The Family came to London. The whole lot of them. Luckily for my parents (and me) the whole family only consists of two adults (Parent 1 - Dad, and Parent 2 - Mom, and numbers or order of appearance do not have any signifigance here.) and only one sibling - Ryan, the token teenager.
Their hotel was conveniently located directly across the street from my humble residence, which made mornings and evenings very easy. My place for breakfast, either cereal or a fry up, and their place in the evenings for good ol' British television or some family "hang" time.
We had many adventures and saw a whole lot of London in the 10 days they were here. Luckily, the weather behaved and it only rained once - the day we went to the park and happened to only bring one umbrella because it was sunny in the morning. Oh, it hailed that day too. So, as we were all trying to share that one umbrella and find cover and/or a bus stop to take us away from the open-spaced greenery, I got us lost and doing circles trying to find the right bus stop. 20 minutes later we had done a lot of walking in the rain, we were wet and muddy and cold and decided to take the underground. Great idea, right? Get out of the rain and get home. Well, that depends on whether or not you have a fear of enclosed spaces, otherwise known as Clausterphobia.
As it turns out, every other citizen and tourist in London also decided to take the underground and they all happened to be going in the same direction as us. I have never felt more like a sardine in all of my life. I was also a little worried a fight might break out as more and more people tried to squeeze their way on to the tube and more and more people became anxious, nervous and impatient that they would not be able to work their way to the door to get off.... but, we survived and I toured my parents safely through the city for the rest of the week (minus the occasional "almost hit by a car because we didn't cross at a crosswalk and looked the wrong direction for traffic" But, whose counting? At least we were smart enough to stay away from the G20 riots.) Aside from the park misadventure, the family trip turned out just dandy!
We even took some lovely trips out of London to escape the smog, the concrete and the noise. We spent a day in Oxford, a day at the Park in Greenwhich to stand on the Prime Meridian - where time begins, and a day out at Hampton Court Palace - the home of Kind Henry VIII and all of his indulgences (wives, food, beheadings, etc.)
We certainly did a lot of walking, but we spent a fair amount of time on buses as well. Double decker buses of course. And yes, we always sat at on the top, in the very front if possible. We saw Big Ben and Parliament, Buckingham, St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. We saw the London Eye and walked along Southbank, went to many museums and of course did a bunch of shopping (stopping at Harrods, naturally). We went to Camden Market, Burrough Market and Portobello Market. We ate lots of food, did the traditional English Sunday Roast and mom and I did High Afternoon Tea.
(gotta love this. dad spotted it. After both him and ryan decided it would be a good idea to eat KFC while visiting Europe. To their dismay, they missed out on this gem "AFC")
I loved having the family here. It was great to show them where I live and how I live. But now it is back to reality. No more late night British TV and no more early morning gatherings in the Kitchen and no more playing tourist all day long (which can actually be quite fun! No one expects anything of you or expects you to know anything, so you get away with quite a lot!).
No comments:
Post a Comment