but the girls did a great job and we easily made the two-minute walk to our hotel, the St Davids Hotel on Norfolk Square. We had spent our first two nights in England at this same hotel back in January so the area was familiar to us, but it sure did look different in summer!
We had no real agenda for this visit to London. Although we were definitely tourists, seven months of travelling and living in England left us less goal-oriented than we would have been had we been visiting for two weeks. We decided to go for a walk around the area, see what we could find, and soak in our last bits of England. We headed down our street toward Hyde Park and soon found the Victoria Inn, the first pub that we had visited back in January and recommended by the Rough Guide to London. After a quick pint and some lemonade (inexplicably in England, this means a lemon-lime soda akin to Sprite),
we headed on to Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. We found a playground but it didn’t interest Gwendolyn all that much so we proceeded along the footpaths. Being a Saturday afternoon, Hyde Park was busy, with people hanging out and doing all sorts of things like bike riding, walking, running, and just sitting in the sun. We eventually came to The Serpentine, which is a lake in the middle of the park. There were swans swimming around, probably ones that are owned by the Queen, and people renting paddle boats. The girls, of course, were pining for some ice cream and we were happy to oblige. Here they are with one of their last ice creams in England with The Serpentine in the background. It was good, but it was no Cornish ice cream!
At this point we made it a goal to see Buckingham Palace, which is an easy walk from the southeast corner of Hyde Park. We eventually made it to the gates after a scenic walk along Green Park and past the posh areas of Mayfair and Belgravia. We eventually made it to the famous gates in front of the palace. The changing of the guard happened earlier in the day so we missed that, but it was still fun to stand in front of the palace that we had seen on television during the Royal Wedding.
Fortunately, the area, and really the city, was not overrun with tourists. You can see that in this larger picture of the front of Buckingham Palace,
and certainly nowhere near the crowds that were in this same spot following the Royal Wedding.
When comparing the previous two pictures you can also tell that the Queen was not in residence when we were there. The Royal Standard flies above the palace whenever she is in residence and it was obviously missing on the day that we were there. The Queen spends her summers in Scotland. Smart lady.
We spent a little bit of time enjoying the views from the fountain. Gwendolyn climbed up on the fountain
and Rebecca and I enjoyed the view of The Mall (inexplicably pronounced ‘mal’ by the English as in the French word for sick), the promenade leading to the palace from Whitehall and through St James Park. This route was lined with thousands of people for the procession after the Royal Wedding. Again, it was fun to be walking here after seeing it on television.
We enjoy the area around Whitehall, Parliament and Trafalgar Square. There is so much history here and we’ve seen images of these places for years, so it was enjoyable to see this area again. We were pretty tired after our week of farewell parties in Harrowbarrow and our journey to London, so after dinner at The Lord Moon of the Mall pub on Whitehall, we walked up to Trafalgar Square, grabbed a seat on a double-decker bus and rode home. This might as well have been a tourist bus because it passed many familiar tourist attractions and we had a top-deck view of them: Piccadilly Circus, Regent Street, Hamley’s, the Marble Arch, Oxford Street, Selfridge’s Department Store and Hyde Park.
The next day we had a bit more of a plan. After a delicious English breakfast at our hotel, we planned to see Westminster Abbey, the location of the Royal Wedding. In the afternoon our plans were to go on a Harry Potter walking tour. We had read about walking tours in the Rough Guide to London, and they seemed to be just right thing for our walking family. Plus, we’re all big Harry Potter fans and were excited to see not only the film locations but also the sites that inspired J.K. Rowling’s stories. The description on the tour’s website also was intriguing – "This walk 'Potters' through the old City of London. You’ll see most of the great buildings of the ancient City: the Bank of England, Mansion House, the wonderful Leadenhall Market, a close up view of the ‘Gherkin’, magnificent St Paul’s Cathedral, etc. You’ll cross the river by way of London Bridge – natch! You’ll see film locations where Hagrid and Harry make their way to Diagon Alley in the first film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. You’ll see where Harry, Mad-Eye Moody, Nymphadora Tonks and their friends fly in The Order of the Phoenix. And you’ll see the locations used for the Leaky Cauldron and the Third Hand Book Emporium in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. And lots more. What's not to like about a London Walk packed with history and Harry Potter. So come on muggles, it's time to enter the maze. Yes, that time – Portkey time, warp-across-London time!
After breakfast we walked over to the Paddington tube station, just around the corner from our hotel, bought day-rider passes that gave us unlimited tube and bus travel all day (kids free!), and headed down to Parliament Square to begin the day. It was a bit more crowded around the church but it was still fun to see sites like Parliament and Big Ben 
and Westminster Abbey.
We also explored the cloisters of the abbey. The cloisters were decidedly less crowded and had a coffee bar to boot! We enjoyed coffee and juice while sitting on the ancient stone benches that surround the cloister. We noticed while sitting there that we were also sitting on graves – the pavement of the cloister was actually grave markers for people who died anywhere from the 1400s to twenty years ago. There were also memorials all along the walls, including one to the world's circumnavigators (Drake, Cook, Chichester) and Edmumd Halley.
After this excursion we headed across Westminster Bridge to the South Bank of the River Thames, which is a great promenade with great views of Westminster and the City of London. The bridge itself offers incredible views of Big Ben
and the entire Parliament building, certainly one of the most recognizable buildings in the world.
A bit further along the river, just past the London Eye, we encountered a carousel offering 2 GBP rides, so the girls went for a ride.
You can see on their faces how much fun they had.
At this point we were running out of time to make the Harry Potter walk, so we headed back across the river on the Hungerford Bridge. We traded photo ops with some Ukrainian tourists,
and then grabbed the Underground to the City of London. Most people don’t know this about London, but the actual City, the ancient core of what we think of as London, is only one square mile and has only about 11,000 residents. It is here that many of the Harry Potter sites are and it was our destination for the Harry Potter walk. We met for the walk in front of the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England, the inspiration for Gringotts in the Harry Potter stories.
Sitting in front of the Bank of England was this great taxi. London gets a lot of mileage out of the old song by The Clash (as did I with the blog title!).
Richard, our excellent tour guide, took us in and out of the nooks and crannies of the City, from modern vistas of the banking industry to back alleys with ancient pubs like this one. Simpson’s Tavern was the inspiration for the Leaky Cauldron, the wizarding pub that was the entrance to Diagon Alley, the wizarding shopping district. Richard told us that it was also used by Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol as the location that Ebenezer Scrooge ate his dinner. Certainly, Dickens himself would have visited this pub.
We saw other stark contrasts. For example, the medieval church of St Andrew Undershaft, so named because of the maypole that used to tower above it, now towered over by the modern skyscraper known as the Gherkin.
We also saw the headquarters of Lloyd’s of London, a design of Richard Rogers that is famous as being ‘inside-out’ – all of the mechanical systems line the outside of the building! We were also lead to the Leadenhall Market, a Victorian shopping arcade that appears in the first Harry Potter film. Here is an example of its intricately-painted ironwork.
On the fringes of this same market is the another site, the blue building in the picture below, that functioned as the Leaky Cauldron in the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban film.
We did a lot more walking on the rest of the tour, including crossing the London Bridge to the south side of the river once again. Gwendolyn rode on my shoulders for a while, bringing up fond memories of our travels in Turkey when I carried her all over the place when she was three. If only she had still weighed the same!
Our final stop was in the Borough Market, known to many foodies as the place to buy fruit and veg of all sorts. The building in the background, next to the train trestle, was the Leaky Cauldron in the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban film. Harry lived in the room overlooking the train tracks. The building also functioned as the Third Hand Book Emporium in the movie.
The tour ended with all of the kids throwing a little cylinder into the air, which when aloft turned into wands. There are at least seven floating in the air in the picture below.
The tour was a lot of fun. At two hours in length it was probably a bit long for the girls, but Christine and I enjoyed it, especially given that it included a lot more information than just bits about Harry Potter.
Our only other goal for the day was to get the girls to Hamley’s toy store. We decided to continue walking along the South Bank so that we could cross the Tower Bridge, one of my favorite bridges and certainly an icon of London. Along the way we found a replica of the Golden Hinde, Sir Francis Drake’s ship that circumnavigated the globe in the 1500s,
and a set of fountains set up for cooling off on a hot day. I say hot because it was probably our hottest day in England, but now that we’ve returned to the heat and humidity of North Carolina, it wasn’t really hot at all. Even Boone feels hot compared with England! Unfortunately we didn’t have any spare clothes with us, so the girls, and Christine, had to content themselves with just getting their arms wet.
The vantage point of the fountains provided some great views: the Tower of London, scene of imprisonments and executions throughout England’s bloody history (the girls learned a lot about this history at school and through a great CBBC TV show and set of books, Horrible Histories),
and the Tower Bridge.
We got to walk across the bridge and it looked great. It must have recently been painted because the colors were bright and clean. Even Christine was impressed with this bridge.
We were able to see the City from the bridge,
and the girls and Christine posed for a picture for me.
We were running out of time to make it to Hamley’s, so we upped our pace and headed down to the Underground for the final push. Look how steep these escalators are!
Like I said a bit ago, it was hot, especially down in the tube, and the day's sightseeing was taking itrs toll. This picture just cracks us up and sums up our level of energy on this last day in England. We were ready for a break!
We finally made it to Hamley’s, a toy store since 1740 and supposedly the “World’s Largest Toy Shop.”
That was about it for our day in London. After an uninspired dinner on Carnaby Street, the former epicenter of ‘Swinging Sixties London’ and Mod culture on the edge of Soho, and some ice cream on Oxford Street, we made our way back to the hotel.
The next day’s journey home to the US was uneventful. Our plane didn’t leave Heathrow until noon, so we were able to relax in the morning and take our time. We took the Heathrow Express to the airport, checked in, and then waited for boarding. We noticed on checking in that US Airways were looking for volunteers to remain in London because they were overbooked. With the offer of $900 per traveler, a free night’s accommodation in a five star hotel, and free meals, we were more than willing to stay in England one more day. I was eager to have four free tickets to return to England, as was Christine, so we signed up! Alas, we were not needed and we boarded the flight for Philadelphia. The trans-Atlantic flight was smooth and uneventful. Unfortunately, our flight to Raleigh was delayed due to heavy thunderstorms in Philadelphia. We eventually arrived in Raleigh about an hour late. It was hot!The next day was spent in Carrboro, North Carolina, visiting my sister and her partner, Janice and Paige, and their new baby, Logan.
The girls were excited to see their new cousin and Christine and I were excited to see our new nephew. Here we all are, each getting a chance to hold him.
Christine is sitting on the deck with Logan at Janice and Paige’s new house, complete with lake in the background.
Rebecca is looking forward to babysitting – only three more years!
Gwendolyn is content to sit on the couch with him.
My mother, Carolyn, was even in town and she was excited to see the girls. They’ve grown quite a bit and their accents are cute (even though our Cornish friends don’t hear anything!), so they are a bit of a novelty right now. I’m sure that the accents will disappear quickly!
We left that evening, spent the night at the farm with Christine’s stepfather, Bill Lail, before leaving the next morning for Boone. We arrived to a nice banner welcoming us home!
Welcome Home!!
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