I found cheap airplane tickets to London last summer (in 2019) and snagged them. Unfortunately, my crystal ball was malfunctioning at the time and it did not foresee the Coronavirus crisis that would correspond with our travel dates. As we were packing for London the night before our trip, President Trump made a live announcement. I listened in shock and disappointment as he declared a travel ban for Europe and I thought that our trip was being cancelled...but then he said that the UK was fine and would not be under the travel ban. Phew! (Until we were already in London and then the UK was included.😄)
The next day, on March 12th, we left our home just before 7am and drove six-ish hours to the Los Angeles airport. On the way we stopped at the largest Chevron in the world. I mention this mostly so that the boys can remember it because for some reason they really loved it. It was raining for a lot of our drive and by the time we got to LA and found the economy parking lot, it was pouring rain. Holding umbrellas while trying to grab suitcases, backpacks, and coats and get five people moving to the bus stop was super awkward and we got pretty wet. Peter also discovered that the shoes he was wearing had a hole in the bottom which let all of the water come straight into his shoe. This was by far the most rain we saw on the entire trip and was also probably the most unpleasant part of our whole trip.
After going through security and waiting around the airport for awhile, our plane finally took off at 4pm LA time. This was the boys' first time on an airplane. Our flight was around 10.5 hours long, but they did great and loved it. Because of the time difference, we arrived in England at 9:30am on Friday morning.
We took the subway and buses to our hotel where we napped for a couple of hours and then went to explore Holland Park which was only a few minutes walk from our hotel. Of all the parks we saw, Holland Park was my favorite. Here are a few pictures from Holland Park.
I can't remember which days we did which things, but we also saw Kensington Palace, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, The British Museum, Platform 9 3/4 in Kings Cross Station, The Royal Botanical Garden, the Tower of London, and several parks including St. James Park. We also saw tons of cool buildings and cathedrals and beautiful places just from traveling around London. Here is a random mashup of a few trip pictures.
For the majority of the trip, the only side effect of the Coronavirus was that nothing was crowded...until we went to Piccadilly Circus. Then we definitely felt the effects of the Coronavirus. It was eerily deserted with most of the shops closed.
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| Chinatown in Piccadilly Circus. Notice that there was no one else in the picture. It was empty. We loved the name of this restaurant/pub. |
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| Outside of a closed Lego store with a Lego Big Ben in Piccadilly Circus |
On Wednesday morning I got an email that our flight home Friday had been canceled and that I needed to fill out a form online whereupon someone would contact us to reschedule. We still hadn't heard back from the airline by Thursday afternoon so I called them and spent over an hour on the phone trying to get a new flight home. In the end, they rebooked us on a flight from London to New York and another flight from New York to Los Angeles. From the time that we woke up in London and began packing and traveling to the airport until we arrived in Saint George, it was thirty hours. This is how the boys looked on the drive from LA to Saint George.
Despite the Coronavirus and some long traveling days, it was a really fun trip! We're so glad that we went.
As an interesting side-note, the day that we got home London restaurants, cafes, pubs, etc. were all ordered to close and two days later London went on complete lock down.
