London Living Experience

In showing up to our online booked condo, we couldn't help but to be nervous to use the 1950's elevator (British call it a lift). Our place was in a perfect location, right in Chelsea off of a main street next to cafes, restaurants and shopping, just down from Harrods. One of the downfalls of the condo was that the windows where one pane and all night long we could hear cars, ambulances, motorcycles, people. You name it.

Chris is an OCD germaphobe and the second night before we left London he noticed two red bumps on his bum. Of course, he went on Google instantly to see if he had Bed Bugs. Google did not have me convinced that they were, but he was. No word of a lie, the next night Chris slept with a towel on top of the sheets, his boxers and a pair of shorts over the top. He maybe got a total of 4 hours sleep, stressing about getting bite again all night long.

The weather in London was around 18 degrees Celsius every day; however, it felt more like 10 Celsius, we didn't pack enough warm clothes for the weather, so we had to layer up and buy the kids more clothes. Shopping on the streets was crazy busy with all different cultures, crazy drivers and the fashion was next level. Chris had big aspirations to shop in London, but that didn't go so well when the stores where all two levels with men's downstairs and no elevators with a stroller, screaming kids or wearing a child. Chris still is on the hunt for some new clothes.

It seemed as though Jada loved London, each day we did an adventure such as the London Eye, Shrek Adventure, six-floor toy store called Hamleys, etc. We combined this with the other half of the day eating out at Cafes and restaurants. Chris google searched "best restaurants in Chelsea" so while we were out walking the streets in our Lululemon's one evening, we came by one of the restaurants Chris researched. It turns out it was a high-end sushi spot. Not the best choice at all with two kids way past bedtime. Jada was literally throwing her chopsticks, then making pancakes with the sashimi which consisted of smooshing the sashimi into the table and then scraping it off. We, of course, ate our meals as fast as possible and asked for the bill. It wasn't cheap, and we completely wasted a nice dinner there. Oh well. After that, we stuck to eating dinner at the condo or at a more practical location such as pubs (kids are welcome in pubs in England).

Transportation around London was crazy. It was a shock that in a Taxi cab or Uber (even in Calgary) you don't need your kids to be in car seats, so to keep things light each day we just travelled with Cruz in the carrier and brought along the fold up the stroller. In the Taxi's and Uber cars, Jada sat with a seat belt on (she thought this was pretty cool) and Cruz in the carrier on Chris. I know a lot of you (older and wiser people) are reading this thinking, yeah we carried our babies on our lap, not sure what the big deal is.

Being tourists and all it only made sense to us to get a two-day on-off tourist bus pass. We sat on the bus for about two hours and to be honest for the first 20 minutes was good, it went downhill from there. We sat in traffic the entire time, Jada kept pulling out our headphones in our ears, and Cruz was getting too hot against Chris in the carrier. We didn't use the second day's pass.

Chris' dad was from England and lived off and on in London. The last location Chris had seen his dad was in London while he was in a nursing home just outside London. He passed away in 2005, so Chris brought along some of his dad's ashes and threw them into the Thames river. Stay tuned to more locations Chris dispersed his dad's ashes throughout our trip.

Thats our Journey through London in a nut-shell.

Posted on October 21, 2018 by admin in Follow the Joneses Journey tagged