Maybe yesterday went too smoothly and I should not have expected today to be the same.
Kaitlyn and I started our day on another slow train from Peterborough to London. This time I managed to buy her a cinnamon roll she actually ate, so at least she didn’t arrive in London starving.
The slow train didn’t help the fact that today we were on a schedule. I wanted to go see the changing of the guard. I hadn’t seen it before. And I thought that since we were there for one of the slowest weeks of the year, certainly it would be easier to get a good spot and see. Plus, it’s in the Madeline goes to London book I bought Kaitlyn to help her get ready for the trip. We got there and staked out the spot that Rick Steves recommends. But Kaitlyn couldn’t see over the ledge, so we moved to the curb. The police officer on the horse would come over and tell us where to look or run to next and since there was no crowd it was really easy to just move to get a better look at the bands. Once they all got behind the palace gate, we couldn’t see anything and Kaitlyn got bored and wanted to go. I can’t really blame her, it was annoying.
Our second activity was the Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood. I stumbled upon it while looking for a museum that I thought Kaitlyn would tolerate. It sounded great on the website. In person, it left a lot to be desired. It isn’t in the center of town. And it’s mostly just old toys (and I say old cautiously, since many are from the 70’s) in display cases. Whoopie. There were a few things that were interactive, but not many. And they were pretty lame. A play kitchen. A dress up box with incomplete outfits. Two rocking horses. Those were the most popular and a group of school kids on a field trip hoarded them. Kaitlyn went to play on some computer game that one of those school kids walked away from… he had the nerve to come back and say I was playing with that. I told him he’d left it and she was playing with it now. Obnoxious kid.
I finally dragged Kaitlyn out of there because I was bored silly. I wanted to go to the hotel and check in and dump the big back pack I’d been lugging around all day. It had my video camera with a dead battery and my digital camera with a dead battery. It had my tour book, which was heavy. And Kaitlyn’s new teddy bear. Which was bulky. The hotel is just a couple of blocks from Harrods. While I didn’t want to just take her shopping, I’d hoped to go to Harrods for more scones and clotted cream. At the hotel I realized she was just exhausted, so I thought maybe I could get her to nap. She finally fell asleep after having a wretched screaming fit like she hasn’t had since she was much smaller, if ever that bad. It was horrendous. It wore her out and she sat next to me to apologize and fell sound asleep. Until housekeeping came to turn down the bed. Who on earth turns down the beds at 4 in the afternoon? (The Claverly Hotel in London does.) She woke up as I was arguing with the guy that yes, he was indeed going to pull the pull out bed out of the couch for her to sleep on. Did the front desk know I wanted that? Who the hell cares? I booked a room for three people; he was going to make that stupid bed if it took me until bed time to get him to do it. He left and came back with another woman who seemed peeved that he hadn’t just done it himself. But all the commotion woke Kaitlyn up. So we went to Harrods.
She was enthralled by the Egyptian escalators. I was disgusted by the display with the unwashed wine glass used by Diana at her last dinner. Completely unnecessary. We wandered through the food halls (it was well past the time for scones and clotted cream, though) and bought a couple of souvenir tins. We also picked up some Harrods shopping bags.
Bill called to say he was at King’s Cross and would get on the metro to Harrods. We wandered a little more then went downstairs to wait by the metro stop. We had to keep moving around because of the women begging for money… holding what looked like a fake baby to try to gain sympathy.
He finally arrived and after dropping his bag at the hotel, we headed out to find dinner. I was really hoping to just drop into a pub and have a big British beer with some chips and a sandwich. We found one and went in, only to be told we couldn’t eat there because Kaitlyn was under 14. Like they might accidentally serve her a beer. So we went for Chinese. Again. Well, there is that Hong Kong thing….