A Weekend in London with Two Kids
I know there are a lot of London itineraries out there in the world. My goal for sharing our super quick 3 day stop is only to hopefully cast some light onto weekend trip with two little kids in tow! Meaning, parks and public bathrooms are just as important to our family as sightseeing stops like Big Ben, hah. Just the reality of the season of life we are in right now!
We arrived in London by train, and as soon as we got there, called a taxi to take us to our hotel which was a 4 minute walk from Buckingham Palace - we were neighbors with the Queen! While we were there for a work trip for Colin, we were determined to squeeze the most out of London that we could. Here were some ways we did that!
Stay Close to the Action
While I know things like budget drive this decision more than anything, we found a tiny little hotel room right next to Buckingham Palace that we were able to book! We felt like if we were going to be in the city - we’d sacrifice the size of the room (it was VERY tiny) in order to be closer to the part of town we wanted to see! This put us minutes away from Buckingham Palace and St. James Park - which became our favorite spot to relax. More on that later :)
Book a Bus Tour
Most of the time when we are visiting a new city, we try to take a bus tour! It allows us to get a birds eye view of the different parts of the city, see some tourist attractions we may not have made a priority to see otherwise and the big bonus is the girls love sitting up top of the double decker! They were content to listen on their own bus headphones, or just take in the views.
My best bus tour tip is to book your ticket after lunch on the day you want to ride. So then when you hop on, you have about 4-5 hours to hop on and off before the buses stop running and you can get off for the final time wherever you’d like to eat dinner or close to your hotel! Then the next morning, your 24 hour ticket is still valid! So you can walk to another stop to hop on, this time before lunch and see some of the city you haven’t seen yet before lunch!
A quick example of this was for us, day one we hopped on a stop right by our hotel and rode for awhile until we got hungry. The next day we walked a few blocks to hop on a later stop that was intersecting not too far away that took us to a new part of the city and then ended right at our hotel stop again! Takes a little bit of coordination but its always served us well & we feel like we really get our value out of those bus tour tickets by the time we are done!
Find a Park
We love finding parks in cities. It means we get to sit and relax while our girls go wild doing all the things, and getting to play with kids their age! Something that we have come to value greatly during our time traveling. Enter, St. James Park. Not only is this park picturesque at every turn, but it has multiple public bathrooms (parent WIN), and multiple kiosks serving coffee, ice cream, snacks and alcohol around the park as well (another massive parent WIN). So imagine sitting on a bench, in a beautiful park with your kids playing on a clean playground with coffee (Meg) and beer (Colin) in hand while you supervise. You now understand why we loved this park so much!
In all seriousness though we stopped here every day we were in London. It was very close to where we were staying so the girls were delighted when got to end our days here. So were we :)
Make a Meal Plan
We planned out one meal a day that we made reservations for, or just really wanted to go to. The rest of the meals were more like, look around when we were hungry and pick something close, haha. Having one meal a day planned out allowed us to intentionally eat wonderful food, while also not stressing out from a rigid schedule that would surely change. The three places we planned beforehand were The Windmill, which is a pub in Mayfair best known for their pies - having won the British Pie Awards three times. Darjeeling Express - which is an Indian restaurant featured on an episode of Chefs Table (Netflix) that we love, so we had to visit! And finally lunch at Kingly Court that was recommended to us by a friend where ate delicious ramen at Shoryu which I highly recommend, but there are a lot of other restaurant options in Kingly Court as well! And finally an unplanned, but equally as amazing meal was dinner one night at Markethall Victoria where we ate Malaysian food from Gopals Corner. London has no shortage of amazing food, we will be back! P/S, if you’re looking for a neighborhood with food as your priority, we would recommend anywhere near Covent Garden where restaurants from all over the world seemed to have ended up on the same streets!
And that was our trip! We managed to see the change of guards at Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abby, Big Ben, Trifalgur Square, the London Eye, the London Bridge - and more! Most of which was made possible by our bus tour and the miles we walked around the city pushing strollers. Again, I am by no means a London expert but keeping these things in mind helped us to plan a few days in the city that all 4 of us throughly enjoyed without breaking the bank. I hope this is helpful in you planning your time in London with kids as well!