Travelogue: London! (Part 1): Arrival

We have had an action packed couple of days in London, part of our great European adventure.  We've got four more days here, and from here we go to Barcelona for 3 weeks while my wife is teaching there at a new business school!)

OUR LONDON TRIP This post is part of the travelogue of our London Trip 2017. If you'd like to read the posts in chronological order they are below. Part 1:Travelogue London: Arrival Part 2: Travelogue London: The Tower of London/Golden Hind/Play That Goes Wrong Part 3: Travelogue London: Hampton Court Palace Part 4: Travelogue London:  Buckingham, Hamley's, Posh Tea, and an Old Enemy Part 5: Travelogue London: The Making of Harry Potter (coming soon) Part 6: Travelogue London: 48 hours of very hard travel by train.

Our bags.  Over 200 lbs of luggage for 3 people!

Packing the morning we were to leave was a little eventful, as the suitcase we bought for our son for this flight (brand new, never used) broke its zipper as we tried to close it.  So much for planning.  We fortunately had a suitcase in reserve and managed to fit everything in.  We are gone for four weeks, so we have a lot of stuff.  The weight limit on international is 23 kilos, and our bags weighed in at 23, 23, and 21.9.  (23 kilos is about 51 lbs!)

Our flight was relatively uneventful, the boy slept, my wife tried to sleep, and I watched Logan.  It was good, but pretty violent.  Glad the boy slept through it!

Having a smartphone provided by your foreign hotel is Handy!

Selfie in front of Big Ben

Big Ben through the London Eye.  The old and the new!

We got in early in the morning and sailed through customs/passport control, and then decided to take the Tube to our hotel in Lambeth North.  It worked well, except as mentioned above, we have lots of luggage, and the Tube isn't exactly handicapped accessible.  I ended up lugging all of our luggage up lots of stairs.

Our hotel is great- we are staying at the Marlin Waterloo. It has a pretty central location steps from a train station, walking distance to Westminster Bridge, the London Eye, Aquarium etc, has air conditioning, free wifi, and we got here there was a little cellphone in our room for us to take. It has wifi, free local calls, and is very Handy. In fact, that's the name of it. A great innovation in today's technological world.


I haven't been to London since 1995, although I lived here one summer in 1985 going to acting school.  It's changed quite a bit, even as all the historical elements have stayed in place.  I love how we are traveling, although I wish we'd brought less stuff...  One of the things I remarked to my wife is that if I were choosing the itinerary alone, or if she were choosing the itinerary alone, we would do things very differently.  But it's a great mix of all of our interests!

We've just been her two days, but have done quite a lot in a short amount of time. After getting to the room and taking a nap to clear our heads, we walked around our neighborhood area-- walked up and over Westminster Bridge over by Westminster Abbey, passing Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, over towards Parliament, 10 Downing Street, walked the edge of St. James Park (the Pelican area) and up into Picadilly Circus area, ate dinner, at a little steak joint and then walked into Leicester Square and bought discount tickets for The Play That Goes Wrong for Wed.   After a sojourn in Leicester Square's Lego store and a couple of other stores (Hello, Kingdom of Sweets) we then bought Oyster cards and tubed back to the hotel for a well deserved sleep.

Weirdly this does not get one into
 the Ministry of Magic.  (Nor is it a TARDIS)

Today we got up a little late, picked up one of those ON/OFF tourist buses (included in our London Pass that we bought online) got off at London Bridge, walked over there, and around the new South Bank building the Shard, saw the HMS Belfast museum, ate lunch at a cute Japanese takeway restaurant called Ito (made by the guys from Pret).

After that we walked up through Tower Bridge (but decided not to do the tower or the bridge exhibition) The tower is tomorrow. We then went to Kings Cross station to see Platform 9 3/4 (totally mobbed) and looked at St. Pancras station, (we leave from there on Saturday).  We also walked into the Youtube creator store, and saw the outside of the Youtube creator space (if you have 10K or more subscribers, it's a free service you can use!)  and then we ended up eating dinner at a great fish place in Borough Market with my wife's cousins.   I had the fish and chips and the sticky toffee pudding and two local beers.

Tomorrow it's Tower of London in the morning, followed by hanging around with some friends from college in the afternoon, and the play in the evening.

Thursday we are going to Hampton Court Palace for a picnic with more cousins, followed by dinner with yet more cousins. (My wife has a lot of cousins in London!)

Friday we are at liberty, but will do more sightseeing, I'm sure, including a cruise up the river Thames.  Got any suggestions?

Saturday morning we are up bright and early to drop our stuff off at St. Pancras station, but then double back to get on the bus to take the Harry Potter studio tour. (Yes, we are travelling with a nine year old!)

And then we take the overnight train to Barcelona by the way of Toulouse.  A whole 'nother set of adventures!  Can't wait!

The statue of Chaplin in Leicester Square.  (Chaplin is the guy in the middle, in case its hard to tell!)

London Bridge is not falling down.  (But it wouldn't matter, this is the Tower Bridge!)

The highlight for him so far-- visiting Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station!

Family photo of us in the  Lego Tube, we are squished in between a Beefeater and Shakespeare.
Yep, that sums up London alright!

Win a BFG Trip to Great Britain!

I was recently looking at Facebook, and found on my friend Jeff Bogle's of (OWTK) facebook page a cool link that he posted to win a trip to Great Britain, sponsored by VisitBritain.
https://www.visitbritain.com/us/en/campaigns/bfg-exp

Especially with Brexit having just been voted on, this struck me as a lot of fun.  And it comes with the opportunity to attend the Roald Dahl celebration in Wales.  He's one of my favorite authors(for both kids and adult books), my son loved the BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (but was weirdly scared of the movie version of James and the Giant Peach)  Anyway, Dahl is a favorite in this house, and I was intrigued.

PLEASE  NOTE: This is not a sponsored post- (although, Great Britain tourism council or other councils , I'm always open for business!)

Punch and Judy show at Cardiff Castle.
Photo courtesy of walesonline.co.uk.
 Photo by Richard Schindler

As I started to fill out the entry form, it asked me what giant British locations I'd like to visit.  I assumed this was just a condition to prove that you and not a robot entered.  Just in case, I looked at the Terms and Conditions, and was shocked to find something out.  (Emphasis mine)

6. This is a game of skill, and chance plays no part in determining the winner. Each entry will be individually judged based on originality, creative merit and humour of the answer provided. The judging will take place on or around 3 August 2016 at the Promoter’s premises and the winner will be the entry that scored the highest in the opinion of the judges based on the judging criteria. The judges may select additional reserve entries which they determine to be the next best and record them in order of merit in case of an invalid entry or ineligible entrant.

Game of skill, eh?  Most of these kinds of contests in the US are chance based.  Challenge accepted!

I started writing a sonnet, but sonnets are hard, and getting a bunch of jokes and thoughts into it (as well as that damned iambic pentameter) was getting too hard, so after about half an hour, I saved what I could of the sonnet, and switched it to a more verse-like poem where the structure and verse is easier and I could play a little more.  (Yeah, Doggerel!)




Here's the poem I wrote:

Big Ben, photo courtesy of wikipedia.

Let’s visit Britain on  a 5 day tour

Explore all of England from shore to shore,

While we are there we’ll have loads of fun.

(Do you measure fun in stones or metric tonnes?)

Let’s go to Cardiff, the city by the sea

Watch Punch and Judy, laugh with glee.

Breathe in the salt and the fog and the fresh air

Listen to the sounds of the county fair.

Then to the middle to see the Pictish wonder

Stonehenge: ancient miracle or cosmic blunder?

As we see historic stones that have been split asunder

We might feel a chill from history (or perhaps its the thunder?)

Last stop London, cosmopolitan seat

Big Ben, Changing of the Guard, Get something to eat

Visit a museum, see the Crown Jewels.

Walk along the Thames, think of Shakespeare’s Fools.

On to the West End, to see a funny play

It’s almost time to end our trip, but that’s okay.

We’ve had a blast, checking out Eng-land.

Now all we have to do is win, wouldn’t that be grand?

Okay, so I'm not the best poet in the world, but it's got a rhyme scheme, it's got some humor,  it mostly scans, and it was quick!

So I submit it, but there's an error-- it tells me that it has to be less than 140 characters!  Yikes-- I just spent like an hour between writing the sonnet, and then changing it to this doggerel.

Undaunted, I pared it down to the size of a tweet and entered.

Please enter if you are intrigued as well.  It would be great if I inspired someone to win!  (Of course, it would be even better if I won, but you can't have everything!)

Click this link to see books by Roald Dahl on Amazon

Oh yes, and here's the BFG Trailer, if you are interested.