for reintroducing "Big Mac, Filet of Fish" to schools this fall.

Julia’s favorite thing of the day: Jumping off stairs at Windsor Castle, and the china room at Windsor Castle

James’s favorite: Queen Mary’s doll house at Windsor Castle

Day 5: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Tea & National Gallery
Day 7: The Best. Tea. Ever.

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 4: The Cotswolds

We use a Groupon to take a bus tour of the Cotswolds, which is officially an AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). The Cotswolds are basically rolling English countryside with rural villages and stone houses that look like they came out of a Thomas Kinkaid painting - but you know, not sucky.

Mark at the London Google office. (The clock reads “Mountain View.”)

Our first stop is Bibury which is so charming that three people leave our tour, find an Air
Bnb, and choose to stay the night and return on the next day’s bus. Julia asks why we
didn’t do that. If I’d thought of it I very well might have. Of the things we did that didn’t
involve tea, Bibury is the highlight of our trip.

Kathy at the iconic Arlington Row in Bibury. I feel like The Painter of Light's going to get me.

Fun with walls.

The village of Bourton-on-the-Water is lovely, and - you guessed it! - located right on the water. By the time we get to Stow-on-the-Wold (dig these hyphenated names!), Mark is pretty much Cotswold-town’ed out and we stop for tea.

Kathy seizes the moment at Bourton-on-the-Water.

It doesn't take much to push over Kathy.

Julia's turn!

Julia thought pretend "push people in the water" photos were the best thing ever.

Cotswolds selfie!

The kids are wearing what I thought was country-inspired attire - meaning hats - but admittedly in retrospect it IS a little much. On two separate occasions two Asian women on the tour take pictures of the kids without asking. (I’m not sure why but Asian women stateside have gone gaga for my kids before, too. At one Taiwanese restaurant, the servers flashed peace signs, took selfies with James, and gave the kids free food.)

It was Julia's idea to pose that way.

Our tour guide takes a fancy to the kids, and they speak to him in their British accents. (He
claims he’s impressed.) Julia also reveals to him their plan for celebrating July 4th (that
day) in England by raising their fists against the British. He laughs and says they deserve
it. He ends up telling this story to everyone on the bus microphone, twice.

Julia loves selfies with Mommy.

Not sure that paint's working…

Julia’s favorite thing of the day: Bibury and sticky toffee pudding.

James’s favorite: Sticky toffee pudding.

Day 3: Indian Food, Greenwich, and Mark's Cousin Shelby
Day 5: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Tea & National Gallery