London Trip

With our extra time off from Kids Kabin we decided to take trips to Prague and London. I was the only one who had never been to London so everything was new for me! We spent December 29-January 2 in London.

We got into London a little after noon and made our way to the Sisters place in Kensington. First we got Oyster Cards that allow us to get discounts on all the transport systems in London. For example, if you were to buy a single ticket from Kings Cross Station to the High Street Kensington tube stop would cost £4 but only costs £1.80 with the Oyster card. We got settled into our nice rooms in the newly renovated building at the convent and then headed out to go to the Natural History Museum.

The building the museum is in is really pretty and ornate. Surprisingly there was a long line to get into the museum. Luckily it moved fairly quickly. We stayed in the museum until it closed at 6 pm looking at many cool exhibits including dinosaurs and a slice of a giant sequoia tree from California. We went to Tesco and bought food to make a meal back at the convent. The building we were staying in has mostly offices, guest rooms so it isn’t used often in the evening and there is an extra kitchen that we were able to use which was great! We were able to save some money by cooking dinner a couple times while we were there.

On our second day, we decided to take a walking tour of London. But our first order of business was going to TKTS to get theatre tickets! We ended up getting tickets for STOMP. Then we headed over to where the tour started.We got there a few minutes early so we wandered through Winter Wonderland which was a sort of Christmas market and amusement park combo. I had every intention of returning to look at what was being sold but ran out of time. The tour company, Sandemans, gives free walking tours in many big cities in Europe and we have been on their tours in Prague, Dublin and Edinburgh and they have been informative and fun so we decided to do the one in London as well. Since the sights are spread out more in London we did not see as many places and there was less meat to the walk in general. It was not a waste of time but definitely not as good as the other ones we have been on. After the tour we walked around and I got to see more of Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye before heading over to the National Gallery for some art. One great thing about London is that there are lots of free museums!! It is fabulous! Abby really enjoyed all the museums since she is the art person of the three of us. I enjoyed them as well but not nearly as much as Abby since in most museums she saw several pieces she has studied in school or at least read about. After the museum we found a place to eat dinner before heading over to the theatre for STOMP. I didn’t know much about STOMP before going except that is was a group using various items to make noises. Well, I thought it was AMAZING!!! I was smiling pretty much the entire time!! So much fun! The theatre was small as well so we had great seat (I don’t think there would have been any bad seats in the theatre). It was a great way to end the first full day in London.
On New Year’s Eve, Heather, another AMA in the south of England came up and joined us for the day. We went to the British Museum in the morning and got to see lots of neat stuff there. It was cool to see the Rosetta Stone but there were lots of other pieces that I found most interesting like all the hieroglyphics! It was a very large museum and we didn’t make it through everything before our stomachs were growling. We took a lunch break and then headed over to the Tate Modern. It took a long time to get there because we wanted to walk but that was fine. There were some cool pieces in the museum but I have a lot harder time understanding and appreciating modern art than most other forms of art. The big exhibit at the moment is:
It is lots and lots of hand painted porcelain sunflower seeds. This one was hard for me to understand.
After that we rushed over to Westminster Abbey for the Evensong service. Melissa has a trick of seeing churches by going to a short service instead of paying the entrance fee. You don’t see everything you would see if you pay the entrance fee but you do get to chance to admire the architecture and the church itself.

We debated for a long time about what to do New Year’s Eve. Even at 5:30 and before people were lining up along the river to get a good view of the fireworks and we heard that by 7:30 many of the viewing areas would be full and closed off. Standing around for 4+ hours to see 7 minutes of fireworks did not sound like much fun to us. Then we would have had to wait a long time to get out and back to where we were staying since there would be so many people trying to get on the tube or just walking in the streets as well. So we looked online and found that there was a park that had great views of the city and some people suggested going there to watch the fireworks instead. We got up there only to realize that the park was HUGE and we had no idea where to find a good view of the city or what direction we even needed to be looking! Luckily we found a bunch of people all waiting on this hill and they were indeed waiting for the fireworks. Well, turns out we probably should have keep looking for a different “outstanding view” point as they were called on the map because all we saw of the fireworks was a glow behind trees. Bummer. The fireworks are shot pretty low I think for a good display right behind the monuments and for the TV viewing so not many went high in the sky. We saw a good amount of other fireworks down the river being shot off by random people but it wasn’t the display I was expecting. Oh well, at least we had easy un-crowded tube rides. To get to the place we were staying at we would go through Heythrop college because they are right next door and have a 24 hour door man and it would lead us right to a door to the convent and through that door was where we were staying. However, said door was locked and so began the adventures of trying to get into our rooms. There are lots of keys at this desk and the door man gave us several to try since he wasn’t sure which convent door was which. We were hopeful but turns out none of them worked. So he suggested we call the sisters and even though we didn’t want to wake them up at 2 am we figured it was ok since we were locked out. No one answered the phone and he tried all the phone numbers he had for various sisters. So he called a coworker and we tried calling the volunteer coordinator whose office was in the building we were staying in hoping one would have some useful information but neither answered. Kindly the doorman offered to open up a student lounge with sofas for us to sleep on until morning. Around 5:30 am he came down saying the person who came for the next shift knew the right key so they would let us in! We were super happy and sleepily left our coaches…it was chilly so we were happy to go back to our warm rooms! However, that key didn’t work either. I think part of the problem is that they renovated the building and likely changed the locks on all the doors and forgot to give new keys to the doorman. So instead of putting us back in the student lounge he opened up the guest house where we stayed the one night upon arriving in London on Sept. 2. This was nicer than the student lounge but he only let us into one room that had 2 beds and there were 4 of us and it still wasn’t that warm. We stayed there until about 8 am when we knew for sure the sisters would be up and if the door was still locked we would be able to reach them on the phone and get let in! Luckily it was open and we went to bed for another 2 hours, this time in warm and cozy rooms! I have never slept in 3 different places within half a block of each other in one night before so that was definitely a first!
Since we didn’t sleep great we took it easy in the morning and started our day later than we normally would. We wanted to see another show so Abby went to get Wicked tickets and Melissa and I went to get Lion King tickets before meeting back up to watch the New Year’s Day parade. It was fun watching the parade and we actually watched it for longer than we had originally planned. We then went back to the Tate Modern because we had run out of time to finish it the day before. After we were done we went over to the Globe Theatre which was about a 2 minute walk. We watched the Winter Wassail performance which was pretty good-my favorite part was a rendition of “The 12 Days of Christmas”, it was hilarious! Just because we hadn’t seen enough shows we split up and I went to Lion King with Melissa while Abby went to Wicked. The set and costumes for Lion King were AWESOME! The opening scene when all the animals come out was so cool!!!!!!! Sadly, the singing left a bit to be desired and when you are used to singing along to great songs in the Disney movie it was disappointing for the music part not to be up to snuff. Melissa and I had standing tickets because all the rest of the tickets were sold out they let a certain number of people stand along the back for cheap. They were not bad “seats” by any means and we especially liked the small price tag…kind of made up for the failed singing. I’m still glad we went but it wasn’t as good as I was hoping.
By our last day we were all thoroughly exhausted from walking around so much. We each had different things we wanted to see and do for our last day so we all went separate ways after breakfast. I had not seen the Tower Bridge or the Tower of London and wanted to see those. Unfortunately, the two tube lines that would take me directly from High Street Kensington to Tower Hill were having maintenance work done so getting there took several tube line switches and about half an hour of walking. Needless to say, that took a lot longer than I was expecting. I didn’t think I would be interested in going into the Tower of London since I have been in several castles already but after seeing it, I think it would be cool to go inside! After seeing the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge and walked the half hour back to the tube and took it to a market area in search of a birthday present for Abby….I didn’t end up finding what I wanted. Oh well. By that point it was time to go back and through the last few things in my bag before going to the train station and catching the train back to Newcastle.

All in all it was a good trip and I definitely have the itch to see more shows! However, I have never been to such crowded museums in my life! It was probably a combination of it being New Years and that they were all free but it was insane how busy most of them were!