So, here’s to my first holiday with children.  Six months ago, I was resolutely single and child-free. then Santa brought me a new boyfriend and three perfect children.  Let’s start this in style, so lets start in London. First, accommodation for a week (the beloved had paid for the flights and had transported the kids over to Heathrow from where I would take charge of arrangements). Let’s see, what options have we got here:

Cheap and cheerful hostel: Out. Imagine three children in a mixed dorm with 24/7 comings and goings.Any old last-minute hotel room: Out. Catering options severely limited, plus trying to accommodate three children is a bit of a challenge for most hotels.Ex-boyfriends couch: Out. How could I even mention it.

I had to discard all single-girl options and find something really family friendly. Enter Air BnB. We did a little trial run in Rome (more about that later) and found something perfectly family-friendly, seen on the right, in Woolwich. Own terrace overlooking the Thames? Check. Okay, it’s a bit of a trip down the Thames into town, a multi-change affair on the DLR, or a very long non-stop ride on the 53.

Here’s the Woolwich Arsenal Pier. The impressive sailing boat is from Holland.

 What’s even better, children to the age of 11 travel free on buses, the tube and some trains.

FREE! In an expensive city like London, free travel for children is a huge bonus. Add to that that many attraactions are free.

Catering and Entertainment: There was a huge supermarket by Woolwich DLR. Cue lots of shopping, self-made breakfasts and DIY dinners. Mostly salads with new and exotic ingredients. And there were loads of new foodstuffs to explore. Different cereals. Bagels and crumpets. A different brand chocolate mousse. Smoothies, So far, so good. The apartment had Wifi. A huge bonus.

It helps to get some ideas across and make a rough plan for the week – I left this to my boyfriend and the children, only supplying a London Map for Kids and the German version of “Not for Parents London” by Lonely Planet.

So, the Rough Plan was like this:

Thurs, 17.04. Arrive. Check out our neighbourhood

Fri, 18.04. Church (it was Good Friday, after all), REgents Canal, London Zoo (in retrospect, totally ambitious)

Sat, 19.04. Tower, Tower Bridge, London Eye, Big Ben

Sun, 20.04. Easter Eggs, Greenwich, Royal Observatory and Meridian

Mo, 21.04. Bus-Tour, Buckingham Palace, Science Museum

Tue, 22.04. Harry-Potter-Tour http://www.wbstudiotour.co.uk/

Wed, 23.04. Shepherds Market, Natural History Museum

And yes, reader, we managed most of these things in a very leisurely, un-stressy manner. But it looked more like this:

Fri, 18.04. Clipper Ride. A very crowded London Eye (skipped). Lost one of the twins by Big Ben. Big Ben. Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Pall Mall, Buckingham Palace. Marvelling at M&S Food inside Green Park Station. Home quite early to play Minecraft

Sun, 20.04. Easter Eggs skipped. Terrible weather. A longish Bus 53 ride through Sarf London. Natural History Museum for La Famiglia, Glamour of Italian Fashion at the V&A for me. Dinner Khan’s of  Kensington

Mo, 21.04. Greenwich, Royal Observatory, London Eye and a longish walk in the rain to Millennium Bridge and the Tower: I learned some children to be extremely resilient to rain

Tue, 22.04. Tower of London. Spitalfields Market. Dinner at Poppies Fish and Chips, a walk along Brick Lane, Brick Lane Bagel Bake. Then a bus ride and an impromptu architectural tour to Leadenhall, St Mary’s Axe and Lloyds of London.

Wed, 23.04. Perhaps the most intense day – first, London Zoo. Then,  bit of cramming to see and do everything that needed doing and that La Famiglia could not possibly miss before returning to Berlin: a walk through Mayfair, dinner at Kulu Kulu Sushi, walk through Chinatown, King’s Cross to visit Platform 9 3/4 (a unashamed commercial enterprise but fun nevertheless).

Thursday: Only slightly exhausted singleton drops off La Famiglia in Heathrow and secretly wishes the next family holiday to come.

The Small Print

Update 2025: This was my first ever blog post in 2014 and I am glad no one has read it yet because it really is cringey, but I am going to leave it here to show that everyone can learn. I am no longer living in the UK or are single/ have a boyfriend with children.

Were blog posts really this bad back in the day, or was it really just mine, just starting out with this blogging thing? I was obviously a very late starter, having posted my photographs from trips mostly on Flickr before, but I wanted to give blogging a try. Pleased to have survived, and ten years on, I am still here. I spent fifteen minutes formatting it then gave up, so I just leave it as the mess it is as a distant memory of my early blogging days – I have just edited a few typos and as I am continuing to tidy this blog and do some backups, I might give these older posts a tiny bit of a tidy and update – or not.