We got back to the apartment about 9:30pm and were thoroughly exhausted. Although the TravelCards ma

The things we learned omni hotel chicago -- there will be confusion all along no matter what you do, and you ought to budget for huge mistakes of both time and money. Once you accept that, and expect technology to fail you, your trip will be filled with pleasant surprises, and you'll omni hotel chicago have a great time no matter what (and we did!).
1. We weren't sure whether our cell phones would work, and by the time we knew for sure, it was too late to do anything about it. This meant no way to make phone calls other than from pay phones. NOT good.
2. My career had taken an insanely busy turn over the summer which meant I'd had almost zero time to plan this vacation. I had hoped to do the rest of my research on the plane or once we got to Europe. BAD idea. With no phone, and additionally shaky WiFi connections at best (when we were able to find any signal at all), I was not able to finish omni hotel chicago planning the trip. This had very bad results. Being spontaneous is one thing, but being stranded with a family is entirely another. We missed out on some significant good things.
3. Husband had *thought* he'd be up to driving omni hotel chicago in England, omni hotel chicago but at the last minute he decided he wasn't comfortable with it. This was another bad turn because it left us in Yorkshire with no transportation except our own two feet ... and while Yorkshire is a lovely place to hike, there's only so far you can get by foot (and the small town where we stayed only had coach trips come through once a week, not on any of the days we were there). Between this change, and my zero planning time, we missed out on the pony-trekking I'd promised my daughter all summer long, and we did not hike into any remote, protected or really natural areas at all. Huge disappointments omni hotel chicago for all of us. Lesson learned -- always have a back-up plan! Always, always, always.
Flight was uneventful, arrived about 11am at LHR. We were a bit befuddled at the airport about how to get to Victoria Station, and confused again about the 7-day Travelcard omni hotel chicago process (wish I would have taken notes from discussions here!), but we got everything worked out eventually. We visited the Royal Mews and would have visited Buckingham Palace but tours for the day had ended.
So we took the train to our apartment in Purley, which was quite nice and much roomier than anything we could have afforded in a hotel. The girls had their own room (bunkbeds), and the husband omni hotel chicago and I had our own separate room (full/king bed), nice bathroom, living room downstairs, fully furnished kitchen and our own little backyard, too. We found a wonderful little diner and had breakfast (and often supper) there every day.
The WiFi connection in the apartment was fairly good, and the girls were able to Skype with their friends every night which really added to their experience. omni hotel chicago I thought at first it was trivial, omni hotel chicago but it gave them a chance to share what they were going through and talk about what they'd done each day. They even took "their friends" on a tour of the apartment (via little iPod, of course), and showed them what the streets look like, and everything that's omni hotel chicago different, and what our temporary little home was like. Another day, their band teacher "teleconferenced" them in during the day so they could see what their classmates were studying and share what they'd learned.
First thing in the morning, husband's razor died after roughly one second of use, and girls realized their hair appliances (flattener, curler, etc.) all had polarized plugs which would not work in our adapter. Now, these were not big things to me, but they were very big things to the rest of the family. Husband had to give up shaving for a few days 'til he found a place to buy a disposable razor, and the girls had to give up being able to do anything with their hair for the rest of the trip (they'd already had to leave all their hair products at home because they hadn't had a chance to get them in small enough containers). I share this not to make you think we're petty, but only to impress that with teenagers, some things are very, very important, and appreciating their ability to adapt and overcome will go a long way toward a better trip. We heard very few complaints after the first day, but I know it was hard for them.
We got back to the apartment about 9:30pm and were thoroughly exhausted. Although the TravelCards made moving around easy, we really wanted to explore on our own two feet as well. We walked sooooo much today!
The girls were skeptical of the Beefeater tour at Tower of London. We stayed for the first part of the tour, but when it lapsed into lists of who had been executed and how, it was a bit much for them. Instead we let them explore on their own, and suddenly the "boring" tour was lasting 2+ hours. One point for the parents.
This is one of the days where I wish we wouldn't have been *quite* as independent. I wasn't sure how our BritRail passes would "play" with our TravelCards, and at every rail station we got different omni hotel chicago advice about which route we had to take and which card/pass omni hotel chicago we had to use. I had mapped out a 2-hour journey, but was assured that that was NOT possible. Long story short, we got to Stonehenge ... by way of Portsmouth (!) and a SIX-HOUR journey from London. This meant no possibility of a trip to Bath as well, sigh. We took The Stonehenge Tour (red double-decker bus) from the rail station, omni hotel chicago one of the last trips out of the day, a hop-on hop-off, and looked only at Stonehenge. Incredible experience! Husband was very nervous that we'd get stranded at Salisbury or that our return trip would take as long as our trip there. But nope, return trip took just over 2 hours. Go figure.
Both girls wanted to do London Dungeon today. I was hesitant but it was a TravelCard discount so gave in ... and it was quite good. There was some educational value, and it really helped put a face on things the girls had just read before in books. Lesson learned -- give in to some of the kids' requests, even if they seem frivolous. Kids have ways of learning from almost anything, and it puts them in a much better mood.
We visited Shakespeare's Globe in the morning. One daughter omni hotel chicago was impressed omni hotel chicago and one was determined *not* to be impressed (as sometimes happens). omni hotel chicago We made her go anyhow. It was a fascinating tour and we really enjoyed it -- or three of us did, anyhow, and the fourth will appreciate it later, I'm sure.
In the afternoon we headed to St. Pancras/Kings Cross to catch the Eurostar train to Paris. And somewhere between here and there, we all realized how much trouble we were headed for. I had not had much time to learn French this summer, and the rest of the family had thought it would not be at all necessary. The first time the girls visited the dining car and came back with all "wrong" stuff, omni hotel chicago they realized life had changed. Yesssss, most people will speak some English, but that doesn't omni hotel chicago mean they'll speak *fluent* English, and it doesn't mean they'll understand specific requests or fast-spoken English. It was a big uh-oh moment (one I'd worried was coming at us, but I had not been able to do much about it). Over the next hour, we had some fast French lessons from the book I'd been studying out of over the summer when I'd had time.
The first night in Paris was nearly a disaster. By the time we got off the RER train, it was dark. I couldn't see a single street sign. I couldn't figure out how to ask where the hotel was -- and the only people to ask, at that point, were the homeless people setting up camp in doorways. It was rather traumatic for the girls, who stuck very, very close by our sides all through the ordeal. They were genuinely scared.
Without phones, or technology, or pay phones, or even basic French, we really had no option but to keep reasoning omni hotel chicago where we were vs. where we needed to be. Paris' omni hotel chicago occasional street maps were a big help here. After a very tense 90 minutes or so of near-panic in the dark, trying to stay alert and avoid dark alleys, we finally found the place. What a relief!
We explored Jardin du Luxembourg which was a marvelous trip. Loved, loved, loved it. We made it through breakfast -- at a very high cost (43 Euros for the four of us, yikes!) -- and struck out to explore some more.
The RER/Metro didn't really make sense to us, so we decided omni hotel chicago just to explore on foot. And while it was not our original omni hotel chicago intention, we ended up walking to Notre Dame, then along the Seine (wanted to take a river cruise but couldn't understand the schedules or costs, and our French was too limited to really engage anyone in conversation, so we decided just to walk along the river which was quite nice), then over to the Louvre (which unfortunately was closed that day -- another price paid for lack of research! -- but we did explore the grounds and have a wonderful little lunch, including some of the best ice cream I've ever had in my life), and then all the way over to the Tour Eiffel. Yes, really.
We braved the RER/Metro system again to return to the Louvre, which was spectacular. We were all still worn out from the day before, though, so after the Louvre trip we just returned to the hotel to rest up awhile. Had a light supper -- still having problems communicating with anyone -- and feeling very much the outsiders here. Everyone was polite, if reserved, and certainly no one was rude, but there is a big difference in the level of "enthusiastic helpfulness" between England and France. I'm not leveling criticism at anyone -- after all, we were the ones in their country, not the other way around -- but it was a new experience for us. The girls came across some multilingual kids at a playground who knew German, which was joyous for them -- their German is many thousands of percents better than their French. It was a reminder of how much, as humans, we are driven to communicate with others, and when we are unable to do that, it has a big effect on us.
By now we'd been living mostly off crepes and croissants and coffee and muffins, or things we could point to, and no one was feeling too hot. When we