Last stop on our summer adventures was London! Our train from Lille was running pretty late so we took a cab to the hotel (Great Scotland Yard Hotel) and Andrew hurried to his work dinner. The kids and I went to the pub at the corner (The Clarence) for dinner.

The next day was my 44th birthday! Andrew planned a nice day with the kids (British Museum, Westminster Abbey) so I could do some solo sightseeing. After a lovely breakfast at the hotel we went our separate ways and I walked over to see the Courtauld Gallery at Somerset House. It was a beautiful little museum notable due to its impressionist collections, including the famous self-portrait of van Gogh with bandaged ear! I enjoyed the informational panels as well, great little museum.

After the museum I got a quick bite to eat and walked back to the hotel (past the Benjamin Franklin house) to shower before the matinee of Hello, Dolly! starring Imelda Staunton. She was amazing! I’d never seen the show before (not even the movie) but I so enjoyed it.

That night we got a sitter so we could go out to a fancy birthday dinner at a delicious Italian restaurant. So good! A perfect end to a memorable birthday.

The next day we went out to the Greenwich Observatory in the morning.

The prime meridian line!

We learned about John Harrison and the years of hard work that it took him to develop the marine chronometer to determine longitude at sea.

Then we walked down the hill and had lunch at a sausage place.

Sarah for some reason loved the text on this box of water.

The Cutty Sark

Then we took a boat taxi from Greenwich around to the Tower of London stop.

By this point in the trip the kids were completely rejecting any audio guides, which is a shame because the one at the Tower of London was very well done. Our experience with audio guides had its ups and downs — the one at the Rodin museum was a highlight, then the one at the Louvre was just terrible, and the Versailles one was pretty bad as well. Erik Satie was a good one.

Anyway! I listened to the audio guide and learned that this little alcove was the royal toilet! No plumbing, it would just go outside the walls.

I also learned about the execution block and this poor guy — it took three swings of the axe to behead him. So when Anne Boleyn was to be executed apparently she requested that it be done by sword rather than an axe, and Henry VIII acquiesced and brought in a skilled French swordsman for her beheading.

We learned that the Tower at different times housed a lot of exotic animals including an elephant, a polar bear, lions, monkeys. It sounds like none of them survived that long since no one knew how to take care of them or what to feed them.

On the way back to our hotel we eavesdropped on a Harry Potter walking tour going by our hotel and learned that the street was used for exterior shots of the Ministry of Magic entrance. This spot in particular you can see when Harry, Ron, and Hermione are sneaking in using polyjuice potion in the Deathly Hallows part 1.

That night we took the kids to their first Michelin star restaurant, perhaps the best Indian restaurant in the world? It’s called Benares. They enjoyed their usual chicken kebab appetizer and butter chicken entree and acknowledged it was tasty, though Sarah still claims our local place (Coriander) is her favorite. 🙂

Friday July 12 was (supposed to be) our last full day in London and we’d planned a visit to the Harry Potter Studios while Andrew went into the office for work. The Studios visit was a big hit; both kids declare it to be their favorite part of the whole vacation. You get to walk through the various sets and see costumes and props. And also learn about the creatures and special effects.

They opened with the Great Hall and we learned that originally the floating candles were really lit up and hanging from wires, but the flames burned through the wires causing the candles to fall! So they switched over to CGI flames.

The story of Hagrid was pretty interesting — they had one actor who did all the closeups. And another who was just really tall, but he’d also wear lifts and a robot Hagrid head to make him even taller, for scenes he is in with other actors. We’ve been rewatching the movies and I keep trying to notice when it’s a robot head but it’s pretty seamless.

I liked seeing that the invisibility cloak was a green screen on one side.

There was a green screen area where you could ride a broom but we decided not to purchase the video, it was kind of disappointing.

The Forbidden Forest set was particularly cool and creepy.

I was also really impressed with the train and Platform 9 3/4.

About halfway through the tour there’s a Backlot Cafe with lots of kid-friendly food options — chicken tenders, burgers, fries, etc, so everyone was happy. I also got a butterbeer to try but the kids refused to have a sip – they are both anti-carbonation. It was a butterscotch soda with a weird foam that was sweet, almost like marshmallow on top.

Outside on the backlot we also got to see Privet Drive, the Knight Bus, the Herbology classroom, the bridge first added by Alfonso Cuaron in the 3rd movie. It was all very cool.

The second half of the tour was focused more on creating the magic — there were rooms on makeup, special effects, creature robotics, artwork, and models. They also had the Gringotts sets, before and after the dragon escape.

Oh and Diagon Alley of course!

Lastly they showed us a giant room with a complete model of Hogwarts, which was used for most of the distant establishing shots in all the movies. They did do a lot of exterior filming at various castles and such throughout England but most of the time the distant exterior shots were of this model! Now we are rewatching the movies and every time we see it we turn to each other and say “It’s only a model” in a Monty Python voice (ala the Holy Grail).

On the way out we stopped in the gift shop (of course!) to buy some souvenirs and then got some chocolate soft serve in the cafe before our driver pickup time. The soft serve was remarkably good.

For their souvenirs both kids chose a wand — Blaine went for the Gryffindor wand modeled after the sword of Gryffindor and Sarah decided on the Ravenclaw wand designed to resemble the diadem of Ravenclaw.

We got back to the hotel and started packing for our departure the following morning when a text came in informing me that our flight had been cancelled! No explanation. Luckily Andrew is an expert traveler and was not phased at all — he got us booked on a different flight leaving Sunday and got an extra hotel room booked at the new hotel. Andrew was moving hotels on Saturday to be closer to his offices since he was going to stay in London an extra week for work. We had a delicious dinner that night and thought about what to do on our bonus day in London.

On Saturday we packed up and went for a nice breakfast. Then the kids and I took a walk near our hotel while Andrew took the luggage over to our new hotel to check in. We happened upon the annual Belgium military parade at the Whitehall Cenotaph and watched for awhile. Apparently the King and Queen of Belgium were there!

Then we walked down to get a better view of Big Ben before taking the tube to Paddington to meet up with Andrew.

From Paddington we took the train out to see Windsor Castle. They do not allow photos inside so here’s an exterior shot:

We also went into St. George’s Chapel and saw the royal burial sites including the most recent, Queen Elizabeth II, as well as Henry VIII and many others. The most bizarre was a man named John Schorne who was a rector credited with miracles including find a well in a drought and casting the devil into a boot (he is usually pictured holding a boot for this reason).

Then it was back to Paddington and to the last hotel of our trip, the Cafe Royal.

We realized this hotel had a pool and the kids were pretty done with touring so we went out to a sports shop and got swimsuits for Andrew and the kids for the following morning. Then we went out for our final dinner in London, on Carnaby Street.

On the walk back we got to see the outside of Andrew’s offices.

The next morning we enjoyed a fancy breakfast at our fancy hotel. Apparently a lot of famous people have been through the Cafe Royal and it seemed like there were pictures of Oscar Wilde and David Bowie everywhere.

Then we spent a relaxing morning at the hotel pool before packing up and heading to Heathrow for our 4pm flight back to JFK.

It was a fabulous trip and that is a testament to all of Andrew’s careful planning! Gone are the days when you can travel on the fly, almost everything required advanced timed tickets and many of the nights we had our dinner plans reserved in advance as well. Hotels, transportation, museums, babysitters, dinner reservations, everything went smoothly except for a few things out of our control. We are so lucky to have such an experienced traveler to put together these amazing trips. The kids did really well, and showed a lot more patience and energy compared to our trip to India a year earlier. It’s fun to travel at their pace and see things we’ve been to before with a different focus. And to see some new things we’ve never seen before!