Kensington Palace & Harrods

While the Halters were busy packing for their journey home (tomorrow), we spent the morning to ourselves.  Karen and Josh went out to get some breakfast food to-go (Karen I both are in love with their porridge) and then spent some reading/work time in the hotel room while Jeff went down the street to a gym to get his workout in.  We met up with the Halters for lunch at their flat and then headed out into town.  We learned very quickly that buses are not always the fastest and best way to get around town.  The bus took us 1.5 hours to get there.  First of all, our bus #30 never came after 25 minutes of waiting.  It is supposed to come every 8-10 minutes. Finally we hopped on another bus and went a different way.  (sure enough bus 30 came a few minutes later we saw)  The next bus took a very long time because it was going down Oxford street, which is the busiest street in town, even though they restrict it only to buses and taxis.  By the time we got to Kensington Palace, it was already 2:45pm. 

The Palace wasn't as interesting as we had hoped.  It was definitely a let down after seeing Buckingham Palace, that's for sure.  The nice thing was that they had a kids "Choose your own adventure" guide book which Josh had a blast with.  (well for a while)  They had people doing role-play inside many of the first rooms and Josh ate that up as you would expect.  The first room he was to meet the King's librarian.  The librarian did this whole bit with Josh about how Josh must be the King's most trusted person and how lucky he was to be in the King's inner circle.  The next room had a few people in dress asking kids to participate in an older card game. Josh played that (didn't beat the other kid) but still enjoyed it.  He quickly got the hang of the rules of the game.  We will need to look that one up when we get home -- he wants to play it again.  The rest of the palace wasn't quite as interesting.  They showed a lot of the gowns of the Queens, Kings, Princesses, etc. but honestly once you've seen one, they all seem just as good after that.  The building wasn't nearly as nice as Buckingham Palace.  Not even close.  So we wrapped up that walking tour and headed out.

Our next stop was to visit the famous Harrad's department store.  It was packed with people.  This store is enormous as many of you already know.  The bottom floor was flooded with people.  And lots of people were buying -- there were a lot of wealthy people here I guess -- many from the Middle East from what they were wearing.  We got some very good desserts.  We looked through the other floors and "browsed" the items.  All of the stuff is very high end but is interesting to look at. If the kids weren't there, I think we'd have more fun looking around.  But they weren't that interested after a certain point.  Tomorrow, we'll take Josh to the big toy store and let him have his own time in store that he likes!

Once we finished that, we headed back to the Halter's flat for Turkey burgers and finishing up their food in their fridge.  We learned our lesson about the buses and took the subway this time.  Of course it was rush hour (5:20pm) so we were squished for the first few stops but it was ok after that. 

The 4 adults went down to the local pub down the street from the flat for one last drink (leaving the kids upstairs with their electronics) and then we called it a night. 

Tomorrow the Halters head home and we spend our last full day in London.  We fly home Thursday afternoon. 

Outside Kensington Palace

Outside Kensington Palace

Hyde Park

Harrods