Collins UK Travels: July 2015

Family Photo at the Eye (insert clever comment about Elise being translucent)

This trip began with a conversation when we were in London at Easter and planning our agenda for the next day:

Daddy, Clare and I have talked. We want to go on the London Eye tomorrow.

Charis, Mommy and I have talked. We're taking everyone on the bus tour tomorrow.

The next day:

Charis, that tour wasn't very much fun. We're going to come back to London, and I promise we'll take you on the Eye.

Our time in London over Easter gave us confidence we could do a visit to London in a long day. That conversation set the agenda for our day trip to London while Kristine's brother and sister-in-law were in town visiting. We had lofty aspirations for lots of sightseeting on this trip with some travel in between. It actually turned out the other way around. We spent a lot of time in transit and a bit of time sightseeing.

Transit #1 - we caught the 90 minute train ride from East Midlands to St. Pancras station. We then tried to be slick by getting all four adults through the Underground turnstiles on two Oyster cards with ample balances to pay for our tickets. It didn't work. The turnstiles evidently don't let Oyster cards get swiped twice at the same location. Add extra waiting time while Kristine and I stand in line to buy new Oyster cards.

Waiting on the platform at East Midlands station

Using her uncle's sunglasses to look intimidating

Or not

This found on the inside of the train's toilet lid

We didn't buy advance tickets for the Eye because I found a couple buy one get one free coupons. I thought we'd be there early enough in the day that we could miss the crowds. Of course, I hadn't planned on being the victim of inflexible turnstiles. That led us to Transit 2 - Matt and I stood in line at The Eye to buy tickets while Kristine and Ashley took the girls to the adjacent playground. The playground recharged the girls, which was a good thing since the line to get on our pod was long and moved slowly. A certain 4 yr old was a little non-functional by the time finally got to our pod. I'm not sure the trade between ticket money saved and time spent in lines really turned out in our favor.

Sightseeing 1 - The Eye. Despite misgivings about the height from an unnamed blog author and one of his daughters, everyone enjoyed the ride. Said blog author may or may not have spent more time marveling at the engineering ingenuity of the Eye than at the ability to see so much of London. The girls figured out how to use the tablets in the pod to point out some of the sights. Circuit completed, we took in the iMax show about the Eye before heading on.

Note the London Eye in the background

Some of us enjoyed the playground while others stood in line to buy tickets

She was much more cheerful once we finally got out of line and into our pod

Enjoyed the ride

We got to pretend to ride on top of our pod

Ruling was 4 (adults) to 3 (children) that free Coke was a good thing

One of our friends from Melbourne suggested taking the water taxi from Westminster Pier up to Greenwich, grabbing lunch, and then taking the cable car to get another aerial view of the city. We thought it sounded like a good idea. We also thought it would be simple to get tickets for the river taxi. Channel Rafiki the baboon: "Hah! Wrong again!" Queue (literally) Transit 2. One long line later we had tickets for the taxi, walked down to the pier, waited in line for the boat, only to find out that it was full by the time we got to the door. Queue Transit 2b - waiting for the next boat to come.

Standard Collins daughter pastime - chasing pigeons

This wasn't our boat, but it was pretty cool

Finally! Our boat!

Fortunately the ride on the water taxi turned out to be quite fun (Sightseeing 2). The girls enjoyed all the boats, and the grownups enjoyed the view of the buildings along the river front.

View of Tower Bridge from the Thames

Thanks to the earlier lines and water taxi ride using up most of our remaining slack time for the day, the planned Sightseeing 3 in Greenwich got cut drastically short. It consisted of walking to lunch, eating lunch, then walking to the Underground station to get back to St. Pancras. We had a minor panic at the station when the sign said that particular line was shut for the day. Fortunately there was someone at the ticket gate, and he explained that while the underground trains weren't running, the overground train that we needed to catch was. We had a much greater panic when we got to St. Pancras, split up briefly thinking we had plenty of time for Kristine and Ashley to window-shop while Matt and I took the girls to get refreshments, only to realize that it was time for the train to leave and we were on the wrong platform. Cue mad dash through the station, some spilled coffee, getting through the turnstile without scanning all 7 tickets, and being the last people to climb on the train before it left. After which we enjoyed the refreshments we'd picked up on what was an uneventful ride back to East Midlands.