London for Kids

Five minutes on board and we're already in love with British Airways. Jordan, my nine-year-old son, is enchanted with his complimentary miniature tube of toothpaste and puts on his free booties and sleep mask immediately, even though it is four in the afternoon and we are still sitting on the runway. (Later, a flight attendant brings him a backpack filled with puzzles and coloring books.) Leigh, my 13-year-old daughter, has her headset plugged in, waiting for the latest James Bond movie. The menu promises they'll be serving us scones with clotted cream after we're airborne, and I'm up to Anne Boleyn in Antonia Fraser's THE WIVES OF HENRY VIII. If we got off the plane right now, we'd have already had a big adventure. 

I've always said England is the ideal spot for a first trip to Europe with kids. It's the easiest foreign country to visit--no language barriers, pleasant people, fascinating history; foreign, but not unnervingly so. Now British Airways literally has made me an offer I can't refuse; if my family is willing to travel in the off-season (November through March), we can spend a week in London cheaper than we could fly to many U.S. or Caribbean destinations. So here on the very last day the discounted family package is offered, we are packed, primed and ready.

Fast-forward eight hours. Although slightly jet-lagged (Jordan helpfully points out that it's 2 A.M. back home in North Carolina), the kids are thrilled to get their first passport stamp at Gatwick Airport. The train transfer to Victoria Station, the major transportation hub in downtown London, goes smoothly; outside the terminal, we hail an enormous black cab, and I tell the driver we want to go to the Grosvenor Thistle Hotel. "Are you sure?" he asks, sending me into momentary panic. I chose the hotel because it was moderately priced (in the dead center of the price range of British Airways packages) and centrally located--but is there something wrong with it?

We roll around the corner and the cab stops. The bad news is that I've just hailed a cab to take us 20 feet. The good news is that our hotel literally backs up to Victoria Station, so for the rest of the week we can easily catch trains, buses and the subway that Londoners call the Tube.Our hotel has a fantastically ornate lobby--oil portraits, marble busts and heavy chandeliers. The rooms upstairs will prove small and spartan, but we won't learn this for several hours because our room won't be ready until 3 P.M. ("That's 10 A.M. North Carolina time, Mom.") Feeling a bit punchy, we store our bags with the valets, eat a hideously overpriced breakfast at the hotel and hit the streets.

Victoria Station, like all London transportation centers, has desks where you can convert currency and buy Travelcards, tickets that provide access to nearly all forms of public transportation. Within minutes, we have pounds, bus tickets and maps in hand and decide to ride one of the big red double-decker buses. The buses turn out to be our favorite form of getting around; the trains and Tube are faster, but on the bus you can sit up high, see all of London's famous places and get off and on as much as you want. As we roll by Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square and to the heart of Piccadilly Circus, the color and excitement of this tradition-steeped city wake us up.

After our whirlwind bus tour, we spend the morning wandering around the distinctive shops of midtown London, taking naive pleasure in the curved red phone booths, the uniformed schoolchildren, the accents, the phrasing. Throughout the week, we will practice our new vocabulary: "biscuit" for cookie, "lift" for elevator, being "on holiday" instead of vacation, "from the States" instead of America. The Tube signs that say Mind Your Nut instead of Watch Your Head crack us up every time.

I would soon discover that the most memorable thing about taking my kids abroad wasn't the massive buildings or historic sites, but the intriguing differences between everyday English culture and our own. As each day passed, we found ourselves slowing down to the civilized pace of the city. On our first day, Jordan ran up and down the stairs at our hotel because the ancient lift was so un-Americanly slow. Leigh had giggle fits over the low-key TV commercials--"That lady doesn't even sound like she cares if she gets the dirt out." I fumed that the city's genteel six-hour workdays thwarted my ambitious touring plans. But by the end of the week, Jordan was following rugby, Leigh was automatically asking for hot tea and I actually went out one day without my watch.

OUR SIGHT-SEEING STRATEGIES

To get the most out of a trip abroad, I believe, a child needs to be at least eight, fairly interested in history and have enough stamina to make it through about six hours of touring without a major break. Usually when traveling with kids, I like to get off to an early start and return to the hotel room for an afternoon nap, but that strategy doesn't work in London. Many of the chief attractions are open only from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., so it's wiser to start sight-seeing midmorning and tour the whole day through. As they say in England, you have to "soldier on" if you want to see everything, stopping for small rests as you go.

For our short midday break, my kids and I always relaxed at a park; London is full of them, and there are numerous snack stands, so it's easy to work in an impromptu picnic. Alternatively, most museums and historic sites have cafés, which are fun places to have lunch. 

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