Travelogue: London (part 4): Buckingham, Hamley's, Posh Tea, and an Old Enemy

After our fun family times on Thursday, we were ready for some sightseeing over the next couple of days.

The scene while waiting for the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace

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.

FRIDAY: BUCKINGHAM IS A BUST AND MY OLD ENEMY SPOTTISWOODE

Waiting for the Changing of the Guard

 We got up and got ready to go to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard.  It was supposed to happen at 11 am.  We got there early (about 45 minutes) and there were plenty of tourists waiting around, and we saw some Beefeaters on the inside of the palace.  About 25 minutes before the changing was supposed to start, we saw a coterie of Horses come by across the road, and we thought they were getting ready for the changing.

While we waited, we talked about our upcoming plans, including how to get our stuff over to the train station during the giant Bike London event that started the next day.  AA climbed the statue of Victoria in the center of the square while we waited.  It was quite sunny and beautiful and crowded.

Surely the guards would come and change soon!

More waiting for the Change. 

11 am came and went, and nothing.  11:30 came and went, and nothing.  Finally, Stephanie looked it up on her internet device and it turned out that they had changed the Changing of the Guard to 7:30 am.! There was going to be no ceremony for today!  We decamped quickly before the crowd discovered it and became unruly.  There were lots of Americans in the crowd, and we didn't want to get sued!

We then walked over to the Green Park next door to meet my other college friend Spottiswoode.  (I call him my enemy because his band is appropriately called Spottiswoode and His Enemies)  He and his daughter (age 1.5 or so) came to meet us in the park.  We walked around, had lunch, walked around some more in the park.  It was great to see him.  I've known him for 25+ years, we rarely see each other, but we manage to pick up where we left off somehow each time we see each other!

I did manage to get a photo taken with him, but it is on my wife's phone, so I may never see it! (and neither will you!)

Here's a picture of the statue of Queen Victoria instead.  She looks NOT AMUSED.

"We are not amused."

HAMLEY'S AND POSH TEA: LONDON TRADITIONS

We kept on walking and got over to Hamley's Toy Store, which bills itself as the finest toy store in the world.  It lives up to its billing! 7 floors of fun!


 (Spode and his young daughter left, as she had just fallen asleep, and the toy store was loud and full of surprises.)

We were agog with all of the cool toys.  Many of them were similar to our toys, but there were lots of other toys we had never seen before.  We bought a couple that they had on display.  They also had magicians and demonstrators on every floor, and their own brand of magic stuff.  AA got a magic set, of course, and some other stuff as well.

I highly recommend bringing your kid to Hamley's the next time you are in London.

What's on tap at Hamley's.

The queen and I have an audience. Or should I say, The queen was my audience!

Here's a sample Magic trick from one of Hamley's resident magicians!

Yes, we bought a magic set.

After Hamley's we had a  posh tea at Fortnum and Mason.  While it was not exactly what I was dying to do, my wife and son were really into it, and it turned out to be a lot of fun.  As I have mentioned before, traveling with your family means a lot of compromises, because everybody has different things they want to do.  But the good news is, you get to experience things you might not otherwise experience!

Posh Tea was one of those things.  Basically, you go to a very fancy place with very fancy teas and all different kinds of sandwiches and little pastries, and you gorge yourself until you can't eat anymore.  It was fairly pricey, a very touristy thing to do, and yet somehow I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would.  Maybe next time my wife suggests something I might not like (Mani/Pedi ?  RomCom?) I should take her up on it.

Fortnum & Mason has been doing this forever.  It works for them!

One of the fabulous sweets at Fortnum and Mason

My family is simply too full to even eat any more sweets!  (I on the other hand, was just very full.  I ate some more anyway.  :O(  

After High Tea, we went back to the room for a siesta.  Then we packed everything that we could into our 3 big suitcases and took a taxi over to St. Pancras and left them with the Left Luggage people there.  We then took a night bus back to our hotel, and got up very early for the next day's adventures.

The Making of Harry Potter! (see next post for that!)

Travelogue London (Part 3) Hampton Court Palace with cousins

Hampton Court Palace in the rain.  It's still really beautiful

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.

The coat of arms of Henry VIII (I think)

On Thursday, despite a late night the night before, we got up pretty early in the morning.  We took the Tube to Waterloo, and then took a commuter train to Hampton Court.  We popped out of the station and met up there with my wife's British cousins.  The mom of the family is about my wife's age, and when they were younger they were penpals!

 They brought two of their 4 kids with them (one lives in Israel, and one is married, the other two that came with were 13 and 8).  The 8-year old (a girl) was only 2 months younger than my son.  The older son 13, is a brilliant track and field athlete and a really nice guy. He was also really good with my son.

It's always great when cousins get together and they like each other.  (It's also nice when you meet members of your wife's family that you like!  Which fortunately for me, has been everyone of Stephanie's family members.  Really!)   In this case, although they'd never met, they got on at once as if they were old friends.  And then it turned out they had lots of similarities, including a love of Disney World, hypermobility, and a love of reading.  So it worked out great!) Especially since we were spending the whole day with them!

They were big fans of Hampton Court Palace, and it's a good thing, because their tour of this historic site was much better than an audio guide or even an impersonal tour guide.

One of the many marble frieses.  I believe this was Henry's coat of arms . (God on my Right)

The bookstore had lots of good historical
books for kids. BUY ON AMAZON.

For those that don't know, Hampton Court Palace was built in the early 1500's by Cardinal Wollesley, who fell out of favor soon after it was built with Henry VIII.  Henry was given the palace by the Cardinal, and then the Cardinal died two years later.  The palace was one of 60 houses that the king owned, but it was one of the few that could hold his entire retinue of 700 people.  (At the time, the King needed to travel all over England, staying in a place only a few days, shoring up his support, and then moving on.)

The palace was later held by other monarchs and was used as a royal residence for over 200 years, being expanded and expanded upon, especially by William and Mary.  King George I and George II were the last monarchs to reside in the palace, in the mid-1700's.   In 1838, Queen Victoria opened the house to the public as a museum, and it has been a museum ever since.

During the 20nth century It had been used as private residences for British nobility (in which the queen allowed people to live there in return for their service to the crown) until the early 1990's when an elderly resident set the place on fire.  Now, no one lives in Hampton Court, except for the many tour guides and docents.  (And many many ghosts, if the rumors are to be believed)

One of the many formal gardens at Hampton Court Palace

The grounds are absolutely enormous, and feature room after room, sumptuously done and beautifully decorated.  There is also a tennis court, commissioned by Henry VIII himself, amazing and sumptuous gardens, a very famous hedge maze, and a wonderful playground for children.

The Hedge Maze at Hampton Court is one of the most famous Mazes in the world.
(photo courtesy of Hampton Court Palace)

There was a very interesting play featuring Henry VIII, the Cardinal, and Ann Boleyn about the creation of the palace, and also the founding of the Anglican church.  The actors were wonderful, and the play split up at one point so that different groups followed different actors around.  Once again, if I had been on my own, I would have followed the players all around, but we were with the group of us, and so I acquiesced.

We spent the day going from one sumptuous room to another, having a picnic outdoors (even though there was a little rain), getting lost in a hedge maze, and then ending the day on the playground around 3 pm.    I especially liked the kitchens, which were enormous and were actually cooking meat in one of the giant fireplaces.  There was also a special chocolate kitchen, the king's privy chambers, an absolutely beautiful chapel, and lots more.  Over all, we spent about 3.5 hours there before we had to take the train back, and we didn't see everything.  I'd happily return another time.

Find out more about Hampton Court Palace on https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/

Henry VIII even has his own beer for sale available in the gift shop.  It looked good, but I didn't try it.

I admit I bear a resemblance to the king.

We left the palace and reversed our trail back to our hotel, (although there was some train fu, as a number of trains didn't come the way we thought they'd come. We had a half an hour rest, and then took the train out towards Golders Green, where my wife had even more cousins.  They had organized a dinner in our honor, and it was quite fun to attend and meet even more of her cousins, as well as the cousins we'd spent the day with.  They were all very nice, and treated us like royalty!  (In fact, the guy who hosted the party kept on insisting that I look like Henry VIII.  Which come to think of it, might not be a compliment.  Never mind!)  :O)

 A few of the cousins weren't able to make it, but it turned out we got to see them in Barcelona.  But that's a different story!

We took one of the last train's back to our hotel and got ready for our next day of adventures.

My son and his cousin feast at the table of Henry VIII.

It was a day of a lot of walking and museums, and AA did great.

I think it was good that he got to spend some time with kids, because that's been kind of lacking in our European adventure so far.

And that they were cousins that he liked-- well, that made a big difference.

My wife was over the moon that she got to see these cousins who she only sees once every 15 years or so.

Hopefully we will see them sooner than that the next time!

Travelogue: London (part 2): Tower of London, Golden Hinde, the play that goes wrong.

Because of the recent train disaster, I didn't really get to talk about the stuff we did Wednesday-Saturday (well briefly, about Harry Potter on Saturday) but wanted to chronicle more thoroughly our London adventure.  I'm getting further and further behind on my travel chronicling!  I will endeavor to catch up.

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.

On Wednesday, we did quite a lot.  Here's the rough breakdown:

TOWER OF LONDON

We got up a little later than we wanted and made our way over to the Tower of London.  We'd walked by it the day before, it was on our London Pass, and it was something we definitely wanted to do.

It was raining a little bit, but fortunately, we'd brought our umbrellas.  We walked in and even in the rain it was pretty crowded. We wanted to take the Yeoman tour (they are supposed to be funny) but one had just left, so we decided to see the Crown Jewels on our own, and come back for the tour.  There was a line of about 35 minutes (supposedly) when we went in, but we cleared it in about 20 minutes.

We saw the Crown Jewels which were pretty cool, but very crowded.  Sadly I did not get to try on a crown,  although they do have a virtual area where kids can see themselves in a crown.  Weirdly, I didn't even try.  (But my son did!)

Buy this on Amazon.

We came back to the tour of the Yeoman with about 3 minutes to go, and waited for about 20 minutes until a guy came out and said Next tour in half an hour.  So we kiboshed that but instead did the walking tour on our own of the tower walls.  We skipped the dungeon tour (which was supposed to be incredibly gory and torture filled, and AA did not want any of that ("creepy!") so we walked through the tower walls, where the king used to live in the 1300s, then ate lunch at the tower, which was surprisingly good, and probably much better than prisoners were used to getting.  The most fascinating thing to me was how small the king's area for sleeping was (Considering he was a king)  It was probably quite sumptuous in those days, but for us, not so much.

At the gift shop I bought AA a book about all the stuff he missed.  They had a whole series of books about London and England from a kid's point of view- quite funny books in the Horrible Histories series.  I really think they are great.  Aaron complained that this book was too gory but he read it all, and he remembers a lot of it.  They are written very cheekily with a little bit of London attitude and I found them funny and informative.

My son tries on the Crowned Jewels (virtually)
Not sure why I didn't!  Next Time!

One of the things I really liked were all of the myths/superstitions about the Tower.  There's a myth/legend going about that if the Ravens ever leave the tower of London, the Tower will fall.  So to this day, they keep at least 6 ravens in the tower.  It's weird and barbaric and totally in keeping with what I know about England.  Love it!



As we started to exit, there was a little play going on, where the commoners were grousing about their taxes and threatening to rebel (which they actually did in the 1380's, one of the few times the secure Tower of London has been taken over.)

The play was quite fun, and I actually wanted to see more of it.  But we had to get going, because I was going to see one of my old college chums and her husband.

 I would happily go back to the Tower the next time I am in London and spend some more time there.   The architecture is amazing, and the history of it (over 1000 years!) just makes me awed.

(Although there are so many other things I didn't do, that I don't know if it will get first priority next time)

THE GOLDEN HIND

After that, we walked down the road to the City Hall to meet my friend Alison and her husband.  I hadn't seen Alison in about 5 years (she came to NY and we did a walking tour of Battery Park City with AA) so it was nice to see her, meet her husband, and have her see how the boy has progressed.  She was very complimentary about him (and I will take full credit!)

We walked the Southbank of the Thames, through the Clink area (former London Prison) and saw the replica of the Golden Hinde, Sir Francis Drake's ship with which he circumnavigated the globe.  It was pretty amazing to consider how many people would live in these tiny areas for a year or more at a time under terrible conditions.  (Most of the under part of the boat I couldn't stand -under it was too short.

The boat itself has also circumnavigated the globe as well!  The docent told me that it had been to Newport, New York, and lots of other places as well.

If you are on that side of the river, it's a cheap self-guided tour, but the boy and I and Alison's husband Julian had a great time touching every rope, asking the guide about the rope and pulley system, and peering out the tiny windows.

(I just looked it up, and it looks like it may have closed: http://www.goldenhinde.com/.  We asked a lot of questions, but I didn't think it was THAT many to close it down!  Unless this is a different organization, or the website is just old?  I don't see anything in Yelp about it closing.) 

I would happily waste my
time here as well!

After that we continued onward, walking past the Globe theatre, the Southbank theatre, and the Tate Modern.  We didn't go in to any of these (another time) as we needed to take our leave of Alison and Julian to grab a quick dinner and go to the theatre.  Of course I forgot to take a picture with Alison because I am a dolt.

But I grabbed a bunch of fun pictures, including the Trash cans of the South Bank, a shark tank adventure that we didn't do (supporting some kind of crazy shark movie) and me posing with Laurence Olivier.

Selfie in front of the Globe Theatre.  (hello Mr. Shakespeare!)

Shark tank on the South Bank.  In support of
a dumb-looking movie.  But an interesting idea!

I believe that Sir Laurence and I share a striking resemblance!  (But I'm biased)

 THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG

We stopped at Covent Garden, went into one of my favorite stores in the world (Pollocks Toy Theatre Shop), took an obligatory selfie at the PUnch and Judy Pub.

Surprisingly, there weren't street performers going at the time, so we grabbed a quick dinner, and then headed off to the Duchess Theatre to see THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG.  It was a marvelously funny farce, in which an amateur theatre society attempts to put on a murder mystery and the set literally falls apart.  Seriously, the set is another character in this play.

All of the characters were delightful, really a lot of fun.  My son really loved it, especially the surly working class stage manager, who is constantly looking for (and sometimes playing inadvertently) his Duran Duran CD.

We had a great time at the play, but we were so tired after this pretty busy day that we decided to take a
cab home.  We had an early day planned for the next day too!

The cast of the Play that goes Wrong.  It was very very funny!

Pollocks Toy Shop.  I especially love their Toy Theatres!

Obligatory selfie in front of Punch and Judy Pub.

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.