Family Fun in Europe, Part 8: London

This is my eighth post about our family's 2024 trip to Europe. I recommend reading the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh posts before this one.

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London, United Kingdom

On Friday, July 19, I felt lousy, but so much better than the previous day. My nose and throat were perfectly fine, but I was exhausted and seriously overheated, even in the cool morning. I didn't have a fever, but I'd been struggling with temperature regulation on and off since surgery and this day was the worst. Staying in the hotel room wasn't an option, though. We were leaving Belgium early in the morning. I slept for most of the 2-hour train ride to St. Pancras in London. 

They have paid luggage storage at St. Pancras, so dropping off our suitcases was our first order of business. Once that was done, it was time to do some sightseeing. London was the only city on this trip that we'd previously visited, so I'd hoped to see different things this time. For a number of reasons, that didn't work out and we ended up taking a similar hop-on-hop-off tour to the one we'd done five years ago. 

That was fine - five years is a long time, the narration was up-to-date, and the route was slightly different. What wasn't fine - the traffic and the crowds. Oh my gosh. 

Instead of zipping through town and seeing a bunch of different sites with constant narration, we spent huge amounts of time stuck in traffic with no narration. Since recorded narration is triggered by passing a certain location, there were huge gaps between fun facts while we crawled along. Having a live guide would have made a huge difference. 

  

The plan had been to ride the HOHO partway, then get off in order to transfer to the included Thames River cruise, something we didn't do last time. Either the driver didn't announce the stop or all nine of us missed hearing it. Instead of cruising the Thames, we drove over it. 

I did enjoy the parts of the HOHO where traffic wasn't terrible and the narration was more frequent. It was fun seeing sights we'd visited in 2019. 

  

  

We hopped off to have lunch, then hopped back on to continue the loop. 

It was exciting to see Big Ben. When we visited in 2019, it was covered with scaffolding. 

I can't emphasize enough how bad the traffic was on most of the route. It had been a non-issue in April 2019 - just normal city traffic. On that particular Friday in July 2024, it crawled. It took hours to complete what should have been a 60-90 minute loop. We saw emergency vehicles trying to get through traffic unsuccessfully. I am convinced that there are people who died because gridlock prevented first responders from getting to them in a timely manner. 

By the time we got back to where we could transfer to the river cruise, it was already time to pick up our luggage from St. Pancras and head to our hotel near Heathrow. So no Thames River cruise for us, which was very disappointing. The next time we're in London it will be my top priority. 

With luggage in hand, we got an Uber to take us the 19 miles to our hotel, where we planned to drop off luggage and relax a bit before a friend would arrive to take us to dinner. Care to guess how long the drive took? We went 19 miles in 75 minutes. Yuck. No time to relax. But all was forgotten when Mahendra arrived to pick us up from our hotel. It was great to see him and catch up. And boy, were we in for a treat! He drove us through some cute towns and then turned onto this tiny road. Look at the banks. It's a now-paved holloway!

What was the destination of centuries' worth of travelers? The Royal Standard is the oldest pub in England and has operated for over 900 years!

  

Check out the entry way. It doesn't look as dramatic in the photo as in real life, but there's quite a trench in the center from the feet of countless patrons shuffling in over the centuries. 

It was a beautiful day, so literally everyone else was eating outside. We chose to eat indoors in order to experience the history of the place. It was nice to be able to photograph the empty interior without disturbing anyone. 

Bunny!

The Royal Standard serves classic British food. We loved everything we tried. 

  

  

Thanks to Mahendra for taking us to such an interesting and historic place. It was perfect. 

It was quite late when we got back to the hotel, the Radisson Red Heathrow. Why did we stay at an airport hotel when we wouldn't be flying anywhere for two more weeks? I'll tell you on Monday.