London

Museums, Shows, Family and Fun.

We left the English country village of Upper Chute to make our way to the starkly different bustling city of London. We dropped off our rental car not wanting to face the city traffic and caught the train to our Airbnb in North Finchley.

As mentioned in our last post, we had originally planned to spend this time with Lez and Bangs. However after Thabang had sliced his arm on a broken window, a nasty accident that required multiple emergency surgeries, the Pretorius’s travel plans were put on hold to a later date. We are extremely relieved to report that Bangs is doing well and has almost completely recovered.

On our first day we decided to use the Hop On Hop Off Bus to get a lay of the land. We got a chance to see the major sights, including the Elizabeth Tower home of Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. We hopped off at Buckingham Palace to take a closer look, we then walked through Green Park and had a picnic lunch on the grass. After lunch we hopped back on again for some more sights before taking the train back home.

Day two blossomed bright and sunny, we had tickets to go watch Frozen on the West End at the Royal Drury Lane theatre. We headed towards the centre and went to go find some lunch before our show. We tried a vegan Ukrainian place but the serving sizes didn’t hit the mark so ended up having a second lunch at an Indian spot outside the theatre before going in. Unfortunately we couldn’t take any photos or videos of the show, suffice to say it was amazing. We had never seen set changes, costumes and live music of such a standard before. After the show we had a little bit of time to kill before meeting up with Rowan’s cousin Vanessa and her husband James for dinner. So we went to the Lego store of course. The store was huge and bustling with activity, there was a queue just to get inside. We couldn’t buy anything because we had no space to carry it on our further travels but we did get some awesome photos. Following this we went for pizza with Vanessa, who we last saw when our James was only one and Juliet was still growing in mums belly. We had a nice stroll through Leicester Square before once again taking the long train ride back to our house in the suburbs.

Day three we had the Natural History Museum and a walking tour of the “City” with Ness on the ballot. I should point out at this stage that all the museums in London are free to visit, which is amazing. In addition kids under 12 travel free on public transport.

We met up with Vanessa at her office and she kindly gave up her lunch break to walk us around the old banking and insurance districts as well as St Pauls and the old Stock Exchange. With family history in this area stretching back at least three generations it was wonderful to take a walk in the footsteps of Uncles and Great Grandfathers, to visit the little bars and restaurants where deals were made. Following this we made our way through to the Natural History Museum. An amazing building with so much on display, it was difficult to get through it all. Finally we went for some delicious ice cream.

Day four we went to the British Museum, which turned into a highlight of our London trip. We did our own tour with a Rick Steve’s audio guide. We hit the best parts of the Egyptian, Assyrian and Greek exhibits, with an additional quick look at the famous statures from Rapanui (Easter Island). While the actual acquisition of all these artifacts is highly questionable it was still amazing to see so much of the ancient worlds history in one place. Some of our highlights included the famous Rosetta Stone, the Egyptian Mummies and the incredible Elgin Marbles from the Pantheon in Athens. After our museum visit we went to have a quick catch up with our adopted Great Aunt, Christiana. We were walked out so she very kindly agreed to come to us and we had a quick coffee at Starbucks and a catch up. The last time we had seen her was when James was three weeks old and she came out to South Africa with Great Uncle Stanley who passed away shortly thereafter. (James and Christiana 2014 bottom right)

On our last day it was time to visit Michael, Antonia, Alicia and Thomas, more London cousins. We had arranged to meet them at the new London Dungeons which is next to the London Eye. The new dungeons are more of a performance event than an educational activity which we didn’t realise at the time of booking. Jo had been to the old dungeons with her Grandmother 26 years earlier and it was one of her fondest memories from London. We did the horror show with varying success and then went for a lovely lunch. Cousin Tim and his adorable dog Hazel joined us. All too soon we were all walking back to the station to catch our trains and go our separate ways.

It was fantastic to meet up with so much family while in London, particularly because we see them so infrequently. However all good things come to an end and it was time to say our goodbyes as we were due to move onto our next stop, Ebley, to visit Aunty Tam, Uncle Scott and our favorite niece Tai Tai.

Until our next post, thank you for reading,

Lots of love,

The Grow Travel Family.