LauraLF

This will probably be a fairly brief trip report, especially compared to the wonderful detail filled reports I have read on these forums. I will focus most on what worked with two teenage boys because that really helped me in planning(would be different if it just been my husband and me traveling).
First our boys are 15yrs. and 12yrs. None of us have traveled to Europe before so this was the first time traveling there for all of us. We made the decision to go last October, so I have been planning this trip for eight months. I did the bulk of the research, planning etc. using this forum, Eyewitness travel books and a Fodor's Top 25 travel guide.
Day One- Departed Atlanta on a 10:55 pm flight. We all were able to get some sleep. Flew coach which wasn't too bad. Arrived in London at Heathrow at 12:15pm. I had Just Airports booked to meet us and take us to our flat. The vehicle was plenty big and the driver courteous and professional. He was there and had us to our flat 40 minutes after we cleared customs and gathered our luggage.
I had booked our flat through VRBO.com. It was in Kensington at Iverna Gardens which is 1 block from the High Street Kensington tube stop. The apartment was a two BR two Bath with kitchen(very nice) and good sized LR. It also had air conditioning which we were so grateful for as it was in the high 80's all week. First, the location was wonderful. We could walk to Tesco, Starbucks, and several cafes. Plus there are many restaurants within easy walking distance. The only problem we encountered was the flat was not ready when we arrived in spite of the fact I had contacted the property manager multiple times to tell her of our arrival time(which was 2:00pm-the check in time specified) We were allowed to leave our luggage, but of course had planned to change and freshen up which we couldn't do because the previous renters had left the apt. a mess. Okay, time to regroup! We found a Marks and Spence and had a sandwich then walked down the street to catch the Big Bus hop-on-hop-off tour. This was a great way to see London and get an overview of the city. In addition, the guide giving the tour was hilarious and we all enjoyed the tour. Would highly recommend this early in the trip. We went on most of the tour and hopped off around Marble Arch.. I had researched lots of restaurants and mapped them out. I put them in a word document and e-mailed it to myself so I had it on my I-phone(which was turned to "off" for international roaming) This worked great so each evening depending on where we were I could pull up the document and decide where we would eat. There is a Hard Rock Cafe at Hyde Park Corner so we headed there. Two hour wait, we all decided to try another night and caught a cab to choice number two. "As Greek as it Gets" 233 Earl's Court Rd. This was wonderful! Fresh grilled chicken and steak Kabobs for the boys, yummy hummis, gyros for DH. and a fabulous Greek salad for me. Plus fantastic service! Cab back to the apartment which was now sparking clean. DH and I left the boys and went to Tesco to stock up on fruit, cereal and milk for breakfast. We unpacked and collapsed into bed. Great first day in London. We are so excited to be here!
Day Two- Everyone slept well, a little foggy until we had coffee! We let the
boys sleep in a little then off to the Tower of London. We ended up just getting one day travel cards for the tube each day. I don't know if this was the least expensive, but DH handled purchasing these so that's what we went with. It came out to about 15 pounds/day for all four of us to travel as much as we wanted each day. Seemed okay to us but I'm sure others know a better way .
We all enjoyed the Tower. So old and so much History. The boys especially loved the Crown Jewels, Royal serving pieces, and the Display of Armour. There was also a demonstration of a crossbow and a catapult which were fun. We spent about 3 1/2 hours there. Then caught the Tube back to Hyde Park Corner for an early dinner at Hard Rock. No wait! The boys were happy. After dinner we walked across the street to the gift shop which also houses a "Vault". This contains guitars and memorabilia from some of the greats of Rock history. Both boys were in heaven and had their picture made with two guitars. This was worth going back to see!
Tube back to High Street Kensington. Glad to have the apartment. We watched World Cup Highlights, Wimbledon highlights and the boys could hang out in their room and read or relax too.
More to come!

janisj

I'll be back to read your report in a bit - just opened it and something came up so I'll have to read it later tonight.

But just one hint - for your other installments it will be much easier to read if you use paragraphs. Hard to read on a computer screen w/o breaks. (to get paragraphs you need to double return)

mamcalice

We took a very similar trip a few years ago. I'm looking forward to reading more. Thanks!

irishface

keep it coming! Please!

janisj

Great start - finally got a chance to read it and it sounds like you had a good time and the flat sounds wonderful (one of the few Kensington flats actually IN Kensington and not Earls Court )

tod

Great start Laura! Please do give us the full identity of the VRBO apartment?! Also what it set you back - in pounds or dollars.
Please continue with your interesting report!

LauraLF

Thanks for your feed back so far. I'll start using paragraphs, I think once I started typing I remembered more details than I thought I would!

The flat is vrbo.com/82346. The cost was 210pounds/night w/ 300pounds security deposit.(Which the owner has already refunded) For us this was a much better option than a cramped hotel room.

Day Three- To Westminster to see the Churchill War Rooms, museum, and to Westminster Abbey. The Churchill War Rooms were fascinating. Everything preserved as it was at the end of the war. Especially impressive was the huge map in the map room. Every push pin representing men and women at war, away from their family and country. The Churchill exhibit was also so well done. I was a little surprised in that both boys really soaked up all the details, read all the information and really took their time looking through each exhibit. We were there close to three hours.

We walked the few blocks over to Westminster Abbey. On the way it was interesting to see the protesters in tents in the park(who apparently were ordered out the week we were there) Westminster Abbey- Wow! So beautiful, so much history! Just a note about how we managed, we allowed the boys to go through each exhibit together, without us at their sides. We felt perfectly safe doing so and had an agreed upon spot to meet up. They seemed to enjoy discussing what they were seeing, liked the bit of freedom, and came away with some interesting impressions(they actually did listen in World History this year!!).
The Abbey is breathtaking. We did the audio guide which was very informative. Ended up not doing the Verger tour which I'm sure was great. Also, we arrived about 2:00pm and while it was crowded, it wasn't impossible to see each area. We toured for over two hours.

Walked from the Abbey past Horseguards, 10 Downing and to Trafalger Square. Then on to Covent Garden. The boys were interested in soccer(sorry, football) jerseys(World Cup Fever!)
We looked around without any luck, headed on to Patisserie Valerie...oh my!! The boys had ham and cheese croissants, we had coffee and eclairs, glad we walked so much today!.Caught the tube back to Knightsbridge, Harrods. DH had an idea Harrod's might be the place to find a jersey. Bingo! What a tourist attraction! But we found the jerseys so all were happy. Back to the flat. Rest, relax before dinner.

Dinner was at Orsini, 8A Thurloe Place, close to the Victoria and Albert museum. First, advice due to a lesson learned. We had taken a cab to dinner. We gave the address to the cabbie who seemed to speak limited English. He stopped to let us out, pointed to a building about 1/2 a block away, and took our payment. As we strolled toward the building, we realized it wasn't the restaurant at all. Either he didn't want to drive us there or didn't know where it was. We soon figured out it was only about three more blocks down the street. Just make sure you are at the address you want when in unfamiliar areas.
Orsini was wonderful! A small cozy Italian place, freshly made pasta, great wine and fabulous service! Would highly recommend it.

Day Four-Slept in , breakfast in the flat, then to the Globe for Macbeth. It was really fun. Our older son had studied Macbeth in English this year so he kept his younger brother informed of the plot.This was the last performance and the actors were wonderful, although the production was a bit gruesome. The we strolled down to the Anchor, Bankside, 34 Park Street to watch the soccer game and try fish and chips, the pub was very crowded, lots of enthusiastic fans but the fish and chips were a bit disappointing. We normally don't eat fried food so maybe this just wasn't our thing.

Back to the flat to change and rest. Then to Hyde Park for Hard Rock calling with Paul McCartney headlining. There was a huge but fairly sedate crowd(our son said everyone was over 40) but the show was phenomenal! Paul played for three hours and played all the songs you could hope to hear plus a few different ones. What a fun, fun night!

tod

Laura - Thanks for the info. What a beautiful apartment! We have gone through the same agency for our apartment in Paris this August. If possible, please give the address(or at least the street) of the apartment so I can mark it on my London map./ We are thinking of sharing with friends in April-May 2011 so we can visit the Chelsea Flower Show once more.

LauraLF

The address is 51 Iverna Gardens, Flat #13, London, W8(right off Iverna Court and one block south of High St. Kensington). Good Luck!

LauraLF

Day Five- Windsor Castle.
Just a few observations first. As you can see, we did not cram as much as we could into each day. When I initially started researching and planning our trip I had planned for us to do a bit more each day. However, once we arrived and started seeing things, I realized that both we and the boys wanted to spend more time at each site and take our time, thus we saw more, but less! I am sure this is different for each family, but our family enjoys talking with people, relaxing a bit in between sites and not being exhausted.
So, off to Windsor Castle...took the train from Paddington station(there seemed to be trains every 20 minutes or so. We bought spot tkts, again probably not the least expensive way to go, but flexibility was important to us. The train took us into the town of Windsor arriving in an area filled with shops and restaurants. This was good as it gave us a chance to scout for a place to have lunch.
The line took about 15 minutes. We did the free audio guide which once again was very good. We all were very impressed with all the audio guides we used, very informative but still allowing you to go at your own pace.
The castle is beautiful, so Big! So much history through generations, this seems to me one of the great symbols of English royal history. It was fun to see things we've all seen in PBS specials or different movies. St. Georges chapel was my favorite. There was a choir singing and we all stopped to enjoy the beautiful music for a bit. The acoustics were amazing and it was very easy to move around that day and really take time to look at things, glad the crowds were not overwhelming.
After touring the castle and chapel(about 2 1/2 hours) we strolled through town and bought some souveniers for the boys and their friends back home. Then we had lunch at EAT. Very good sandwiches and fresh fruit. We have really enjoyed all the fresh fruit, everything must be in season, strawberries(wonderful) and nectarines especially.
We headed back to the train station and caught a train about 4:00, the train had trouble somewhere along the line and we had to sit for over 30mins. Hot!! Finally got going again, arrived in Paddington and back to the flat.
Ate at Cafe Concerto on High Street Kensington for dinner. It was okay,(a bit expensive we thought) we ended up there as we were all a little undecided about where to go(it was 2 blocks from the flat). The boys enjoyed the cakes though!

Day Six- Imperial War Museum
We(I) had originally thought we would use this last day in London for either another day trip(Oxford?) or to visit the British museum and National Galleries. However, once the boys began reading about the Imperial War museum, they really wanted to see it, and given that we were heading to Normandy next, they felt it would give us all good background.
So to the War Museum! (I'll have to return to see the British museum and National galleries another time
The Imperial War museum was very good. The boys could see huge tanks up close. Both the WWI and WWII displays were very detailed and informative. BTW this museum was free, we made a small donation. The most moving display is the Holocaust exhibit. It is so eerie and felt so horrifying even all these years later. It is well worth the trip. Many interviews with survivors, items which belonged to victims, and a model reproduction of a concentration camp. I'm so glad the boys could see this(older son read "Night" by Ellie Weisel this year ) and younger son had read "Number the Stars" last year. We shared a couple of sandwiches and fruit at the cafe in the museum-okay(convenient)
We spent over 3 hours here.
Went to St. James and walked around Buckingham Palace for a few photo-ops. Wish we had more time to spend in St.James Park and Green Park, they look lovely.
Caught the tube back to Knightsbridge, found the Pizza Express. We thought this was very good pizza and the salads were also very good. Toasting our time in London!
Then back to the flat to pack. Tomorrow we take the Eurostar to Paris then on to Bayeux. Can't wait to see France!!

twk

Enoying the report. We had a similar experience with our rented apartment in London (although we knew in advance it would be an issue), so, since we were staying very close to St. James park, we ended up spending a good bit of time just lounging around in the park while waiting for our apartment to become available. Had to rent the chairs, but it was worth it.

Look forward to reading the rest.

jeanned

Laura, we are headed to Normandy and Paris with out boys so I can't wait to hear about that part of your trip!!

texasbookworm

Enjoying your report; nice mix of personal story with good info. We are headed to London and beyond in 16 1/3 days (Am I counting--you betcha!) so appreciate the current trip reports.

LauraLF

Texasbookworm-I remember reading you trip report from last(?) year, it was really helpful. Can't wait to hear about your latest trip!

On to France. The manager for our apartment had a contact for a driver to pick us up at the flat and take us to St. Pancras. He arrived promptly and we were at the train station in 30 minutes. We had purchased our tickets on line and had also printed them out so we scanned them, went through security and were in the waiting area 15 mins. later. What an efficient way to travel!! We loved the Eurostar, very comfortable, clean and it was fun to see the countryside whizzing by.

Arrived in Paris at Gare du Nord, got in the very long line for the taxi stand(warning, if you are short on time to get to another train station, reserve a taxi ahead of time! I think I saw info somewhere on one of the forums explaining that process. Wish we had done that as it would have decreased our stress; we were not sure how long it would take to get to Gare St. Lazare. We finally got a taxi, were taken to Gare St. Lazare(I'm curious how much that fare normally is, it seemed like our driver charged us way too much...but what to do?-Oh, well!)
I had purchased our tickets to Bayeux at home also, but had not printed them out. The web site said I could simply scan my credit card and print out the tkts at the station. Seemed easy enough. However, it seems that the machine would not read my card since it doesn't have a Euro. chip in it. Even though they accepted my card on line and I had already been charged, this was a problem. Long story short, got in the very long line for customer assistance and a very nice young man did what he could to get us on the next train(after waiting in line so long we had missed our train. It cost about $80 extra to get the next train(I guess that goes in the"You didn't read the small print" budget) Soooo, make sure you either print out your tkts at home or use a credit card accepted at the station. Another lesson learned

Arrived in Bayeux! Oh it is lovely!
Taxi (10mins) to the Hotel d' Argouges. What a beautiful, charming hotel. Frederic greeted us and our room was ready. A lovely family room with plenty of space. The hotel has a beautiful garden in the back where you can eat breakfast or have a glass of wine in the afternoon.
We strolled through town, wish we had arrived earlier so we could have seen the tapestry. Did get to go in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. It is amazing and so large for a church in a smaller town. Found a place for dinner(wish I could remember the name), boys wanted omelets and frites. These were very good with a salad and glass of wine. Sitting outside in France, just wonderful. The boys are so relaxed and have slowed down, we sit at dinner and talk for 2 hours. Heaven!
Back to the hotel, it is still light at 10:30! Off to bed . We see the beaches of Normandy tomorrow.

LauraLF

Day Eight- Apologies, this is the second time I am typing this portion, I moved my mouse and the last two days of my report disappeared
D-day tour. We used Battlebus which was recommended to us by a relative. Dale Booth was our guide and he was wonderful. He took us to all the major sites, plus a few "out of the way" which gave us a much more personal view of the battles. There was one other family with us who also had two boys. Dale did such a fine job weaving in personal stories of the soldiers with historical information, he really has so much knowledge and a deep passion for the invasion. The American cemetary was the highlight of the tour, so moving and beautiful.

Back at the hotel we sat in the garden and enjoyed a glass of wine while the boys took their soccer ball to a grassy area. Went to dinner at Petit Normand. The food was okay but the service was very good. The French people have been so helpful to us. We speak very limited French and they have all been so kind and helpful.(They probably preferred not to have us butcher their beautiful language!
We have loved this area of France, it is so beautiful. I feel sad that we don't have more time to spend here, I know there is so much yet to see.

LauraLF

Day Nine- Paris
We took the 8:50 train from Bayeux and arrived in Paris about 10:30. Took a cab to our hotel, Hotel de la Motte Picquet(30 Ave. Motte Picquet) This is between the Eiffel Tower and Les Invalides. We arrived a few minutes after 11:00 and our room was ready. It was a suite with a king sized bed and a twin bed with a trundle. Very small room but fine for one night. We left our luggage and headed out. Right around the corner from the hotel is Ave. Rue Cler which has lots of cafes, boulangeries, and patisseries. Yum! I am going to eat my way around Paris!
We grab sandwiches and fruit and head over to the tower. Find a bench to eat and make a plan. We give the boys the option of going up in the tower, but the line is very very long so they decide to save that for next time. We decide to take the Batobus so we can at least see the places we will not be able to visit since this is our only day in Paris. This works well as you can get on and off at several major sites. It is very Hot today and the batobus is also very hot but it works well for us.
Off at the D'Orsay. Art! No tanks or guns but lovely art! The boys enjoy the museum as well. It's fun to see many of the pieces they have studied in art classes through the years.
BTW, the museum has a very nice gift shop where I purchased several items for gifts.(it was also air conditioned which was very nice).
Back on and then off at Notre Dame. it is huge and so ornate. The line was long but moved very quickly. There is a bit of a "carnival" felling outside due to all the panhandlers. We tour inside and enjoy the lovely stained glass and the frieze with the retelling of scripture. We did not take any of the tours of the tower or the treasure due to time.
We then strolled over to Ile St. Louis just as it started to rain-first rain of the entire trip!
More to come!

nanthompson2

THank-you so much for getting this posted!!! We leave tomorrow for our London/Paris/Normandy adventure. I have done so much research that it's really pretty overwhelming. I will hopefully be able to get online in London to view the rest of your trip report.

LauraLF

Nanthompson-I am so jealous! We are already trying to figure out how to go back. I know you will have a great time. I don't have much left to post, just the remainder of our day in Paris. I really wish we had had more time in Normandy, it is soooo beautiful.. Can't wait to hear about your trip when you return. Safe travels!!

Jayneann

Really enjoying your trip report!! We will be going to London and Paris in September with our two sons, so your comments and suggestions are very helpful! (Although our sons are 20 & 24 y.o.) We are also staying in a flat, but closer to Covent Square. Looking forward to the rest of your report, thanks so much for sharing!

LauraLF

Day Nine- Paris-continued
We ducked into a cafe on Ile St. Louis, had gelatos and drinks. The kind waiters allowed us to linger until the rain tapered off.( Our folding umbrellas and rainjackets are stuffed at the bottom of our suitcases) Strolled around a bit more then back on the Batobus. We pass the Louvre, I can't seem to rally any one for another museum. Off at the Champs Elysees. We stroll down for photo ops at the Arc deTriomphe. Beautiful, then back to the Batobus, we make the final loop back to The Eiffel stop. We are all exhausted, walk under the tower one last time then back to the Hotel.
I think there is so much to see in Paris, we will need weeks next time! We freshen up a bit then head out for our last meal together of the trip. The boys vote for Pizza We find a very good place around the corner from the Hotel, Pizza Tina (I think) Good salads wine and pizza is very good also. Back to the hotel, pack up for our flight home tomorrow. One last night to watch World Cup in Europe.
We wake up to pouring rain. DH and I stroll down Rue Cler for cafe creme and a croissant. Yum! We take fruit and croissants back for the boys. Pack up, our driver meets us to take us to the airport. There is a horrendous traffic jam and it takes over 2 hours to get to CDG. We are a little panicked but make it in time. Then of course the flight is delayed. We buy yummy chocolat at the airport to take home. Flight home is uneventful(happily!)

This has been a wonderful trip. Our boys were great travelers and I am so glad they have had the opportunity to see first hand so much of history, art, and beautiful England and France. We met so many kind, helpful people and I am so grateful for all we experienced as a family. Can't wait to plan the next adventure. Thanks again to everyone on these forums for all your advice(some heeded, some not Happy Travels.