Big Family Adventure Part 2

OK, let's catch up to the present.  And let's do it by tracing today backwards from right now, as I sit in our London home at 10:40 p.m. writing this.

Just got back earlier from a trip to the market for tea and peas.  Don't ask.

We took a long bus ride back to our neighborhood after visiting the Abbey Road crossing famously portrayed on the Beatles album of the same name.  We waved to the webcam as the folks at my office back in Chatham watched and listened.

At Abbey Road.

We spent  a couple of hours at Madam Tussauds.  Somewhat underwhelming that, very flashy and crowded. And expensive.  But the boys enjoyed it.

The Boys with Charlie.

Visited Baker Street where we posed in front of 221B and popped into the Sherlock Holmes museum and store.

Had a picnic lunch in Kensington Park at the Lady Diana Children's Playground, which includes a full-size reproduction of the Peter Pan pirate ship.  Again, the boys had a fine time.

Quiet morning sleeping in, having a nice breakfast and playing catch with Lir in the tiny garden out back.

More tomorrow, perhaps!

Big Family Adventure Part 1

The hardest part about this Big Family Adventure has been getting to this blog.  At our apartment in Paris, the WiFi was broken, the first time ever, according to our landlord Bruno, so no connection, no email, nothing.  That turned out not to be such a big issue as we were on a three-and-a-half-day whirlwind and had little time for anything other than sightseeing, eating and sleeping.  When we got to our temporary home in North London, the WiFi worked, but our first two days here were again a whirlwind of sightseeing days and getting to be bed late at night.  Jenny met up with a friend and her daughter who flew in from Berlin for the weekend so we all played tourist, along with about a billion other people.

Today we had our first breather.  Leisurely morning, finished the first installment of a travel series and sent it off to the Chronicle, and we went for a walk in the nearby Hampstead Heath, where the boys swam at the lido (enclosed outdoor pool) before lunch back home and the first of what will likely be several visits to the British Museum.

How's it going so far?  Mostly good; but there have been challenges.

Mostly to do with keeping the boys from melting down without a set schedule and crazy late hours (bedtimes around midnight most nights in Paris).  We've seen some amazing sights, climbed the bell towers of Notre Dame to hear the noon bells ring, and climbed to the second level of the Eiffel Tower (only to find that we needed our tickets to get to the top, and Jenny had stayed below at level one with the tickets.  I declined to go back down and up again.  It was our first day in the city and we hadn't slept in about 24 hours.

The boys at the second level of the Eiffel Tower.

Paris seems more of a city for older kids and adults.  Lir was more interested in running along the sidewalks and giving us heart attacks by getting too close to the tracks on the Metro.  Rowan, when engaged, like at the Louvre, was happy and excited.  Same today at the British Museum, at least for a while, until fatigue set in.  Ice cream solved that problem.  He also wasn't engaged by the art at the Pompidou Center, Paris' modern art museum, because it wasn't familiar like many of the pieces at the Louvre, but both boys really loved the colorful, whimsical sculptures in the fountain out front.

Rowan snogs the big lip sculpture at the Pompidou.

We, of course, enjoyed the food, and culture, the diversity and the bustle of city life.  Staying in the Marais, we got a taste of a small Parisian neighborhood with lots of ethnicity and amazing eats around every corner.  London is similar in a way; we've had Indian food two out of our four nights here, and Rowan has enjoyed fish and chips and chips and chips.

More to come...