Our Whirlwind Day (Plus a Bit) of Adventures in London

In retrospect, I wish we’d had one more day in London. John had warned me it was a HUGE city, but that didn’t adequately prepare me for the sheer scale of the place.

We left Denmark early on a Sunday morning, connecting through Norway. There are lots of direct flights from Copenhagen to London, but the best price point included a connection. Plus, we got off the plane and walked on the tarmac, so we felt justified in crossing another country off our “visited” list.

By the time we arrived at Heathrow and navigated out to our hotel in Ealing, we were tuckered. Originally, the plan had been to hang out at our hotel all evening and meet up with Nicole early the next morning, ahead of our Big Bus Tour.

But… it ended up making sense to pivot. The kids were keen to veg out at the hotel, and I wanted to explore a bit of London without them in tow. We bought Subway for dinner, set them up on screens in our TINY hotel room (it was seriously the tiniest hotel room I’ve ever been in and we had to share it as a family of four), took a shower and headed off.

Not only is London huge, but the transport system is sprawling. And there are constantly delays or strikes. It was quite the adventure to navigate into central London, but we got to connect through the iconic Paddington station!

I told Nicole to pick a spot that was conveniently located close to her hotel and send me a Google Maps link. It was lovely to not have to think or plan. She picked The Phoenix and we navigated there.

When we were a few minutes away from the pub, John asked me if I’d recognize her.

YES. For starters, I have seen dozens of photos of this lovely lady over the years. Secondly, she came bursting toward the door when she spotted me and gave me a giant hug.

What followed was two delightful hours of getting to chat IN PERSON. She was wrapping up her own adventures in London and heading off on a South African safari (check out her full recap of that experience). I’m still amazed we overlapped by a day and managed to make this bloggy meetup work.

After we said our goodbyes, John and I navigated toward Buckingham Palace. It was a gorgeous evening and basically the perfect time to visit a famous site because it was practically deserted! (Which happens to be my favourite size of crowd, haha.)

The Queen Victoria Memorial.

We strolled down The Mall.

Trafalgar Square.

I posed with the famous lions at the base of the towering Nelson’s Column.

And of course I had to pop into a red telephone booth; this one happened to be right outside the Canadian Embassy!

I got my first glimpse of the Elizabeth Tower, more colloquially known as Big Ben (Big Ben is actually the name of the biggest bell).

The dusky lighting was PERFECTION.

I would have loved to stay and wander the city for hours more, but it was getting late, we had an hour of transport to navigate to get back to our hotel, we were exhausted AND we needed to get the kids settled for bed.

The next morning, Indy and I headed downstairs in the hotel together for the breakfast buffet. I decided I would throw caution to the wind and try Marmite.

Yuck. No offence to people who like the stuff. But, also, HOW AND WHY could anyone enjoy it?? It is so salty.

After everyone had a chance to eat, we headed to catch the Big Bus. We’ve never done a tour like this and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

I’d say we got our money’s worth out of the experience, but didn’t necessarily optimize things quite as well as we could have.

I’d been warned by multiple people about the pace of these tours. London traffic is notoriously slow. There was a lot of starting and stopping but it offered incredible views of all the main sights.

The thing that bothered me the most was the audio portion. It was very choppy, which I understand (they have to play different tracks and the pace is going to differ day to day based on the traffic), but it felt… cobbled together. I had thought, for some reason, that the red route had an actual live tour guide (I could swear I read that was the case on some forum).

Anyway, we settled in, put on our headphones, and hit the streets of London.

This is Millennium Bridge.

St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Driving past the Houses of Parliament!

At one point we drove over Tower Bridge (which I always thought was London Bridge; it is not… London Bridge is very forgettable!)

Another glimpse of Big Ben!

And another view of the River Thames, London Eye, and Big Ben/Parliament.

We ended up doing a complete bus loop around the city (Red Route), and then hopped off for lunch. We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so we navigated back to The Phoenix (where we’d met Nicole the night before). Belle had wanted to try fish and chips in London, so that’s what we did! The portions looked big, so we bought two plates and split them between the four of us, which ended up being plenty of food.

Tours buses can’t actually get to the front of Buckingham Palace. The kids both wanted to go, so we navigated there after lunch. We didn’t get to see the iconic changing of the guard, but I’d heard mixed reviews about it anyway. It tends to be packed with hordes of tourists. Once again, we basically had the place to ourselves which was lovely.

We wandered around to see a few more things in the area. The main stop was Westminster Abbey.

I would have loved to go inside but: a) we’ve seen a lot of churches, b) there’s a fairly high entry fee and c) we had a limited amount of time.

The architecture is stunning.

There was a delivery van parked right in front of the door, ruining the photo aesthetics! Hence the “from below” angle.

I loved this inscription on the side: May God grant to the living grace, to the departed rest, to the church & the world peace and concord, and to us sinners eternal life.

We had to get pictures of the kids in front of Big Ben!

We walked by Downing Street. (At this point, Keir Starmer was still Prime Minister.)

We stopped by Horse Guards on Whitehall. You can get shockingly close to the horses, but we made sure to keep a respectful distance. I appreciated the signage and I’m sure it’s very upsetting to both the horse and rider when tourists get too close.

(We look closer than we are!)

More telephone photos!

As part of our Big Bus Tour ticket, we also had access to a free river cruise. We had great luck in terms of seats. We were the very first people in line for the cruise, so we got a front-and-centre spot at the back of the boat.

This tour did have a live guide which I really appreciate and prefer! It was a great complement to the bus tour and fun to see everything from the water.

The London Eye.

The OXO Tower—they were prevented from marketing their brand on the outside of the building, so they designed the windows to do the promotion. Brilliant!

This is the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Another time, I’d love to go see a show! Apparently you can get groundling tickets for something like £5.

The Shard and the HMS Belfast.

The tour finished at Tower Bridge. It was fascinating to see such an iconic bridge up close! (It used to be chocolate brown, which apparently was Queen Victoria’s favourite colour; they repainted it in the current colour scheme for Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee.)

I love this picture of Belle taking a selfie. How much more “teen in London” can you get?

One final look at The Shard and the HMS Belfast.

I swear we took pictures of the exterior of the Tower of London… but I’m too lazy to go try to hunt those down.

I have heard nothing but good things about the Tower of London, and I went into this trip planning to go. But in the end, we had so little time and I didn’t want the day to feel horribly overfilled. Plus, I’m trying to remind myself (a maximizer to a fault) that I cannot do ALL THE THINGS. Another time…

We did stop for a pastry, and then Belle and I hopped back on the bus while John and Indy walked into the heart of London (hoping to spot some nice cars).

Our plan worked out… okay. We had to rejoin the bus tour on the Red Route, before it eventually merged into the Blue Route. Which meant that, for almost an hour, everything we were seeing/hearing was a repeat. Also, it was windy and cold at this point (we eventually headed down to the interior level of the bus).

While we were on the bus, the boys were seeing things like this…

And admiring cars like this…

And this.

Finally we made it to new territory on our bus tour!

This is the Victoria and Albert Museum. There are so many world-class museums in London and most of them are free!

We drove by Harrods; such an iconic place.

One of the main reasons why we hopped back on the bus was to get close to 221B Baker Street, the home of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. It was supposed to be close to the final stop of the tour.

Perfect!

Well… we made it to the second-to-last stop when the bus driver announced it was the end of the day and we were going to be rerouting back into the city.

I was so disappointed. It was too late to get off, so we had to stay on a bus travelling the opposite direction from where we wanted to be going.

We were tired and a bit cranky, but we both quickly agreed we were even more determined to visit Baker Street.

So that’s what we did. Our experiencing selves were a bit salty about having to walk so far but it was worth it for the photo op. There’s a little museum on site (though we were visiting after hours).

When we arrived, there was a young man wearing a Sherlock hat and holding a fake pipe and he asked us to take his picture! It’s clearly a niche spot to visit but very much beloved by fans.

John and Indy had navigated back to the hotel without us, so at this point Belle and I made our own way back.

Now, I’ll skip a whole day—our trip to Warner Bros. Studio Tour London (full recap coming soon)—and jump ahead to when we left London for Wales.

We took a Great Western Railway train from Paddington Station to Cardiff Central. While we waited, the kids got up close and personal with Paddington Bear! This is such a cute statue.

And this bench was equally adorable! (Belle’s hair continues to be my #LifeGoals.)

And just like that, our time in London was over.

Obviously we barely scratched the surface on seeing the city. On a return trip, I’d love to spend a few days wandering famous streets, take a guided Jack the Ripper Tour, visit some of the iconic churches, free museums, and Churchill’s War Rooms. But this was a great introduction…

Your turn.

• Have you ever done a bus tour of a new city?
• Did anyone else grow up reading/watching Sherlock Holmes. Always and forever Jeremy Brett will be the iconic Sherlock character to me.
• Have you tried Marmite? Did you like it?