Days 8 + 9: St. Paul’s Cathedral, British Museum, and The End!

Thursday, March 27

Thursday! Our last full day in London. 😢

This was a shorter trip than many of our recent trips, but it felt like a good amount of time overall. Of course, I could always use more time… there were certainly things we didn’t get to (I mean, I think you could spend 3 months or probably 3 years in London and not see everything) and I really would have loved time for some more side trips! In particular, would have loved to make it to Bath.

But one thing is true: this was a much more ACTIVE trip than some other trips. Our 2 week Costa Rica and Hawaii trips were also busy and active (what can I say, we like to see and do stuff), but both also included lots of time just sitting on a beach or by a pool. Not so much in London! I think it would be hard for me to keep up this pace for much longer than what we did…. I was feeling a bit tired by the end! It crossed my mind that if we were now going on to say, do a second week in Paris or something, I’d probably build in some more buffer downtime or slower paced days.

Anyway, in terms of pacing, I honestly don’t think what we did was at all unreasonable for our group + our stage of “heartiness”. I believe it felt just right, considering the relatively limited time we had and all there was we wanted to see….and also knowing we are not super likely to return any time soon. (Not because we didn’t like it; there are just too many places we want to see in the world!)

We had several “later start/ sleep in” mornings, some afternoon rest times, and the very earliest we went anywhere was 10 a.m. (It is important to take into account the teens’ very real sleep cycles! They would NOT have been happy campers if we had early stuff every day. Also, in hindsight, I think some of our, ahem, attitude issues on Days 1-2 were likely jet lag/ sleep related with one particular child…).

I targeted typically 2 big anchor events most days, with the exception of some days that had 3 smaller or shorter things. We did have more evening plans and reservations than we normally would on a trip; this was just sort of how it worked out and ended up being no problem, in my opinion.

My favorite thing about how our itinerary panned out was the variety!! I always put a LOT of consideration into this piece. I love to experience a place in a multitude of ways. Between our river cruise, Tower of London, Jack the Ripper walking night tour, museums, old famous churches, lookout points, Richmond, the graffiti tunnel, an England game!, Windsor + Buckingham Palace (castles/palaces/royal stuff), Churchill War Rooms (war history!) and of course, Harry Potter, it felt like a really nice, balanced itinerary that allowed us to feel and see and experience London in many ways (i.e. we didn’t just go to museums, or just see a million churches).

Anyway, I digress! Let’s recap the end of this trip! You are probably all tired of seeing London posts popping up in your feeds by this point. 😉

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Our two big “anchors” for Thursday were: St. Paul’s Cathedral + the British Museum. (Original plan also included taking Asher to swim in the Aquatic Centre where the 2012 Olympics were held and where Michael Phelps won gold medals, but when he asked if he should pack his suit and goggles, I had told him, “I don’t know if the pool stop will fit in”. I guess he heard “It won’t fit in”, because he ended up not packing his suit…Darn.)

First we stopped at a coffee shop around the corner for a quick pastry breakfast. This ended up being a long, drawn out stop, because my mom’s credit card had been declined repeatedly on an earlier Starbucks coffee run that morning, and now again here. So, we all stood around and waited while my dad called the credit card company (which always takes forever to talk to a human!). She’d need it working to tap in on the tube, so…. I guess this was a worthy wait. (They got it sorted out.)

We sat and admired this lovely car right outside the window:

Right next to the coffee shop was also a Lamborghini dealership! We walked past it everyday. Asher said he was going to go in and say in a cool, nonchalant tone, “Hi there, uh, yeah, so, I’m interested in buying.” 😆 I told him they’d take one look at him and boot him out of there. Ha. They’d be able to tell from a mile away that we are not “Lamborghini clientele”. 😂

We finally were able to get going, much later than planned, but we took the tube over to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Fortunately, I had not bought advance tickets.

This area around St. Paul’s was really picturesque! I liked it a lot.

We bought tickets (no wait) and got the included audio guide. They had a “highlights tour” that would only take 30 minutes, so we opted for that one, given our delay and all.

It ended up taking us much longer than 30 minutes, in part because we started and stopped a bunch, but also because Ivan and I spent at least 20 minutes on a side bench trying to check in for our next day’s flight on my phone. (The check in window opened while there, and the 4 of us didn’t have assigned seats yet, so we wanted to do that, but the app was being slow and glitchy and it wanted all of our passport info re-entered, etc… It was a hassle.)

The cathedral was beautiful!! I loved it.

The dome art was so impressive! Really unique.

The “quire”, or choir area, is SO gorgeous in all of the churches here. I am obsessed with those little lamps they have in all of them!

Beautiful moasiacs:

Gorgeous carved wooden pulpit:

Amazing altar…

Gold, stone, mosaics, stained glass, wood… this place has it all. I love the combinations here. So so pretty!

This beautiful little chapel at the back is called the American Memorial Chapel. It’s a tribute from the people of Britain to the 28,000 Americans who died in Great Britain fighting by their side during World War II. Awww. 💗

Below the cathedral there is a large crypt, but we were running low on time and there didn’t seem to be anything that interesting down there for us. We hadn’t heard of most of the people, so we breezed through there.

I did stop at the Florence Nightingale memorial, though! Hats off to the Mother of Nursing. 😉

Finally, we (minus my mom who doesn’t love tight, winding stairs) all climbed the 508 steps to the top of the dome!

There are actually 3 stops along the way. First you stop at the Whispering Gallery, which is an inside view looking down over the cathedral. It’s amazing! But no photos allowed.

Then you go up to the first outdoor landing:

Here you have to look out through these pillars, so it’s a little hard to get the best photos or view.

Up to the tippy top, it’s a lot of steps that look like this!

Finally, the highest view. We totally lucked out, by pure chance, with another blue sky day!! We opened our trip with a full sunshine day and now closed it out the same way. 🙂

A cute family shot!

Love this one with my dad. 💗

And then, after wandering around and just enjoying the view (and the rest), we headed back down.

Due to the various delays, it was getting late now… after 2:00 p.m.!! We still wanted to make it to the British Museum, but they close at 5:00. AND we needed something to eat.

We poked our heads into a couple cafe type places right by St. Paul’s, but nothing really struck our fancy. We just wanted quick and easy and ideally, inexpensive, for this meal.

Not wanting to waste more time searching, we decided to cave and just stop quickly at the big McDonald’s staring us in the face on the corner. lol.

They had meal deals with a cheeseburger, 4 nuggets, medium fries + drink for only 5 pounds! That’s a deal! So, we went for it, and yes, we were “those Americans” eating at McDonald’s in London. 😆

Then we still needed to get to the British Museum. We were kind of in an awkward location relative to the nearest tube station, the line and the other stop by the museum. I finally made the executive decision that I thought it would actually be faster, (or equal time, anyway, and cheaper) to just walk. It was maybe 1.3 miles I think? Not awesome in our rush and on tired “last day” legs and after climbing St. Paul’s, but we did it.

We didn’t make it there until about 3:30. (And then when we finally arrived, we had to WALK AROUND THE ENTIRE BUILDING to go in a different entrance 😩, as the closer one was only for advance ticket holders…).

Fortunately, the museum is free, so only having 1 1/2 hours there wasn’t a big deal. Anyway, the main stuff we wanted to see was the Egyptian area.

This is a huge museum with a zillion artifacts, etc, but a lot of it was sort of out of our knowledge wheelhouse. I’m sure much of it is amazing stuff…. if you know something about it.

The exhibit rooms and building, while all well done, are also not quite as visually appealing as some other museums- more of just a standard museum layout with glass exhibits.

Seeing real mummies was very cool though!

A highlight for me was seeing Cleopatra’s mummy! THE Cleopatra. Awesome.

The most striking thing about this museum is how OLD many things were. It’s crazy to think about!

This Roman section was pretty cool:

We then decided to detour down from the 4th floor back to the ground floor.

There was one “must see” thing for us at the British Museum, and we didn’t want to risk missing it….. The Rosetta Stone!!

There was more amazing Egyptian stuff in this area:

Again, it is astounding how old everything is!! Like this statue above is from ~1500 BC. Meaning it’s like…. 3,500 years old?!

This one is from ~1900 BC! Almost 4,000 years old. 😲

We tried to quickly squeeze in the Africa area, but really only had a short time as they started closing up the exhibits at about 4:45.

And that was a wrap on our last official “sight” of the trip!!!

Unfortunately, on the way down these steps, thankfully near the bottom, my dad misstepped (they are kind of oddly wide steps, with like a rounded edge, with no railings) and FELL! It was scary but thankfully, he seemed mostly unscathed, minus some pain in his foot.

Well, it quickly became a more significant pain that made it difficult for him to walk normally. We were still on the opposite side of London from our apartment… and the tube stations are large, crowded, and not particularly well suited for someone hobbling around!

We managed to get him back, and even were able to stop off quickly near Kings Cross station so Ivan could check a certain store for something (my parents waited on a bench).

As my dad limped along, feeling very irritated that this happened at all (I mean, really- he just climbed 508 steps!! He walks 4 miles a day at the gym! He’s in great shape), we were all just SO thankful that this didn’t happen earlier in the trip!! Can you imagine?? It would have completely ruined the trip. (Update.. he went to doctor at home and turns out he has a small fracture in that foot! Ugh.)

From our South Kensington tube station, we stopped straight away for dinner at a pub. Ivan (and others) had requested one last fish and chips dinner!

What a great trip this was. Honestly, the biggest hiccup was my dad’s stumble, but again, how lucky he was that it happened as we were exiting the very last place we wanted to visit!

The boys had to get one more gelato from the place next to our apartment:

My parents went up to pack, and Ivan and I decided to sneak off to our other local pub for one last drink. We sat and chatted for just a short while before we also returned to pack up.

Friday, March 28

Not a ton to say here! The travel day home is always pretty “meh”. Ha.

We left the apartment just after 8 a.m. and took the Piccadilly line to Heathrow.

It was a challenge, because now my dad’s left knee was bothering him. Not really hurting, but it keep randomly like giving out when he was trying to walk on it. Fortunately the boys were able to help carry stuff, but it was very slow going through the stations and at the airport. (Maneuvering through airports is a hassle under the best of circumstances!)

We did have time for a very nice farewell breakfast though, at a sit down restaurant.

(And then we almost missed our plane because we didn’t realize that our gate, which the sign pointed was “that way” as if it were “just over there”, actually required us to take a very slow TRAIN/ shuttle thing for 15 minutes! Our flight had been delayed almost an hour, but then they suddenly bumped the time up by 20 minutes! That has never happened to me before. We also sort of just let time get away from us at the restaurant, so totally our fault. We usually always go to the gate and THEN eat, but with the delay, we thought we had time… We were still waiting for this train thing when the app showed “final boarding!” I was like omg, this is the dumbest thing ever, we literally were just sitting there drinking tea!!)

But, we made it. Whew. Had a layover in Boston which was uneventful and then finally landed in Chicago around 7:30 p.m. Had to get the car, wait for a couple bags that ended up gate checked due to a full flight, stop for dinner, drive my parents home… I drove the “final leg” home at nearly midnight (aka almost 5 a.m. London time…) and I was sooooo tired!! But we made it in one piece.

THE END!

Wow this was a long final post! haha. Thanks to anyone who managed to read all this! And thank you London… we loved you! It was a fabulous trip!!!!

Next up, I need to start planning for Copenhagen! The boys, Ivan and I are going there for a week in June and I have done basically zilch so far. Which is fine. Kind of planning to approach that one a little differently; Ivan has always dreamed of going to Copenhagen (from what I know, Denmark is definitely a “best in summer” destination), so this trip is really for him. (We have exactly one open week in there and originally were planning on maybe just a local long weekend somewhere, or maybe a few days in Boston or Colorado Springs… but then somehow it morphed into Ivan’s Copenhagen, since he’s been wanting to go there for years and we found some pretty good flights.) I’m sure I’ll plan and research some, but I feel okay keeping it low key-ish and just wandering and exploring and doing whatever.