79527 steps later

Well I promised to let you know how my trip to London went and we had a absolutely amazing time !!! We set off on Friday morning and once our dog was in the safe hands of my in laws I started planning. We arrived bang on schedule at 2 pm and checked in quickly to our hotel then we were off….

We had been in the car for a while and decided as it was such a lovely day we would walk as far as we could and check out our location. We stayed in a Holiday Inn on Finchley Road so it was a great location in terms of the tubes and buses. We ended up walking the full distance and took us about 1 and a half hours until we arrived to the wonderfully decorated Oxford Street.

The plan for Friday night was The Winter wonderland and we arrived not long after opening time it was heaven no queues to get in and no pushing and shoving unlike other Christmas markets I have been to. There was so much there it was huge !! We did a few rides and the big wheel , had a look round the markets before we had something to eat. The atmosphere was great even in the outside bars had entertainment. You could spend a fortune here and we spent a small one.

The following day we had booked to go the Dungeons and managed to get my husband on the underground which made sense as it was only 4 stops away. We spent about about 2 hours inside. We walked round following some of the stories of London and it was fairly entertaining although wouldn’t be top of the list of attractions I would recommend.
We walked down the embankment past the galleries and through the street markets until we got to Tower Bridge. It was a bit drizzly on Saturday so we went to eat and dry off a bit.At this point we got a bit lost but managed to find a tube station and put us back on track.

We visited Downing Street and houses of Parliament and Westminster. We made are way through St James park which was lovely and full of wildlife ,squirrels , Pelicans and other birds. We made are way up The Mall to Buckingham Palace and although nothing much to see we stayed around watching a few people come and go.We then got the bus to Knightsbridge to do a bit of window shopping and the famous Harrods ! not what I remembered at all but it was extremely busy so we literately was in and out We were absolutely exhausted by this time and we wanted to do more but didn’t want to have to walk much further so we headed back to Oxford street past the Winter Wonderland which looked heaving !! I am so glad we went on the Friday. The biggest regret we had was we hadn’t booked a show !! We didn’t think we would want to be tied to a time as we would have so much to see but actually we stopped and spent half an hour to see if we could get any last minute tickets but unless we wanted to pay a £1000. We went back to the hotel freshened up and then decided to go to the pictures as we all wanted to so something.
Sunday we were up and off again and needed to tick the last things off our list of places to see. We went straight to the Changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace and this was my childrens favourite sight they said. They both got right at the front so the could see everything. We finished off the day with a visit to Leicester Square and Convent garden.

We had an amazing time and we saw everything we wanted to for our first family visit. We are already planning another trip hopefully next year and top of the list is a Westend show , go on a bus tour that will tell us what all the buildings are and a visit in the Tower of London.

I have now got an extremely busy December coming up starting off with a girly weekend with to the Manchester Markets, my brother in laws 50 th Birthday celebrations and then Cruise.co.uk annual Christmas conference unfortunately not on a cruise this year but we will be heading to Butlins Skegness for their 60’s weekend.