Last summer, our family of 6 spent a whirlwind 3 days in London, as we were traveling back from our family trip to Ghana. I had never been to London before, and I needed to make a plan ahead of time for where we would go in those 3 days. We stayed in a cute rental with fun LONDON DECOR, and for snagging it just a few weeks before, it was a decent little apartment. It was about a 30 minute commute on the subway into the city, but it wasn’t so bad. (I don’t see it up there now, but if use my affiliate link, and get a discount on your rental: AirBnB, other affiliate links in this post as well at no cost to you).
Two books that I ordered online at Amazon before our trip were: Rick Steves London 2015 and Around London with Kids and that helped me figure out the best spots for us to visit. The second had really great kid friendly food recommendations near all the famous spots, and between the two, I felt really well informed about what our family would see.
I planned back in Texas before we even traveled, that we would take our family pictures in London, so had a special little duffle bag where I kept all of our clothes and accessories, not to be touched til we got there. I actually shared that post last fall, check them out if you haven’t seen them! I realized just now that I never shared part II of those family pictures, so I may just intertwine them into this post. Rachel at Shoot Sweet Photography out of Scotland was AMAZING, and now counted as a friend. We loved spending our third day with her.
First of all, we flew British Airways, and someone gave me a tip that if you enter online at least 24 hours in advance, you can arrange for a kids meal on flight, and I’m so glad I did, because my girls had a more kid-friendly food option which was really nice. We flew 6 hours overnight from Ghana to London, my kids were troopers. It was tricky to grab a cab once we got out of the airport, because not many could accommodate 6! Then, they wouldn’t take a credit card (we hadn’t converted money yet) so once we finally found one, we were so glad! Who doesn’t love foreign money???
It was fun to squeeze into a cab, 3 of us had to face backwards.
I knew for sure when we went to London that we needed to do:
And I’m glad we did, those were the highlights. My favorite place in the entire city was the Tower Bridge. It’s just so pretty, so unique, and it was SO fun to go up inside!
I’ve decided to break up this post, so this is DAY 1 of our adventure!!!
I took a Facebook poll ahead of time, and got lots of great info, which helped me map out where we’d go, and along with the books, I felt fairly well informed. I know I also love tours of the city, and thought we’d do the hop on/hop off double decker buses, but we ended up doing the Duck Tour, which was REALLY fun to see the city by land and by water! So that’s actually what we did the first day.
After we sleepily dropped our stuff off at our resting place, we caught the subway into the city.
I was pretty excited about our first family subway adventure. We took the boys in New York City 4 years ago, but never all of us together.
My kids were troopers throughout the entire time, squeezing into the subway, sitting by strangers, just chillin’ like it ain’t no thang. I just couldn’t help myself from snapping subway pictures.
Took the subway down to the London Duck Tours to see the city in a unique way. I listened very well, I love the history at a glance, then I fell asleep for a bit. That jet lag really got to me. I was annoyed with myself, because I really love hearing the commentary of the sights as we drive around.
After the duck tour, we walked across a few bridges…
and headed on over to Trafalgar Square. After we hopped up to take pictures with the Lion, we found out we weren’t supposed to….oopsy!
Just chillin’ with the locals…and other tourists…
Then I busted out the selfie stick to grab a family selfie
We then found ourselves in Hyde Park with lots of cyclists. It’s HUUUUGE, like unto Central Park in NYC, in fact pretty sure CP was patterned after this one, a gigantic city, with a green escape in the middle. We had fun checking out the nooks and cranny’s of the park, but I really wanted to see the Diana Playground. My book said kids love it, but it was hard to tell how really far away it was. We started at one end, and it was at the opposite end.
But we enjoyed the stroll along the way…people watching…each others’ company, you know.
This little one was sure to lead us right there with her map skills
We found this really cool tree, where when we went under the canopy, people were inside climbing up to the top. A few of my kids went part way up (see that guy up at the top?)
We just kept on strolling…
Until we made it to the Diana Park. It was pretty cool, even if it was drizzling while we played.
We headed back to the subway, took one last family selfie for the day…
And enjoyed resting our weary feet back at the apartment.
I’ll be sharing our adventures of day 2 in the next post, look forward to that! In the meantime, feel free to check out our family pictures in London!
