Tuesday 22nd December

I turned over a new leaf today: I introduced a REST day into the middle of our holiday. Honestly! I learnt from the US trip (although I probably should have learnt from interstate trips before that…) that I can’t push everyone every single day to the point of exhaustion 😬

We have had so many early starts that I let everyone sleep in. We are in two rooms at a little boutique hotel called The Academy Hotel off Tottenhma Court Rd, opposite the University of London. The hotel is quaint and steeped in history, created by linking five terrace houses together. It is in Bloomsbury, the first suburb built after the Great Fire of Lomdon, and most famous for the group of writers, artists and philosophers (such as Virginia Woolf) who would meet there.

The hotel provides an included continental breakfast in its dining room between 7am and 10am, so my only stipulation was that everyone be awake in time to attend that. The kids were very surprised at the extensive sleep in that was allowed! After that the eight of us set off in search of a laundromat. We followed the hotel’s directions and found one, and walked on to St Pancreas and Kings Cross stations while it was on. I took the kids to Platform 9 and 3/4, but there was such a queue for the photo opportunity and then to purchase the photo, that below is the only photo of it we took 😉

  
We then explored a second hand bookshop next to the laundromat while the dryer was on (and spent 30 pounds on books!), and had lunch in a little Turkish cafe around the corner. Everyone enjoyed gozleme for lunch, and then we trekked back to our hotel with our clean washing. Yay for washing being achieved!

We enforced a rest time in the afternoon, intending to meet a family from our coach tour for dinner and movie at night. But I couldn’t book enough tickets! They are all mad Star Wars fans, and our kids have been asking to see it before they find out any spoilers online. The Thams had plans that prevented them from meeting any earlier, so were quite happy for us to see the movie without them. We took the kids to the 4.45pm session, and at 7.15pm walked out of the cinema and they were waiting to meet us for dinner! Side note: Star Wars was excellent – we had low expectations with it being taken over by Disney, but those expectations were far exceeded!

We went to a restaurant near our hotel called Garfunkels, which offered a kids’ three course meal for six pounds, and had a delicious meal and lovely time with them. It is sad to say goodbye! They are very keen for us to visit them in Singapore. By the time we returned to our hotel and packed our bags to go tomorrow on our next tour, it was after 10.30pm – probably not the ideal time to tell the kids they have to be up at 5.30am tomorrow!!