Day III- Sunday, May 17th

Alright, so after two pretty dense days of museums and historical places (Westminister Abbey, Big Ben, Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral), I thought it was a good idea to slow down a bit and get the kids somewhere where they could really run around and lead the day. So for day 3, we started off at The London Zoo! To revisit Day I & II itineraries, click here!

This is something I definitely recommend if you’re planning a big trip with multiple stops and travel transitions (walking, taxi, train, etc). I think it was so helpful to have a more low key day for the little ones mixed in. We spent the entire day/afternoon at the zoo. It opened at 10 am and we took a taxi from our hotel directly to the zoo. The zoo requires a booked ticket with a specific arrival time. You can stay as long as you’d like but just can’t gain entry until the time of your ticket. We booked our time for 10 am and got there ready to roll!

The zoo was unlike any other zoo we’ve ever been too! We paid to do the penguin feeding which my daughter loved, and they also have a lot of different walk through exhibits that get you really close to a variety of animals- lemurs, monkeys, birds, butterflies, spiders, sloths! It was so cool to walk through and watch the animals swinging by, I’ll never forget watching lemurs prance and jump right in front of me and nearly hitting me in the face!

We ate lunch at the cafe and then did some shopping in the gift shop before heading out. We’d finished everything and were ready to go by 4 pm.

The day before, I had reserved free tickets for the Natural History Museum, just in case we were feeling up to it and I wasn’t sure just how long we’d spend at the zoo. The Museum is free, but does require a reservation which you can make online. It closes at 5:50 pm with last admission at 5:30 pm. We made it to the museum at 4:30 after getting a taxi from the zoo. The museum was really cool and fascinating for me but my kids were only really interested in the dinosaur and animal kingdom exhibits, so we basically stuck around there. Once we hit closing time, they started kicking everyone out (nicely), lol. It was 6 pm and the thing about London is, it doesn’t really get dark until 10 pm, so you really do have A LOT of time to explore and you certainly feel like you’ve got to take advantage of the sunlight!

Again, because this was my “chill, let the kids lead” day, I really just wrote things down with a big question mark and wasn’t sure just how much we would see or do. I had Kensington Palace written down because I did want to see it and it was only a 20 minute walk from the museum. By this time the kids were tired, so we strapped my son to my husband’s chest and let my daughter jump in the stroller. They both fell asleep on the walk.

I’m so glad we made it to Kensington Gardens because this ended up being one of my favorite memories. As we were strolling through the gardens, which by the way is STUNNING, like it’s insane these areas are just totally open and free for the public to enjoy, it started to sprinkle! I love the rain and always feel like it’s lucky when it comes at an unexpected moment. Travel tip- always bring an umbrella if you’re out and about in London! It can and does rain a lot and does so randomly!

We walked by the Albert Memorial! A memorial commissioned by Queen Victoria in memory of her husband, who died in 1861. We walked up to the gate of Kensington Palace (birthplace of Queen Victoria, current official residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and was Princess Diana’s home up until her death). You can book tours of certain areas when the palace is open, but it was closed when we were on our little garden walk.

After checking it out from afar, we started to walk back through the gardens; it was here that I found/learned about The Diana Princess of Wales memorial walk. We walked part of the path, it is in total a 7 mile long walk that takes you past some locations that played a role in the life of Princess Diana.

Along the walk, I learned about the Peter Pan statue and knew I had to find it! So, little Disney history here- Peter Pan is a fictional character created by a Scottish novelist, J.M Barrie. Walt Disney had seen J.M Barrie’s play Peter Pan in 1913 and in 1935 started thinking about adapting it into an animated feature. After buying production rights and then some stents in production because of the ongoing wars, the film was released in 1953. Anyways, sorry for the Disney side quest!

The statue is located in Kensington Gardens, not far Barrie’s former home. The statue was commissioned by J.M Barrie in 1912 as a gift to the children of London, Peter Pan was inspired in part by the gardens and the time Barrie spent there himself.

Avery slept through seeing the statue, her little stroller nap ended up being like an hour and a half- which mind you, NEVER happens.

It was so magical to see the statue and just to be in the same place that J.M. Barrie had been when he wrote and created this magical character!

Since my daughter was still sleeping, we walked from the statue over to the Italian Gardens, and right when we made it to check out the fountains, a huge rainbow appeared overhead! It was so cool!

It was about 7:15 pm by now and my daughter had woken up, so we started to walk down the street to a pizza and pasta place called Vapiano! It was so good, then we walked over to Buns From Home to get some cinnamon rolls for dessert! It was still pretty light out and we wanted to see the River Thames one more time so we walked across the closest bridge we could to get one more view of the river and the city at night and it was amazing! We got to see Big Ben across the way which was spectacular to see at night!

We started walking back to our hotel at 9:40 pm (time stamped by the above photo lol). Once we got back, it was bath & shower time for us all and then we all enjoyed our cinnamon rolls in bed to close out Day III!

Stay tuned for Day IV!