From mountains, trees, and fresh air to a busy London City. If it wasn’t for the draw of connecting with like-minded world schoolers, I don’t think we would include many cities on our travel itinerary. However, our favorite part of London is the museums are all free, and there’s a variety of parks to enjoy. This time we had a smaller number of us attending, compared to the hub we joined back in Vienna, making it a lot easier to coordinate and meet up as well as get to know the other families better. We’re grateful for the friendships we’re able to make, especially for our kids as not everywhere we go has children of the same age, with the same interests or similar personalities. These hubs have been a great opportunity to connect and learn from many families from other cultures and lands.

London was not our most favorite place to stay- mostly due to the accommodations we stayed in. To put it nicely, it was an outdated, overpriced, sauna-like studio we avoided being in as much as possible- giving us a greater appreciation for our busy itinerary.

London does have its charm though, the red double decker buses, “royal” mail cart, red telephone boxes, the British flag being represented everywhere, a random pony race, ancient brick homes wedged between modern structures, and of course the connections to the Harry Potter films.

Our first day there we jumped on a last-minute Harry Potter walking tour to help kill time while we got our room changed due to the undesirable (and unhealthy) living conditions of our first room. A mold infested bathroom was not going to work for us!

Our tour guide was a lot of fun, especially for the kids. He showed us places and insights about where parts of the movies were filmed. Our kids got really involved as they were familiar with a great deal of what we saw, as we’ve been listening to the books throughout our travels, then watching the movie after each book we complete. It’s been fun to see them identify the things they remember seeing, even Hallie got really into it.

The first Sunday here was Father’s Day. We celebrated with a nice dinner of Phil’s choice the night before. On Sunday we attended church, took a picnic lunch to a nearby park, then created a not so fancy microwavable meal to enjoy on our beds. As we travel, it’s important to us to honor the Sabbath day as best we can so we utilized the only heating element and space we had available and made the most of it.

We toured so many places throughout the week, I won’t name them all, but one of the highlights we splurged a bit and sat through a six-hour (divided) production of the Cursed Child. We loved it!

I took my girls on a Mother-daughter dinner date to the Secret Garden. We ate outside, next to a beautiful church and enjoyed some delicious food and even more amazing desserts.

We also took advantage of watching the changing of the guards at the Buckingham Palace. It was highly recommended as something to see but from our experience it was overcrowded and rather uneventful.

The kids and Phil also enjoyed a live Minecraft interactive game with some of the other families in our group, and the Science Museum was a lot of fun with interactive stations for the kids based on their interests. Hallie especially loved the anatomy section while Claire and Gavin got into the engineering and invention sections. We also toured the Natural History Museum, which we breezed through rather quickly because it was an extra hot day and the museum didn’t have AC. Another great tour was the Dockside Museum. It was rather fascinating giving great history we’d never heard before. Definitely worth the stop. There was something for everyone and a friend for each of our kids too.

I loved being able to see the iconic sights and structures you hear so much about but don’t really understand their magnitude until you see them for yourself. Places like Big Ben, Westminster Palace, London Eye, and Tower Bridge.

We’re grateful we took the opportunity to venture here, there’s still a list of places I wish we took the time to see but even more, we look forward to the quiet, more peaceful scenery of Scotland.