I woke up feeling even worse this morning, and the 4:15am alarm probably didn’t help. I was seriously considering not going out for the day as I didn’t want to ruin it for everyone else. Mark, convinced me to go and I’m pleased he did. After a few more hours sleep on the Eurostar and more Sudafed, I felt like I might just be able to get through the day.
When we arrived at Gare du Nord to catch our train there was a nice orderly queue but the French took so long to open up the gates, despite saying we had to be there by a certain time, that it became a big bun fight when they did open.
We all got through and onto the train and got some sleep (although not sure Mark got any) until we arrived in London Euston at 8:30am.
We organized our tube tickets and got the tube down to Waterloo. It was rush hour and the tubes were packed so we had to wait until we could get on one but that’s all part of the fun.
We wandered up past the London Eye and over Westminster Bridge to see the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. We stopped at Pret for a snack, coffee and toilet break. Next up was Westminster Abbey and then on to Buckingham Palace, the Mall and Green Park.
We continued on to down Piccadilly, past the Ritz, New Bond Street and Fortnum & Mason until we got to Piccadilly Circus. We had a quick look in Lillywhites for a Wrexham Football Shirt but they didn’t have any and then walked down Haymarket, past NZ House (although it has temporarily moved to Pall Mall due to renovations) and the found the current NZ Embassy and considered voting but due to time constraints decided it was better to wait until we got home. Next stop was Trafalgar Square – I was surprised at how few pigeons there were as I always remember hating going there as there were so many.
We walked back over the Embankment bridge and to the London Eye (it wasn’t open earlier) and our priority tickets came in handy getting us straight on. We enjoyed our ride looking at the landmarks and the pod wasn’t too full which was good. We collected our photo at the end and then walked along the river and over the Golden Jubilee Bridge to Embankment Station where we caught the District line to Tower Bridge.
At Tower Bridge we went to see the Tower of London and Tower Bridge (just to take photos) before heading to an old haunt, All Bar One, for lunch. Greer wanted to get English fish and chips but said she likes the ones from Grampian Street at home better ?.
We walked to and over London Bridge to get some good side-on views of Tower Bridge and went to Borough Market (one of Sophia’s must-dos (together with going to Boot’s ? – food and shopping … I wonder where she gets that from ?)). We had a look around the market and eventually she found what she was looking for – the chocolate covered strawberries! There was quite a line for them but they were very efficient and very tasty.
Tummy’s full we went back to London Bridge underground and headed to Moorgate – my old stop for work. We took a photo outside my old work and went into the M&S I went to every day often for lunch and dinner. The kids wanted to try some Percy pigs so we got a few bags and other treats I felt the need to reminisce over.
A quick walk to Liverpool St and into the Boots (a pharmacy and more). They didn’t have what Sophia was looking for but Mark was happy to find Beconaise at half the price it is at home.
We caught the Central Line to Oxford Street and went into HSBC as we needed to sort out an issue with logging into the app for my UK credit card. Once we got they sorted and I had a UK credit card I could use we hit the shops!
We walked up Oxford Street (Christmas lights were already up although not switched on and Christmas displays out in stores) until we got as far as Selfridges, but my credit card remained largely unused. I didn’t actually have the energy to shop properly by that stage.
We caught the metro back to Kings Cross from Oxford Circus and went to get a photo at Platform 9 3/4 with the Harry Potter trolley but there was a huge queue and no one was bothered enough to stand in the queue to get their photo taken.
At Euston, we got some M&S sandwiches and sat until it was time to go through security and passport control, which unsurprisingly was much more orderly.
Mark had booked us Standard Premier Tickets on the way back so we had a bit more room for sleeping and we also got a meal, although the kids were more interested in trying out the snacks.
We arrived into Paris at 11:40pm and caught the metro back to our apartment. It was a huge day with our pedometer measuring over 30,000 steps.