June 1, 2025
Today we got up and jumped on the tube at Paddington and went back to Baker Street to visit the Sherlock Holmes store. We missed it by a few minutes yesterday. After riding the train and arriving at the Baker Street station, we made our way through an enthusiastic, chanting crowd celebrating winning a football game and walked the short distance to the famous door at 221b Baker Street. We got a few souvenirs and then walked to the bus stop to catch a ride over to Abbey Road to see the famous streeet and studio. We visited the gift shop and then stood at the gate to the studio looking at that wooden door. I couldn’t help but think of all the great artists that passed through the doors of the world’s most famous music studio. To save some Googling, Abby Road Studios made famous by the iconic Beetles, has seen artists like Lady Gaga, Ed Sheran, Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Oasis and so many other names we know. Soundtracks and film scores have been recorded there like Raiders of The Lost Ark, The Lord of The Rings trilogy, Black Panther, most of the Harry Potter and Star Wars movies, and Avengers: Endgame.
In case you didn’t know, Abbey Road is just a regular old London crosswalk. There is nothing special about it except that the Beetles used it as an album cover. There are no traffic lights and traffic does not always stop for the many pedestrians and annoying sight seers looking to recreate their own Abbey Road crossing. A friend of mine back home was watching on the web cam and was going to try to get a picture of us crossing. There was a rather large tour group crowd that showed up as we were trying to cross. We didn’t feel comfortable asking a stranger to take a picture using one of our phones, so we were glad we would at least have a webcam screen shot. It was chaos trying to decide when to go between impatient drivers attempting to get to whatever destination they were headed to. We ended up in the crosswalk without a lot of people and got our shot to follow in those famous footsteps too.
From Abby Road, we headed back to the station and made a detour over to the King’s Cross St Pancras Stations because I wanted to see Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross. This was a pretty cool station and judging by the line at the Harry Potter platform, I wasn’t the only one with that idea. I didn’t want to make the kids wait in line to see something they didn’t care much about, so I just snapped a few pictures over the crowd and called it good enough. We went from there up to Camden Town to the Camden Market. Once there we were faced with a sea of hundreds of people. We weren’t sure we ever ended up in the right place because it didn’t look like the type of market we imagined, but it was something to see. Pretty sure it was a little too culturally diverse and hip for me. Want to feel like an out of place American? Head on over to Camden Town. To make me sound even older and less hip, one cool thing about it was it had an old working canal lock. It was a manual gate, so it was interesting to see how they controlled the water level to let boats pass through. I have never seen one in person. This is one of those things David would have loved to see had he been willing to swim like a salmon upstream in a sea of people. I guess from wherever he is, he has seen a lot more wonderous things than a lock at Camden Town.
The sketchy station at Camden Town was packed when we headed over to the Westminster Station to see Buckingham Palace. The three of us had to hold for dear life to a pole on the train packed in like sardines in a dented can. We were standing where the carriages join and got the full force of the wind rushing through the train. As we bounced off each other trying to remain upright, we had a pretty good laugh and had memories I doubt we will forget about old Camden Town.
At Westminster, we walked the 15 minute walk over to Buckingham Palace. By this time, we were so tired and were just shuffling along. There wasn’t a ton of people and were were able to take pictures at the gates and walk around a little looking at the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of the palace. On the way to the palace, we passed the entrance to the Royal Mews. I think if I ever went back to London and had more time and maybe was with someone my age, I might consider a Buckingham Palace tour and check out the carriages in the Royal Mews. The kids weren’t too interested and neither was I given the time constraints we had. We did well seeing all we saw. The Gurkhas were guarding the palace, so we didn’t get to see any of the King’s Guards. We read that during certain times in the year, they are only out a few times a week and for changing of the guard ceremonies which we didn’t plan for due to timing. We stopped off at the Buckingham Palace gift shop on the walk back to the station. If you want some royal China that is the store for you.
Because I do remember being young once, I offered to have dinner on my own so SL & Adam could spend the last evening just the two of them. I checked out some of the cheesy souvenir shops and walked around Paddington for a while just people watching. I have found that people watching isn’t as fun by myself. I sort of need someone else’s commentary. Still not brave enough to eat alone or navigate the tubes at night by myself, I just grabbed fast food and went back to the hotel to get my bag airport ready.
While it is relatively easy to navigate the train and bus systems with the London TFL app or maps, it does take time to get from station to station and then walk to where you want to go. I wanted to see and do more but with just two full days we did the best we could. I don’t feel like I missed a lot because we saw so many things and so many different areas of London with little to no planning. I just didn’t have it in me to plan this trip hardly at all. And that isn’t me. I am a planner and organizer, It was the first major trip without David, and I never could get excited enough to figure it all out. Knowing things now, the next trip may afford different things to see outside of the touristy areas.
