Short break in London

We made it to London. Two nights, three days and no disasters. Despite only being a short break, it was just long enough to feel like we'd got away and had a proper little holiday. If you're planning a short break in London, this brief diary of our time away might be of interest!

We'd booked to stay in a Holiday Inn Express in Limehouse. Over recent years, we've found that Holiday Inns in London are actually often cheaper than Travelodges or Premier Inns - or at least they are if booking relatively last-minute. The bonus with the HI Express is that you also get breakfast included - which, for two adults and two children, works out as pretty good value. We paid just under £70 a night - I have seen cheaper at other times, but this was the best deal I could find anywhere for when we wanted to stay, unless we chose to stay much further out. With regard to location, Limehouse is actually pretty good. The hotel is five minutes' walk from the station, which is on the DLR. Two stops and you're at Bank/Monument, which is more central than you'd think, and serves six underground lines. Alternatively, two stops takes you to Tower Gateway - perfect for visits to the Tower of London, which was the main purpose of our break. 

We arrived a little later than planned, parking near a friend's house in Eltham and getting the bus to Greenwich North station. We had debated getting the train to London, but it's just so expensive when you have to buy tickets for four. If you can find free parking on the outskirts of London, however, your transport works out pretty cheaply. Children are free on the buses and the underground; the only time we had to buy tickets for them was on the train back to Eltham. For the benefit of the uninitiated, you can also use your contactless bank cards as Oyster cards, tapping in and out of tubes, buses and even the train to/from Eltham - this makes travel a lot quicker and easier, and is cheaper than buying individual tickets or travelcards. 

From North Greenwich, we took the Emirates cable car across to Royal Docks. If you've not done this before, I thoroughly recommend it. If you have a travelcard, you're entitled to a reduced price ticket (currently £3.50 single, rather than £4.50). Alternatively, you can use your contactless card and the reduced price is added on to your travel charge for the day. Again, we had to buy tickets for the boys, but this didn't cost much (£2.30 - sadly no discount as we hadn't needed to buy them travelcards). It is a fairly short trip, but you get some good views over the Thames and east London. The area is being developed at the moment, so the views are rather industrial, but it's still a fun way to cross the river for not too much money. If you're lucky (we weren't this time), you can also get a cable car to yourself. 

View from the Emirates

We checked in to the Holiday Inn around 3pm - too early for dinner but too late to do a whole lot. We decided to go for a walk along the Thames Path instead, an area we hadn't really visited before and just minutes from the hotel. Despite the cold and the wind, it was a pleasant walk, the unusual sky setting off the river views perfectly. 

We headed down some steps near the Prospect of Whitby, a sixteenth-century pub, and onto the 'beach' at the river's edge. It was the first time I'd actually been on the Thames beach, and we had an interesting time finding bits of pottery and what genuinely looked like human bones - made all the more creepy by the gallows standing nearby (where apparently the pirate Captain Kidd, among others, was hung). 

Hangman's noose outside the Prospect of Whitby

After one bone too many, we headed back along the path. Disappointingly, some bits of the path are closed after a certain time, so for a large portion of the path we couldn't actually see the Thames! Once we were back by the river, we got some beautiful views of the Shard and Tower Bridge, and we continued along to St Katherine Docks, a little-known area of restaurants, bars and boats just behind the Tower of London. By this time it was getting late and we were getting thirsty, so we headed back to the Prospect of Whitby, which had tempted us earlier. 

The Prospect of Whitby, dating from 1520, claims to be the oldest riverside pub in London, and can be found in many a guidebook. It's full of history and tales of ghosts - and, according to Lee, good beer. It's a bit of a maze inside; we found a table in a room upstairs, where we relaxed with a drink - and then decided to stay for dinner. I thoroughly recommend it for a meal or just for a drink; it's family-friendly (but not in the traditional 'gastro-chain-pub' type way) and the surroundings make for a very pleasant afternoon or evening. Sadly, the February chill made going outside an unpleasant thought, but I'd imagine it would be lovely to relax on the terrace overlooking the river in warmer months.

We headed back to our hotel after dinner. I've got to say, it's one of the friendliest places I've stayed, especially for a chain hotel - all the staff were exceptionally friendly and helpful. We were a little more positive about going back to our hotel than we normally would be - with our children that little bit older, and with our eldest now owning a mobile phone, we felt that the time had come to progress to the hotel bar for our evening game of cards while the kids were in bed, rather than the bathroom. Luckily, our room was on the same floor as reception and the bar. We gave the boys strict instructions not to leave the room unless there was a fire (just an alarm? Clothes on and walk calmly to reception, closing the door behind you. Fire in the room? Get the hell out in your underwear...), to ignore it if anyone knocked on the door, to phone us if anyone knocked on the door twice, and otherwise not to phone us unless there was an emergency (someone's been sick? Emergency. Brother annoying you? Definitely not an emergency). With that, we wandered around the corner and spent a pleasant evening chatting, drinking and playing backgammon and cards, arriving back in our room at a perfectly reasonable night-time hour to find the boys fast asleep - bliss.

The next day was museums day, based around a 2pm appointment at Shepherd's Bush, where my eldest was meeting his friend to be the fourth person in their group for the Star Wars virtual reality experience. Museums worked well, partly because there were a few not too far away from the Shepherd's Bush area, and partly because it didn't matter how long (or not) we spent there, because we didn't have to pay. We made the mistake of going with the boys' choice and heading to the Natural History Museum first. Not that there's anything wrong with the Natural History Museum - it's great, just not at 11am on the first day of half-term. 

Natural History Museum

We had to queue to get in, and then it was heaving once we were in there. If you have children, I recommend leaving it until a random Sunday - or, even better, an inset day - preferably when the weather's good and other people will be doing something outside. If you don't have children, avoid school holidays and weekends at all costs! We made the double mistake of trying to see the dinosaurs first (the reason why the boys had wanted to visit). It was so packed that you really couldn't see anything - unfortunately, though, there is a one-way system through the exhibit, so we had to shuffle our way through the whole thing just to be able to give up and get out. The other sections we saw weren't so bad but, to be honest, we were too pissed off after the dinosaurs to really appreciate them.

Having had as much of the Natural History Museum as we could stomach, we hot-footed it over to Westfield at Shepherd's Bush, where the Star Wars experience was based. If you've not been to Westfield before and you're a Primark kind of girl (or guy), forget it. All the shops seemed to be high-end, from Debenhams or John Lewis at the most affordable to designer brands - nothing to see here. We couldn't even find anywhere to have a quick, cheap lunch, resorting to buying sandwiches from Waitrose and eating them undercover next to the car park, as it was to cold to go outside. (Note: there is a Wagamama's - and plenty of other restaurants, none of which I can remember - outside Westfield, but we were pushed for time.) Lunch eaten, we handed Finn over to his friend's parents and off we headed to Museum No. 2. 

(I can't personally recommend Star Wars - partly because I didn't do it and partly because the idea of wearing virtual reality goggles for half an hour actually makes me feel sick. But my son, his friend and his parents all loved it, and said it was brilliantly done. So if you're ten or over, don't get travel sick and like the idea of shooting a few Stormtroopers, go for it.)

Museum No. 2 was the British Museum, at the request of our youngest (leftover) son. He has currently got an obsession with the Ancient Greeks (Greece was his choice for half-term, but sadly our budget couldn't stretch), and wanted to see all the Greek artefacts. We wandered around looking at pottery, coins, statues and the like (the 'winged lion phallus' was my personal favourite) until Son No. 2 had had enough and it was time to meet Son No. 1 (kindly delivered to us at the museum). 

A wingld lion phallus. Of course.

The British Museum was much quieter than its Natural History counterpart, so a better choice for school holidays. If you've not been before, prepare to be overwhelmed - there's no hope of seeing everything in one visit. Pick a theme and come back another day to see some other stuff.

By the time we left, we were hungry and tired and it was rush hour. The queue just to get into Holburn station reminded us why rush hour was not a good time to travel by tube, so we started walking towards the next station, planning to stop for a drink anywhere that looked suitable. We came across a Wetherspoons (Penderel's Oak) and went in gratefully, desperate to have a drink and get out of the biting cold. Where I live, we have two Wetherspoons, both family-friendly - this one, not so much. We did see one other family but it was mostly people in their twenties, here for after-work drinks (or a strange Monday night out). By some miracle, we found a table, but the panicked instructions at the bar when Lee ordered two J20s with straws, that children had to leave by 7pm, meant that we didn't have long. Still, it was nice to be warm and have something to drink, and it kept us going for the journey back to Limehouse.

Turns out there aren't a whole lot of places to eat around the hotel. If we'd fancied another tube journey, there's loads in St Katherine Docks or Canary Wharf. But we plumped instead for a Chinese a couple of minutes' walk from the hotel - 'cos everyone (including the children) likes Chinese, right? Hmmm - turned out this Chinese (Shan Shui Jian) is rather 'authentic' and not your typical special fried rice/chow mein emporium. It specialises in lamb hotpot, and the menu proudly tells you all the different body parts it makes use of. Non-intestinal/spinal-cord options included tofu skin, bean curd and 'fungus'. It took me back to our visit to Hong Kong, where we'd got a surprise when we discovered that real Chinese food is not quite the same as you'd get in a UK Chinese takeaway. Still, we found a few less scary-sounding options, which were actually delicious, and Lee bravely tried a hotpot. I'd thoroughly recommend the restaurant if you like trying new stuff, but perhaps not if you are a little more conservative in your food choices!

The next morning, the kids woke us early and not so bright, and, after another filling breakfast, we headed off to the Tower of London, the main purpose of our trip to London. Having got to 40 and still not seen the Crown Jewels or visited one of the country's most iconic landmarks, I had thought it was about time. One of the reasons we'd not visited before is the price - it's not cheap. It's also not somewhere you want to go for a short visit in amongst ticking off your other London must-see boxes - you really need a full day to see everything. Given that there's actually lots to see and do there, the price doesn't work out too bad. If you book online in advance, you can save yourself quite a bit too - a family ticket for two adults and up to three children costs £53 rather than the £63 you'd pay on the door. If you're organised enough to print tickets before you head to London, or your hotel is nice enough to print them for you (as ours was), I'd recommend doing so - it means that you can head straight to the gate rather than queuing first to pick up your tickets. To be fair, the queues weren't actually too bad when we visited, but I'd imagine they'd be a lot worse on a warmer, drier, sunnier day. Something to also bear in mind is that if you book a ticket to arrive before 10.30am, you can save yourselves another £14 (£39 for a family ticket). We opted not to take the risk, as we didn't want to rush in the morning (the ticket is invalid if you arrive late). Had we known in advance just how early the kids would wake, we would have booked the cheaper ticket, no question. As it was, we deliberately took our time at breakfast and packing up our stuff just so that we would arrive after 10.30 on principle. Not really our cleverest moment. (Note: according to the website, the prices are going up in March 2018.)

You may have picked up that the weather wasn't brilliant. The previous two days had been icy cold with a biting wind - on this day, rain was added to the equation. When we had left home two days ago, it had been sunny and relatively warm - stupidly, I assumed the weather would be the same in London (it's normally warmer!) and left my hat, scarf and jumpers at home. Consequently, I spent most of our time in London shivering, wishing I'd brought warmer clothes and searching (unsuccessfully) for a cheap hat to buy. While walking towards the Tower of London, we spotted a hat lying on the ground. It was bright pink, it was soaking wet and it seemed to be mocking my own lack of a hat. I picked it up and put it on a bench for its owner to find, trying to console myself with the fact that it was pink and I wouldn't have worn it anyway. A little later, while walking around the Tower of London, we spotted another hat, left on one of the information boards inside. This one was grey, dry and completely wearable. I can't pretend I wasn't tempted but I tried to think of the owner, cold and shivering and hoping they'd be reunited with their hat; I left it where it was. A little while later, I found another abandoned hat. This one was (also) bright pink and child-sized. It's probably a good job, because otherwise I'd have had it. There's only so much hat-taunting I can take.

Hats aside, we enjoyed our time at the Tower of London, and I thoroughly recommend it. There is lots to see - the White Tower, which is the main building in the middle, the battlements walk, the Bloody Tower, where the two princes were reportedly imprisoned (and murdered?), the ravens, small exhibitions on torture instruments and the menagerie that was once at the zoo (not related), and probably lots more that I can't remember. 

Ravens at the Tower of London

There were activity sheets for the children, but the idea of completing soggy sheets of paper in the rain put us off. As it was, the amount of information presented around the tower was perfect - enough to tell you something but not so much that you got put off and didn't even try to read it. As with anywhere, we would have enjoyed our visit more had the weather been better - we didn't wander around the outside as much as we'd have liked to, preferring to dart into anywhere under cover. We were a bit concerned that eating would be a problem - we hadn't brought packed lunches, figuring that we wouldn't want to sit outside anywhere to eat them, and we worried that everyone would be trying to crowd into the one open restaurant. (Note: sadly, you're not allowed to leave and come back in, which is a pity, as there are several restaurants just outside.) A first glance into the restaurant confirmed our fear - it was heaving. However, there are actually loads of tables, and people were leaving at roughly the same rate as coming in, so it wasn't too difficult to find ourselves somewhere to sit. The food was the usual price you'd expect for captive consumers, but it was nice enough and there was a decent selection of hot and cold food (we'd probably have chosen hot if we'd known for definite that we'd have got a table - hey ho). The obvious jewel in the crown of the Tower of London is just that - the Crown Jewels. Time it wrong and you'll queue to get into the building where they're housed. Luckily, we timed it right and walked almost straight in. 

This is as close as you get to a photo of the Crown Jewels

Needless to say, they are rather impressive. Awestruck at so much gold, my youngest spent the entire time asking just how much we thought each and every piece was worth. There is a slow conveyor belt taking you past the actual crowns - this sounds awful but actually means that you get a good opportunity to look at everything without people crowding round and blocking your view. You get to go on again and again if you so wish, so there's no worries about missing anything. Unfortunately, we weren't able to take photos for security reasons. In fact, I have very few photos of the Tower of London at all, mainly because it was too cold to take my gloves off to take a photo!

The White Tower - photo taken from inside another tower!

Sadly, the Tower of London was the end of our visit to London. We left around 4.30, with the hope of missing the rush hour - we kind of succeeded. We headed back to the hotel first, where they'd kindly looked after our bags, and then got back on the DLR to Lewisham, ready for the train to Eltham. We timed it pretty well, with only a five-minute wait at Lewisham, and we avoided the worst of the crush, getting seats for most of the journey. By the time we'd walked back to our car from Eltham station, we'd missed the worst of the rush hour traffic, and the A2/M2 wasn't too bad. We took the opportunity to stop at Bluewater for dinner, eventually arriving back to a freezing house just in time for the boys' bedtime. Luckily, I have plenty of warm clothes at home, as the heating took a while to kick back in.

Well, that was our mini-holiday to London - and, despite being just a couple of days, it really did feel like a break. There's something to be said about getting away from your home for a few days, where you can't worry about work, chores or the usual stresses of life. London isn't a bad option for February, and it's not too expensive if you plan carefully. Just maybe avoid the Natural History Museum if you'd rather look at dinosaurs than the back of the person in front of you...

Priorities

Once upon a time, before children, we were fairly comfortably off. My husband and I both worked full time in teaching, him in a management position, and we brought in decent wages. Our house was smaller, meaning a relatively smaller mortgage and lower rates and bills. Our outgoings were few, and we had less time to spend the money we brought in. This meant that if we wanted or needed something, we could usually afford it, from clothes to repairs to home improvements. We went out for dinner regularly, as well as the cinema, theatre, pub, etc, and we actually had savings. It also meant we had money to spare for holidays, and we made the most of it. We weren't extravagant by many people's standards - 3 or 4 stars rather than 5 - but we did enjoy the opportunity to holiday wherever we fancied visiting rather than simply wherever we could afford.

Roll on several years and, like most families, we are in a somewhat different financial position. Along with children come increased outgoings, from basics like food and clothes to school uniform, extra-curricular activities and Christmas and birthday presents. More family members means a bigger car and a bigger house, and consequently higher mortgage payments or rent and bigger bills. For those families where both parents work full-time (or even part-time), childcare takes a huge chunk of earnings, and for those families where a parent gives up work or works part-time in order to look after the children, the income is of course much reduced. And most importantly - in relation to this blog - holidays are suddenly much more expensive. After the age of two, children have to pay for a seat on a plane (very often full-price). You need bigger rooms in hotels or bigger cottages to rent. You have to pay double the admission charge for many attractions. After the age of 12 (sometimes lower), children are counted as adults in the pricing for many holidays (and they're often charged the same as adults anyway). And if you want to travel anywhere during school holidays, expect to pay four times the price (this is no exaggeration).

So how do you manage to go on holiday, given all the financial limitations of having a family? I know some people wonder how I can afford to keep going away, or why we struggle with money for some things yet still have enough to go on holiday. The answer is pretty simple: it's all about priorities. Of course, we also do our best to holiday cheaply - we cut corners and search for bargains where we can, and I'll share some tips for this in a future blog. But even the cheapest holiday is only doable if it's a priority. Don't get me wrong - we don't put having a holiday ahead of food, bills or other essentials. You won't find me scrabbling in the bargain bin in the supermarket to pay for half a night in a hotel, or sending my children to school in shoes with holes to pay for the luggage allowance for a flight. Nor do we go without on the whole. However, for items and purchases that are non-essential, we are quite careful - and picky - with our spending. Of course, we try to save in all the usual ways - using comparison sites for insurance, using a cashback card, looking for money-off deals when we can. But it's more about what we choose to prioritise, and it's rarely material things. We have absolutely no interest in branded products; although I admit there are exceptions, I'm not convinced you always get what you pay for, and more times than not you're paying for a name and not for quality. And if I'm honest, I'm not always that bothered about quality either. I'm very happy to buy my clothes at Primark or other cheap shops, and I love picking up a bargain in a charity shop. I buy my shampoo and shower gel in the supermarket, and my make-up is Avon, not Clinique. We don't have an X-box or PlayStation, my phone is still an iPhone 5 (£15 a month pay-as-you-go) and the boys use a cheap tablet. We don't have Sky or any of those other expensive subscription services - we're quite happy with Freeview, although we have more recently started 'splashing out' on an almighty £5 a month for Netflix! We buy second-hand cars and we drive them until they die and we have no option but to replace them. We still need to redecorate most of the house after having it re-wired over two years ago. We need new patio doors, a new sofa, a new front door, a new shower and new carpets. The thing is, much as we'd like to replace these things, drive newer cars or upgrade our phones, we could only afford to do it at the expense of holidays. It's a simple choice - and the holidays win every time! Those who know me will recall that a while back we spent over a year without heating or hot water - no joke. Our boiler had had it - in fact, so had our whole central heating system. We would have had to save up and go without holidays for a VERY long time to afford to replace it, and we simply weren't willing to do that. We could get by without central heating - we had a gas fire in the lounge, we bought a couple of electric heaters and I took my hot water bottle everywhere with me. We could get by without hot water - we had an electric shower, a dishwasher and a kettle, and I don't much like baths anyway. What we couldn't get by without was holidays. After a few months without a holiday of some sort, I'm feeling antsy. I can't imagine how I'd feel going a year or more. I have no idea how anyone else manages it. I know most of my friends thought we were mad. We probably were. But it was a simple matter of priorities - we'd rather go on holiday than have a functioning boiler. 

So when it comes to holidays, it very often boils down to a matter of priorities. Of course, this is a gross oversimplification - holidays are bloody expensive, especially when children are involved, and I know not everyone can afford to go away, regardless of how much they scrimp and save on everything else. I'm well aware that there are many people who struggle to afford to pay for food, let alone holidays, and of course I'm not advocating that they - or anyone - let their children starve to pay for a holiday. I know I'm very lucky to have a secure home and enough of a regular income to cover the basic necessities and be able to choose what to do with the excess. But choice is what it often comes down to for those living relatively comfortably on a reasonable income. Many people would prefer to spend their money on clothes, Sky or an iPhone X. Me - I'd rather go on holiday than have heating or hot water. Hey, we're all different. I know I'm in a minority, but I'd happily sacrifice a whole bunch of things in exchange for a holiday. I'm not suggesting that everybody should follow my example, unless they too are holiday-obsessives - we all have our priorities for what to spend our money on, and holidays probably aren't most people's. But when people think they can't afford to go on holiday, sometimes, maybe, it's just that they don't want to enough.