London Day 1: Buckingham Palace and Finding Gluten Free Pizza!

London, baby!

This year my husband, Alan, starts a fancy new job that we expect will keep him busier than he has been for the last couple of years. Therefore, we decided to give our family an all-out overseas vacation.

This was the boys’ first time overseas, so we figured a United Kingdom trip would break them in the most gently to international travel. After all, everyone speaks English there. Ha.

London day #1

Day one took us from the airport, to our hotel for a long nap, and then down to Central London to see Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abby. Plus, I had this need, thanks to my time watching Downton Abbey and such shows, to go for a walk in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.

You can fly nonstop Washington, D.C. to Heathrow Airport near London, so we did just that.

Hotels in London are insanely expensive, and there were five of us going. Maybe a single room in the heart of London would not be too bad, but two doubles? Yikes. We had to find a happy medium between staying out of town and staying downtown.

I opted for a good deal I found near Chelsea, and Chelsea is fairly close to Kensington. I knew I wanted to walk through Kensington Gardens and get a glimpse of Kensington Palace, so I figured Chelsea was good enough.

We stayed at the Hilton Doubletree Chelsea, and thankfully it was right next to a train stop.

I checked when I booked it. Unfortunately, I didn’t bank on that very train line being shut down for one of our trip days, but you just cannot know that sort of thing.

It was okay though. London is eaten up with train stops, so we just walked to the next closest one, which was in easy walking distance for us. Well…. honestly it was in good distance for us for the first part of our day. We couldn’t hack it at the end of our day, but I’ll save that story for later in this post.

By the way, we took the red eye flight.

….Because let’s just go ahead and deal with the jet lag head on. Plus, red eye flights were cheaper.

We left D.C. at 5pm, and we arrived in London at 6am. We probably each slept two hours on the plane. Daniel did not sleep at all. Gracious, Daniel and JD. Those two! I sat beside them, and they were giddy happy trouble all night long.

I thought we’d manage.

My delusional brain figured we’d ditch our suitcases at our hotel and go sight seeing right away. We knew our rooms wouldn’t be ready yet.

Miracle of miracles, the Doubletree managed to get us into one of our rooms at around 9am London time. The other room would be ready later. We were thrilled.

No one had any choice. There was a twin bed and a double bed and four people. All of us, except poor Alan, crashed onto a bed and couldn’t wake ourselves until probably 2pm London time.

Poor Alan. He tried to sleep on the double bed with two of us. He couldn’t do it successfully. I think he may have only gotten an hour of sleep in the hotel compared to our four or five. He kept trying to wake us up to head into town. It was not happening. We couldn’t wake up even if we wanted to.

Around two or three in the afternoon, Alan finally got us all awake and herded out of our hotel.

We were ready to hit the town. I’d known this day would be the weird day that never ends, so I had booked us for nothing at all. We were free to roam.

First order of business, we were starving. We began our hike to the second-closest overground train stop, with our eyes constantly scanning for restaurants we could all agree on.

We hit the jackpot. There was this Italian pizzeria, super close by. The place was empty too, because who eats at three o’clock?

I never did figure out exactly what time Londoners do eat because it seems like we were always off their schedule.

This pizzeria offered gluten free options. I had a delicious salad, and I could have had pizza if I’d wanted it. They offer a cauliflower crust.

We were all happy, happy, happy.

Our trip from the airport had already involved half a dozen train changes, so we felt pretty comfortable on the train, but we were also tired of it and ready to get out and see London!

By the way, London trains are easy to use. You do not have to buy a special ticket. You can use your credit card as your ticket, to just scan right in and out. However, we needed older child tickets. For those you do have to buy a ticket, as it saves you money. Kids ten and under ride free. Older kids have reduced fares.

We decided to begin in Kensington, since it was the closest tourist area to our hotel.

Kensington Gardens surrounds Kensington Palace. We entered Kensington Gardens at the part which is actually an Embassy Row. Enormous embassies lined the streets. I asked later where the U.S. embassy is, as it wasn’t on this row. Apparently, the U.S. Embassy has its whole own compound in London, south of the Thames River.

I took zero photos of the embassies because there was a sign at the entrance to the street saying that no photos were allowed, so I was afraid to. Alan later said that just meant at the checkpoint. Drat. I should have known that.

It felt like we walked constantly from four o’clock until around seven o’clock.

My feet were killing me. Daniel’s orthopedic shoe insoles were giving him blisters, and everyone was dead exhausted by the end of it. I have to hand it to Daniel though. He never complained about the blisters. I didn’t realize he had them until the end of the night.

We walked from Kensington Gardens, past the small pond with beautiful swans, past the Prince Albert Memorial, and found ourselves a double decker London bus. Riding the bus for just a few stops gave our feet a short break.

We got off near the Hyde Park tunnel and still had so much walking to do, on the edges of Hyde Park, to get to Buckingham Palace. Maybe it wasn’t that far, but thanks to our feet problems and general exhaustion, we began sitting on benches every time we came to an open bench.

We had a surprisingly fun time sitting on benches on the outskirts of Hyde Park.

Finally, we came upon Buckingham Palace. I was excited, but I was equally excited to spot a snack stand. Joy of joys. Everyone but Alan had an ice cream. Alan bought a few waters. The rest of us felt that ice cream was most certainly a need. London was in a heat wave, and we were getting a work out, even with all of our bench sitting breaks.

Did you know that King Charles does not actually live at Buckingham Palace?

He lives primarily at Clarence House, which is next to St. James Palace. Buckingham Palace is still the administrative headquarters for the monarchy though.

The palace is so much bigger than it appears from the front. That building makes an entire square with a large courtyard in the middle. We only saw the front and one side.

After Buckingham Palace, we hoofed it over to the Parliament area.

We were determined to see Big Ben and Westminster Abbey before calling it quits on day one, and so we did. There were no sitting breaks at this point, and we got it allll in.

Once we’d hit all these must-sees, we basically just kept walking to see what we would happen upon.

We kept on trooping along, passing several interesting buildings and statues. We ended up at the Horse Guards parade ground.

Somewhere right past here (the above photo) we walked right by Downing Street without realizing it.

There were several memorials there too, and that is where we spotted the London Eye for the first time in our trip. Actually, I think that’s the only time I noticed it.

Then we kept on walking, until we hit the Boer War Memorial. It had steps, and the boys were drawn to those like a magnet. Once again, we were all sitting down.

At this point we were on a delightfully decorated street, which I’d never heard of. It is called The Mall. It is lined with UK flags. I thought it was one of the most splendid sights in London. We’d basically made a circle, walking around St. James Park. The Mall ends at Buckingham Palace. We were on the end closer to Trafalgar Square and Scotland Yard, but I certainly didn’t know any of that.

The thing was, we were all completely done with that day. Our four hour nap was nice and all, but it wasn’t quite enough. Plus, there was the blisters and the plantar fasciitis, and so much sweat. Ha!

At this point, the idea of finding a train station, walking to it, changing trains several times, and then walking a mile to our hotel, because the Mildmay line was down for repairs, was far too much for any of us.

Thankfully, Alan understood just how broken and out of juice our entire group was, and he ordered an Uber. Moments like these, when Alan rescues us in central London with an Uber, are moments when I love him the very most. He was a knight with shining iPhone, taking us for a ride on an Uber XL.

Our Uber ride was the most relaxing part of our day.

We drove past many of the same things we had seen earlier, plus so many beautiful store fronts! The car ride from central London to Chelsea was delightful.

No one really had dinner that night. I went straight to bed. Some of the boys ate some little crackers or junk in the hotel, I think. We all knocked out hard that night.

Caleb and JD shared a room for our two London nights, and those two got along better than anything I’ve ever seen. They are quite a happy duo. Being five years apart, JD calmly accepts Caleb’s leadership. Plus, they both prefer to live in peace. There are no sibling issues with these two. It’s funny how many different relationship dynamics you find in a big family.

Day one was an exhausting success. I was far more excited for day two!

For day two, I booked us tours at the Tower of London (castle) and the Prime Meridian Naval Observatory. I figured it’d be a day of less painful feet. (Wrong.)

Come back next week for my post on the Tower of London! It was one of my personal top two things we saw in England. I have read so many things and watched documentaries involving the Tower, and I’m so excited we got to go there! Plus the whole area around it is a vibrant place to visit.

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