London

We started the day by hopping on the "Big Bus" and riding to Harrod's. 

Since they had enjoyed the Egyptian displays at the British Museum, I had to show the girls the Egyptian escalator. Even after multiple visits, it still impresses. Also, it's nice to know that the ownership of the pieces on display is not disputed. (And yes, I do know that the stuff in Harrod's is not authentic!)

We bought lots of Harrod's chocolate for gifts.

 

From Harrod's, it's a short walk to the Natural History Museum. Some eye-catching sights en route:

St Saviour's Church

This window display in a shop called Divertimenti

This window was so appealing that we went inside. Fortunately, when you know you need to pack your bags to get on the plane, it is easy to resist purchasing anything. Otherwise, this shop would have been quite tempting.

The Museum of Natural History

This museum is in an amazing building and features a suspended skeleton of a blue whale.

The museum itself is kind of old-school, very much like the museums of my youth with a lot of stuffed animals that look like stuffed animals, but the girls enjoyed it. 

Something I found kind of sad was that a lot of the mammal displays had signs apologizing for the poor condition of the animals, because they had been stored improperly and had become discoloured or faded.

When Zoe's dad was little, he absolutely loved these souvenir penny machines, so when we saw this, we had to get one for him.

When we finished at the museum, it was getting close to time for our Harry Potter walking tour. Zoe, a true Potterhead, was looking forward to this!

The tour started at Leadenhall Market, just steps from the Monument. Our family loves the Monument, so since we were early, I thought we could use this time to make the climb. However, I had forgotten that the Monument is closed from 1:00-2:00 pm. Since our tour would start at 2:30, we wouldn't have enough time.

I thought maybe we could make our way back here after the tour.

I had read a little bit about Leadenhall Market, but it was not quite as impressive as I expected. It is quite small and part of it was walled off for construction. It is beautiful, however, and we felt quite safe knowing there were 6 or 7 of these heavily armed police officers standing by. Not -- if anything, their presence was slightly alarming, especially after they explained that they were there because there was a lot of drinking underway.

  

We met up with our tour guide, with whom Zoe had an instant connection, and four young women from Texas and Sydney, and the tour began. This was my first time to go on a guided tour. Although I read the first three Harry Potter books when they first came out, I am by no means a fan, so I wasn't sure what to expect. However, Zoe's obvious pleasure in seeing places from the films helped me to enjoy it too. The tour was quite long and it was getting a little cold, but every time I asked her if she wanted to go, she said no.

Some of the places were old haunts of Charles Dickens, so that was interesting, and I always take pleasure in interesting architecture.

We had some excellent views of St. Paul's, and the guide took us to a newly constructed reflecting pool, off in a small garden. This would have been easy to miss, so I appreciated having it pointed out.

A van with police horses is not an everyday sight.

The tour guide pointed out this pub as featuring in the first Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movie.

We also walked past the Globe Theatre and the Golden Hind.

The tour ended near here, in Borough Market, next to a train track that shows up in one of the Harry Potter movies (you'll have to ask Zoe for the details!)

By now it was dark and I was a little bewildered. Although I had glanced at the tour route, somehow, I hadn't expected to end up on the south side of the Thames. (I know, I should have paid more attention.)

I had originally thought we might go back to the Monument and climb up for a view of London after dark, but the girls were tired and cold. We started out walking back to the hotel, which was only about a kilometer away, but as I couldn't figure out how to get up onto the bridge, I finally decided we would just take the underground. 

A couple of train changes and we were back at the Tower Hill station. A quick trip to a little Tesco for supper fare, and back to the hotel.

Rainy London

 A full English is always a good way to start the day! At this hotel, kids eat free, so it was too good a deal to pass up.

After this feast, we got out my umbrella (yes, the weather forecast of 100% chance of rain  was all too accurate) and headed down to the pier to catch the boat to Westminster and Big Ben. On the way down, we stopped in at a souvenir shop so the girls could buy their own London-themed umbrellas.

As you can see, the boat trip was not overly popular today!

We got off the boat at Westminster Pier, where the girls were thrilled to see Big Ben and to show off their new umbrellas. It was really quite a miserable day, so we just wandered around a little bit here before getting on the "Big Bus".

Before this trip, I had never ridden on a Hop-On, Hop-Off bus, but I thought that with the girls, it might be a good idea. Normally I walk or ride a bike everywhere, but I wasn't sure whether they would be up for that, and I thought having the option of the bus might be good. For both London and Paris, the ticket included the boat ride as well, which seemed like a good deal. 

Although the boat rides were nice, overall, I think the bus is a bit of a rip-off. When I had seen the buses on previous trips (as a person without a ticket), I thought they were everywhere and frequent, but when you actually want to ride one, it is a bit of a different story. First, you can only ride the buses from the company whose ticket you purchased. So, although there are lots of buses, there are not necessarily lots from Big Bus. The other thing is that they only come every half hour or so, meaning that if you miss the bus by a couple of minutes, you have to wait for the next bus to arrive. This makes it hard to plan your stops. To top it off, sometimes the bus that was scheduled doesn't arrive or arrives late. Finally, because I had spent a big whack of money on the bus tickets, I felt like I had to use them. 

In retrospect, maybe I should have just counted it a loss and we could have used the Underground more (we did use it quite a bit anyway). Chalk it up to lessons learned. In future, I will know better!

Buckingham Palace

We figured a rainy day was a good day for a visit to Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station. Since Zoe loves all things Harry Potter, she was thrilled with this. I think she could have spent all day in here. There is also a place where you can take a photo with a luggage cart going through the brick wall (I had no idea what this was about until I watched the first movie on the plane on the way home), but there was a long queue for this, and Zoe didn't want to wait.

The rain had stopped, so we decided to go to Hyde Park and rent bikes. 

Was I ever surprised when we got off the bus at Marble Arch. First, Marble Arch was not even visible, as it was completely covered with scaffolding for reconstruction work. 

Nor was Hyde Park visible. Instead, there was a big green fence all around, above which we could see fair rides. It turned out this was a big Christmas fair. At first the girls were excited, but then we saw that admission to the fair was £10 and rides were also £10 each. Since the girls had limited funds, and I wasn't keen on paying that much, we decided it was too rich for our blood.

But, I assured them, we could still rent bikes and enjoy a ride in the other part of the park. It took a bit of walking, but we finally found a bike stand and began to rental process, only to find that kids have to be 14 or older to rent the bikes. This was a big disappointment, but of course, there was nothing we could do about it.

Because the fair took up so much of the park, we had to walk quite a distance before seeing anything, but we did manage a short walk, including Wellington Arch. By this time it was getting quite dark, so we found our Big Bus and rode back to the hotel.

London

 December 18

Eurostar to London 

Paris

 December 17

We started the day with a leisurely walk to the quay for the boat cruise.  It turned out we were too early for the first cruise, so we went to a little Christmas market that was nearby. We also spent some time looking at the rover and interacting with some mallard ducks!

Then w