Day 4 in London: Buckingham Palace, Churchill War Rooms and Jack the Ripper…

Sunday, March 23

The “plan” for the day included 3 big rocks- Buckingham Palace at 11:00 (1-2 hours total), Churchill War Rooms in the afternoon (~2 hours), and then the Jack the Ripper walking tour at 7 pm (2 hours). Adding on travel time and meals and wandering time, I knew this would be a busier day, but still felt very reasonable.

Buckingham Palace

First up Sunday morning was to try and catch Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace (not “The Changing of the Guard” as is often said; a British person corrected me when I asked a question about this event on TripAdvisor).

I had read about this online and knew that it gets crazy packed and can be considered sort of a bust, or waste of time. There are various other spots besides right AT Buckingham where you can go to try and “beat the crowds” (where the guard parade initiates on another side street) or along the route.

I don’t know, it all confused me a little bit and I didn’t care that much either way. I ultimately decided, too, that if I’m going to see the guard parade and change, then I’d rather see it with Buckingham Palace as a backdrop.

So, we decided we’d go a little early (but not super early- wasn’t really interested in staking out a spot 2-3 hours in advance!) and see what we saw and call it good. (Of note, the palace interior is only open for touring during certain summer months when the king and queen are away.)

Changing the Guard takes place at 11 am. After getting ready and taking the tube (we’re just a couple stops from Buckingham Palace), we arrived at the Palace (along with masses of other people, most of who already seemed to be there….) around 10:15.

Here you can see the famous Palace! And a million friends. 😉

We managed to find a spot to stand, but it wasn’t particularly great. Kind of just in the middle, so neither right up against the palace gates (where you’d clearly see the actual changing ceremony) nor along the street (where you’d clearly see the marching parade).

I thought it was nice that there were volunteer police type people going around warning people that this was a high pickpocket area. My mom had her purse swung around her back at one point and a woman in a yellow vest came up and told her to put it in front, and the same for several folks wearing backpacks.

Here we are in front of Buckingham Palace! So cool to see in real life, though the boys thought it kind of just looked a little bit like Ethan’s school. 🙄 haha. (I assure you, his school is not a palace, but I guess it is also a big, old, light colored brick building.)

Finally, after what felt like quite a long time (and even longer for some members of the party than others), the guards approached, playing music. This part was cool! I love a good marching band.

I did get this good shot of them with the London Eye in the background!

They made their way behind the gates and then proceeded to do their changing routine (could not really see this part at all, minus a few peeks through the people and gates).

Most pics look more like this:

They did play a nice medley of music then, from… The Lion King. lol! I mean, they were great! But I guess I thought it would be more formal music or something! Maybe King Charles is a Disney fan? Or, you know, he’s the King, so they play music with King in the title? Ha.

Then the procession back out:

All in all, it worked out okay! Do I need to do this again? Nope. But I also don’t regret having “been there” for the experience in front of the Palace, at least this once. It’s something we’ll remember, anyway.

I mean- it’s iconic! Buckingham Palace!

As the crowds slowly cleared out, we were able to get a few better pics:

Love this angle from farther away!

We then walked all the way down through the Mall to the iconic Trafalgar Square.

Trafalgar Square

This is a very bustling area with lots of shops, etc. We stopped into a few, including this cool Magic shop, Harry Potter themed.

Tons of Hogwarts clothing and gear too. You could easily outfit yourself in your favorite “House’s” stuff if you wanted.

We were all starving, after only have some baguette for breakfast. There was a Chipotle not far from here, so we stopped there for lunch, which always hits the spot, here, there and everywhere. 🙂

The plan was to then walk down Whitehall to the Churchill War Rooms. Well, we got part way only to find the road was closed! They were filming a movie!

We couldn’t see much initially, but the woman guarding the barricade hinted that it was a car chase scene for an action movie. Another woman nearby said it was a Tom Cruise movie! Cool.

We took a detour over by the river, behind the beautiful Royal Horseguards Hotel.

A cross street here was also blocked for filming, but from here we could see a bit more. The cars and the motorcycle were all part of the scene. The boys were into this and we waited quite a while until finally they must have called “action” and the cars + motorcycle all started advancing. Then two sleek black sports cars came racing towards us and sharply turned the corner to our right (near where the headlights coming at us are).

Then they all stopped and the cars and motorcycle all backed up into their original positions. This was cool!!! I mean, we couldn’t see that much, but still. There were (movie related) people milling around down there and we zoomed in to see if we could recognize anyone. (Nope.)

We waited to see if they’d do another take, but finally gave up and continued on.

Finally a little before 2:00 we made our way toward the Churchill War Rooms, passing by Big Ben again on the way.

The big Winston Churchill statue at Parliament square:

Churchill War Rooms

I had quickly bought our tickets online while walking a little while ago to avoid the ticket line (which wasn’t too bad, but still nice to walk right in).

We got our audio guides and set off. The Churchill War Rooms are the actual rooms where Winston Churchill ran all of the operations during World War II. They were left exactly as they were!!

The museum covers the war rooms (including offices, map rooms, typing rooms and even bedrooms), and also has a big section dedicated to Churchill himself and his history (a very fascinating guy with a turbulent political history- so interesting to see the inevitable ups and downs and mistakes and triumphs and lessons he learned along the way, and how it all worked out in the end).

The Churchill museum was well done and very informative while also having lots of interactive parts that were easy to digest.

In the gift shop at the end, a book of Churchill quotes. I liked this one!

The Churchill War Rooms were a hit all around. The boys also found them very interesting overall and it kept them engaged. (Ethan went through a long phase around maybe ages 9-12 where he read a MILLION books about World War II and the Holocaust.)

We spent a good couple hours at the museum, and then took the tube back to the apartment.

Rest time! I stretched out on my bed with a cup of tea and worked on a blog post. 🙂 I think some people even dozed off a while.

We had ~1 1/2 hours or so to chill, and then by a little after 6 we bundled up in warm clothes and made our way to the tube station. It was a longer ride over to Aldgate East (the Whitechapel area where Jack the Ripper terrorized the neighborhood back in the late 1800s) but a direct route, no train changes.

We arrived right on time, just a few minutes early. Met up with our tour guide and group and set out!

Jack the Ripper walking tour

I really loved this tour!! I had found it recommended on Trip Advisor. There are a bunch of different Jack the Ripper tours, but this one had great reviews, so I didn’t waste a lot of time mulling it over and just booked it a week or so before our trip. (I thought a real life murder mystery might be a teen-friendly activity, and I think I was right.)

It lasted just over 2 hours and the guide was great. Funny and really passionate about the subject. (Maybe slightly weird, but she said she has been obsessed with the mystery of Jack the Ripper since she was 9….).

She really painted the picture of what this down-trodden, slum-like part of London was like back in the late 1800s. (Now much changed and revived with multi-million pound flats!)

His victims were all women, prostitutes, and were called “unfortunates”- women who had fallen into a state of disgrace by either divorce or poverty or illness, most of them alcoholics, all struggling to make ends meet by selling themselves.

She took us to many different related sites, describing the victims’ stories and lives, and also gory details about their murders!! She had crime scene photos (warned us to avert our eyes if desired- this guy was messed up). I didn’t realize he literally ripped his victims open and like, pulled their intestines and organs out!! 😳

There were many dramatic (albeit sad/horrible!) parts to the stories. It was fun and spooky to walk the dark streets at night, imagining the “olden days”. And also, it was very cold, by the end. 😆

She kept everyone captivated with the stories, and it was exciting and interesting. This tour has been a memorable highlight for me so far!

The tour ended a bit after 9. My original plan had been to eat before the tour, but since we had Chipotle for lunch, we were all pretty stuffed! Chipotle tends to hold me for most of the day. lol.

Weather has overall been mild and dry, but Sunday night it was cold!! (Dry, at least.) We were freezing by this point and also starving.

The kids did not think they could make it way back to South Kensington without eating first, and besides, it was getting later and later.

Many places already weren’t serving food at 9:30 pm on Sunday night… but we managed to find this diner-looking place right across from the tube station called “Jack the Chipper”. 😆 (Clearly capitalizing on the location in Whitechapel!) It said its speciality was fish and chips. Perfect. It was warm and they had food.

It turns out, this random place was REALLY good!! Ivan and I split a large fish and chips and I got hot tea to warm up.

After we ate, we caught the tube back to our place.

Yet another full day! I really liked the variety and balance of this day though! The afternoon break was just enough to pep us up for the evening tour, and I liked the balance of the main sights (Palace, Trafalgar Square) with the Churchill War Rooms and the Jack the Ripper tour. 🙂