We started the first leg of this trip in a state of glee. There were a lot of belly laughs at somewhat inappropriate times (like afternoon tea) caused by somewhat inappropriate words (how else do you get a 14-year-old boy to laugh?). Our two days in London went fast but we packed a lot in and found our tempo as a travel group. Highlights were pretty predictable: Harrods, the Changing of the Guard, afternoon tea, a bit of rain, curry, and fish & chips.
Warning: The following will undoubtedly be very boring for anyone else to read, but I'm writing it down for my own memories and because my mom will want to know every single thing I did and ate.
Where we stayed
The Pelham Hotel in South Kensington
What we ate
Lebanese, Indian (Memories of India). Chinese. Croissants. Coffee. Dessert (El & N), and fish & chips. The Indian was really good. Nothing else was really that notable.
What we did
A walking tour of London with a guy named Will (not that Will) with a stroll through Green Park (possibly not the real name) which used to be a mass grave for plague victims, then to the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, then to Big Ben and Parliament.
Afterward, we ate some deliciously crispy fish and chips and then went to Churchill's War Rooms, an underground bunker where Winston Churchill and a bunch of people directed the war while bombs went off overhead. You could almost imagine how intense that must have been in these windowless, airless rooms, somberly tracking air strikes and determining what to blow up next.
That night, we met cousin Deborah and Uncle Steve and Aunt Ellen and their friend, Nancy, for Indian food and then went back to their flat for a visit. It's so nice to see people you know in other countries.
The next day, we went to the Tower of London, where we rushed through a 2-hour wander of this incredible fortress with a salacious history of torture and beheadings. We didn't make it to the Crown Jewels since we had a tea time to get to, but it was well worth the history lesson we got from Beef Eaters who actually live right there within the walls. It's somewhat jarring to walk out of there and see the most modern architecture of the city directly across the Thames.
One of those buildings they call the walkie-talkie building. Tyler claims that a YouTube video told him that the building had a design flaw that reflected the sun off of the angled windows to the street below, causing roads to melt and eggs to fry and they had to redesign the window angles to correct the problem. Cool story. Thanks, YouTube.
From there, we headed to afternoon Tea at 11 Cadogan Garden, a sweet little hotel in Chelsea with a sweet little afternoon tea. What started as a slightly awkward, slightly underdressed situation quickly turned into a raucous tea party with insulting attempts at British accents and hilarious discussions that would have made a proper tea-drinker blush and faint. We managed to not get thrown out and instead had a delicious blend of tea, sandwiches, scones, and pastries. Even Tyler liked the tea, declaring it "just like Bobba Tea without the Bobba".
We made it to the train station just in time to be really late for a very long queue (that's "line" in British), which we were escorted through to the front and hopped the train just in time for a leisurely ride through the Chunnel and the countryside to arrive in Amsterdam around 11:30pm.
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