I’ve used headings and bold font to highlight main attractions so you can skip to whatever interests you in this lengthy report.
Some background: As some of you know, we had to cancel a three-week trip we had planned for this past June to Greece and the Netherlands with our daughter due to some sudden health issues that took a while to resolve. Rescheduling that trip was not possible, but I wanted to use some of our flight credit with United to do a trip with my daughter before her return to work in a preschool the last week of August. Since we only had about eight nights to work with and we both love big cities, London was a logical choice.
We spent a week in London in 1999, so we have been to many of the top sites: Westminster Abbey, The Churchill War Rooms, British Museum, Tower of London, British Library, Windsor Palace, etc. Since my husband, who loves history, could not go with us due to other commitments, I decided to focus primarily on sites that I knew would be of interest to my daughter, but less likely to be my husband’s top priorities. My daughter has mild to moderate intellectual disabilities, but is interested in many things when they are presented in an interesting way. For this trip, we focused on modern movies/TV (Harry Potter and Ted Lasso), and a history theme related to Henry VIII and his six wives. This worked well. I’ll report day by day, as I always find it interesting to see what others can accomplish in a day.
Planning: I used the RS London Guide book, trip reports and topics from the forum, and various websites to research the trip. Thanks to Nigel, Mardee, Claudia, CWSocial, and many others for your forum posts that helped me to plan. For each day, I tried to plan some flexibility. My daughter is not in great physical shape, and I’m coming off some serious joint issues, but as you will see, neither of these ended up limiting our trip. We walked a lot, and used the tube and trains.
Hotel: After reviewing our plans, the Premier Inn County Hall seemed like an ideal location.Thanks to all who have reported on Premier Inn experiences. We never spend much time in our rooms, so the lack of charm was not a factor in our selection. It worked out very well. I booked a Premier Plus room because I like to have a refrigerator for cold drinks and my morning yogurt. Pros: The most important to me were the great location with easy access to either Waterloo or Westminster stations, comfortable bed, enough elevators that we never had to wait more than a few seconds, and a very quiet room on the sixth floor. I am very sensitive to noise, and this one of the quietest stays I’ve ever had. The air conditioning was also essential, as daytime temperatures climbed into the low to mid 80s the first few days. I also appreciated the room-darkening curtains, tea kettle, large towels, outlets on both sides of the bed, and good lighting. A bonus was our view of the London Eye from our window. And for London, the price was good. Cons: The only real con for me was the lack of shelves for storing our packing cubes. It was somewhat inconvenient to juggle our suitcases to get out clothing, but not a big problem. There is an area for hanging some clothing, and a few hangers, and I had packed 4 folding hangers, which we did need to use. I did some sink washing, and the hotel recommended a laundry service, which I did use once (Laundry Heap).
Weather: We had ideal weather, with a mix of sunny, partly sunny, and cloudy days, with high temperatures from 70 to about 84 Fahrenheit. Not a drop of rain.
To be continued day by day.