London - November 2025

We skipped Thanksgiving and took advantage of low work expectations during the holiday and both kids having the week off to take a big trip.  It was our first international family trip (excluding Canada) since we went to the Portuguese Azores in February 2019.   Kathy flew to London a few days before us and then spent a few days in Scandinavia after we returned home.  

Saturday

• We arrived and dropped off our bags at the Mile End AirBnb, where Kathy had already checked in.
• Then we went out and walked Tottenham Court Road, Denmark St., Leister Square and Clerkenwell, which were areas featured in the book Troubled Blood (book 5 in the Robert Galbraith aka JK Rowling series).   
• We ate at a Vietnamese restaurant where a British Trump supported chatted to us, a little oddly.

Sunday

• We slept 'till 11 am, gloriously in separate bedrooms, which helped.  Thanks, Kathy :)
• Then we went out to the British Museum, with a quick stop at Sushi Dog, Dd's new favorite restaurant.   We saw Egyptian stuff and lots of very old and large books and fossils.
• Then we went to Westminster and did the first part of the free Rick Steve's audio guide for that area, near Big Ben.  Kathy had a bluetooth speaker.
• We had dinner back near our home base in Mile End.   We got some authentic pub fish and chips.

Monday

• The subway shut down before we made it back to the Westminster area so we had a long walk along the river to get to the Churchill War Rooms.   During the walk we saw an ancient column that had been rescued from a shipwreck after being pillaged from Egypt(?) and was then installed along the Themes.
• Visiting the War Rooms went well for our group as each person got their own audio guide and there was a kid version for Dd.
• Then we finished the Rick Steves Westminster tour, listening to it as we went to Trafalgar Square.     We had a nice lunch at an Italian restaurant there and then went to the National Gallery.   Some of us were quite tired by then but the lobby had a nice sitting area to regroup.
• Next, we went to the British Library, which was open late, at least on Mondays.   It had many treasure, all in one museum room, which we liked.   We finished a busy day with an Indian dinner.

Tuesday

• Instead of starting with the tube, we took a short bus ride to Canary Wharf and caught an Uberboat to Westminster.   It was a great ride, mostly for commuters, and was much cheaper than a narrated tourist boat.   We saw the outside of Westminster Abbey and some older buildings in that area.   
• We got some sushi (sadly not Sushi Dog) on our walk to Buckingham Palace.
• Then we took the tube to the Mithreum, the ruins of a 2000 year old temple.   It was free and interesting.   
• Next we walked to St Paul's cathedral.  D and I paid to walk all the way up (in a bit of a hurry, because it was late afternoon, so we didn't look at the inside as much as the view).   Jack, Kathy and Dd went over to the Tate Modern and we met up there, using that winding pedestrian bridge over the Thames.
• Then we had hot pot, back in Mile End and everyone was happy choosing their own ingredients.

Wednesday

• At 8:30 am, Jack and I left to pick up a rental car in SW London.   This was not ideal planning.   We drove back in to the middle (NE part, Mile End) of London to pick up the other three and didn't get there until 12:15, over an hour after they had checked out of the AirBnb.   Then we turned around and drove back around to the west of the city.   In retrospect we should have dragged everyone and all of our stuff to get the car.
• We had a pub lunch in the middle of nowhere and then visited Oxford, just from 4:30 - 6:30 pm.  It was quite nice to walk around and they had fresh hot scones in a cafe in an old church there.
• Driving out of Oxford was quite rough though as night had fallen in it was all buses and unlighted bicyclists on top of the wrong side driving.
• We made it to our next AirBnb, a 300 year old farm house in Bradford-on-Avon, at 8:30 pm.

Thursday

• All five of us walked around Bradford-on-Avon a bit and had breakfast out on the cute main street, or high street I think I should say.   Then Jack, D and I drove out to the Cotswolds.   
• We parked the car in Upper Slaughter (yikes) and walked a clockwise loop of about 6 miles.  We saw lots of beautiful stone buildings, a few sheep, some horse we had to sneak past and the fanciest stables I have ever seen (full of race horses).  We didn't start until about noon I think and were hoping to be able to eat at a pub along the way, but that didn't work out.  
• We made it to the Black Horse Inn in Naunton, but it was almost dark and it turned out they didn't serve food at that time.   D and I were pretty tired (and hungry) so Jack gallantly left us there and walked the last 30+ minutes to the car, ending in the dark, before driving up to fetch us.
• Meanwhile, Kathy and Dd took the train to Bath for the day.  We had dinner back at the AirBnb.

Friday

• We packed up and drove back to SW London, where we visited Kew Gardens.   It was very nice.  Jack successfully talked his way out of a parking ticket when we got back to the car.   Elsewhere in London we had used the same pay to park app that we use in Seattle, but near the garden there was a sign about paying to park but no information about how to pay.  Apparently we were in Richmond and apparently you just have to know that they use a different app.   
• With a huge sigh of relief, we returned the car and caught a bus to the tube to the airport hotel where we spent the last night.   As I learned by missing a flight in 2004, Heathrow is so large that Terminal 5 is basically its own large airport.   It was difficult to find the hotel, which was actually connected to Terminal 5, but we eventually did and then walked back for a relaxing dinner in an airport restaurant.  

Saturday

• It was spectacular to wake up for our flight at a reasonable time, eat one of the best buffet breakfasts I have ever had, and then walk 10-15 minutes to airport security.   This was one of the better parts of our planning.

Other Reflections

• We really lucked out with the weather.   It rained the first evening we walked around and drizzled while were walking in the Cotswolds but generally was great weather for November.
• The kids were 7 and 11 and did a good job with the jet lag and the walking.  On the full tourist days in town, I did 18,000-20,000 steps and the Cotswolds walking day was 22,000.  With the exception of walking up St Paul's, Dd managed to cover some good distances with his short legs.
• I'm happy with what we chose to visit in London.  
• I wouldn't rent a car again.  Jack did all of the driving but readily admits that he needed my help constantly.  I was helping interpret the on-screen navigation at every turn because he couldn't look away from the road at all.  For example, "go 3/4 of the way around this traffic circle.  Now get in the right lane."   We expected the driving on the right to be the hardest part, but actually it was centering the car in the lane while driving from the starboard side of the car.  I was constantly saying, "scootch right."   Miraculously we only curbed it once.  Additionally, the speed limits were ridiculous, like a windy, unlit narrow road that felt like it should be 15 mph would have a sign saying 60 mph.   I'm not even exaggerating that.   On top of that, to fit all five of us and our luggage we had a car with three rows that was definitely on the larger size of normal there.   One more thing is that I thought we were familiar with roundabouts since more and more are being built in Washington and they were common in Massachusetts.   These were a different beast.   We went through many near highway entrances that had 2-3 lanes going around, more than 4 roads coming in and multiple traffic lights in and around the circular part.   Driving on the freeway was actually the easiest part, where only the lane centering was challenging (but at least the roads were straight and lit, etc).
• The Yoto was a birthday present for Dd in 2024 along with some music cards, but it didn't really take off until he listened to the audio book card we got for the long flight and down time on this trip.   Dd listened to Harry Potter 1 and all seven Narnia books voraciously and is still quite interested in Harry Potter 1 through 3 on repeat now, as I write this in March.  We also were reading Harry Potter 2 aloud during this trip.
• It still feels novel to me to have full smart phone data access while traveling.  We bought eSims before the trip and as difficult as the driving was, it would have been much worse without a navigation screen in the car.   The phone data also made it easy to navigate transit.   We got D a child-priced Oyster card for transit and Dd was free.   Jack and I were able to just tap our credit cards to pay and it was a pretty smart system where there was a max price you could be charged in a day, so there was no weekly pass to plan around.  
• This wasn't quite on the trip, but is a story of disaster averted, so I'll explain it.   We left on a Friday and Jack went to the airport from work.   My task was to pick up both kids from school, by bus, and head to the light rail to the airport with them.     Getting the house sorted out naturally took longer than usual, so I was a little behind schedule.   I called D's school to give them a message for him saying "meet me at the bus stop on 23rd".   He didn't have his phone since we weren't bringing it on the trip with us.   The message he got was wrong (or he heard it wrong), so he wasn't at the bus stop and was waiting at the cafe where we originally planned to meet.   I got off the bus to wait for him but then 15 minutes later had to get back on the next bus to get Dd, because it is a quite a big deal to not pick up a 1st grader at the end of the day.  I had five bags to carry and neither kid yet and a flight to catch.   Thankfully D, who waited for me at the wrong place, eventually asked to borrow someone's phone to call me.  Then he was able to get on a bus at the stop I had wanted to meet him at and he then rode to where I was with Dd (and a whole bunch of bags).    This felt like a cautionary tale about poor planning and freaked me out a bit about going to place where the kids wouldn't be able to call me if we got separated (which D has done a number of times, such as when snowboarding, also).