As I mentioned, after enjoying a lovely and restful Christmas
at home last year, we were recharged for a big holiday adventure to close out
2018. With work and school schedules,
the winter holiday break really is the easiest time for us to find a long
enough span of days available for a big trip (Spain
in 2014, New
Mexico in 2015, and Canada
in 2016) and, with the kids’ passports expiring in 2019, it was time for
another trip to out of the country. Ella
and Jack had mentioned an interest in London—and I’m ALWAYS up for Europe—and so
the planning began…I was so excited that I probably had everything booked by
February. Holiday trips always take
quite a bit of intricate planning and London was a particular challenge as
museums and many sights are not only closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,
but also on December 26th, Boxing Day.
So, when we landed on Saturday, December 22nd we
hit the ground running. As we made our
way by car to our hotel, we caught our first real glimpse of London, passing by
Kensington Palace, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and ice skaters outside of
the Natural History Museum. We drove
along Hyde Park and were even lucky enough to get a good look at the procession
of the Horse Guard Parade after the changing of the guard. We dropped our luggage off at the hotel and
took the tube straight to the Tower of London.
After grabbing a quick bite at a fish and chips window shop outside the
Tower, we were able to join the 1:30pm Beefeater tour. Christmastime is a very busy tourist season
in London, but surprisingly we didn’t battle any crowds at the Tower of
London. No lines to visit the crown
jewels, a spot in front for the Beefeater tour, and plenty of open spaces. I wish I’d known at the time that this would
be one of my favorite sights while in London.
The levels of history—the White Tower built more than 900 years ago by
William the Conqueror, Traitors’ Gate through which Elizabeth I entered from
the Thames, the Bloody Tower where King Edward V and his brother were brought in
1483 by Richard III and never seen again, Chapel Royal of St. Peter and Vincula
(my favorite stop on our Beefeater’s tour, we got to sit in the pews and really
contemplate the space) built by Henry VIII and where he buried some of his
wives, and the nearby Tower Bridge, the drawbridge of which was built in Queen
Victoria’s time—were mind-boggling and kicked our trip off with the reminder of
London’s historical significance as opposed to being simply just glamoured by the
big city and bright lights.
We walked from the Tower of London to St. Paul’s Cathedral,
getting peeks at the Shard framed by 17th century bank buildings,
popping in nearly every telephone booth we passed (even a black one, as we spotted
it before we came upon red ones), trying to remember to ‘LOOK RIGHT’ whenever
we crossed the street, and finally getting a view of the famous dome of St.
Paul’s. We unfortunately didn’t have
time to wait in line to explore the inside as, if we wanted to fit in the
British Museum during our trip (which, like all of the museums, would be closed
December 24th through 26th), we had to continue on our
way.
I’m sure we barely scratched the surface in the two or so hours
we had to explore the British Museum before it closed, but we saw our fill of
remarkable artifacts from ancient civilizations in that time. The Rosetta Stone, King Ramesses II, Head of
Amenhotep III, and many mummies from Egypt; three-thousand-year-old human
headed winged lions that once guarded a palace in ancient Assyria; a
reconstruction of a temple (Nereid Monument) and many pediment sculptures and
friezes once adorning the Parthenon in Greece…the list of wonders goes on.
We must’ve been running on pure adrenaline at this point,
determined to see as much as we could before sights started limiting hours—our
four remaining days in London included a Sunday which always had shorter hours
for most museums, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. We walked through the Soho theatre district, picked
up our tickets for the next day’s show of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
at the Palace Theatre (so excited!), and made our way to Trafalgar Square. We were too late to explore the National
Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, but we of course had to take time to
climb the lions and admire the Norwegian Christmas tree. We had an okay dinner in a very cool setting,
a very British buffet in the ancient crypt under St. Martin-in-the-Fields
church, their Café in the Crypt, off of Trafalgar Square.
The closest tube station to our hotel (which was off of Grosvenor
Square, between Oxford and Mayfair) was Bond Street Station along Oxford
Street. Oxford Street is decked out at
Christmastime with light displays hanging over the street and festive window displays
in all of the shops. Selfridges was
about a block from our hotel, the
London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square, and Selfridges was our brightly lit
beacon letting us know to make our turn back to our hotel each night. Before calling it a night, we explored the
many floors of Selfridges—which was bedazzled for Christmas and actually had a
DJ blasting tunes—and, much like Harrods, which was a destination a few days
later, we found the food market and toy sections to be the most interesting.
Our hotel (and this was one of the reasons we selected it
amongst the slew of Marriotts in London) had a wonderful Executive Lounge which
provided access to snacks and drinks around the clock, but also served
breakfast, afternoon tea, evening hors d'oeuvres, nighttime desserts and draft
beer and wine. We learned this when we
went to Santa Fe over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, that it’s really nice to
have a place outside of your room to grab a quick bite and relax on Christmas
Day because most places are closed and if they aren’t closed they cost a small
fortune and take a lot of time for a meal.
Anyways, it’s a nice perk of all of Jonathan’s work travel to have access
to the Executive Lounge, and we took full advantage on our hotel’s on this trip. We definitely visited 2-3 times a day while in
London and saved the expense of, at the very least, breakfast in the morning
and drinks at night. So, after a few
drinks in the lounge, and a very full day of travel and exploring London, we
had no problem getting to sleep that night and getting ourselves on U.K. time.
