Planning your trip to London

Well, a few months after out last trip to Hawaii it was time to start thinking about what we wanted to do the following summer.  It is always difficult to decide where to go in the "off Hawaii" year.  Since 2011 or so we have taken many wonderful trips within the United States and Canada.  The trip in the off year also requires a lot more planning than the Hawaii year, so starting to plan the fall before has never been a bad idea.  I pulled books from the public library on Croatia and Costa Rica.  Croatia, though lovely, had a strong reputation for nudism and I decided quickly that this was not how I wanted my 15 year old son to get an education.  Costa Rica looked great but the travel was complicated and expensive.  During the fall we spent a lot of time watching Masterpiece on PBS, stuff like Downton Abbey and Victoria, and we started to think it might be fun to go to England.  We soon figured out that British airways flew non stop to London for less than it would cost us to go to Costa Rica or Hawaii for that matter.  Though we had little hope of running into Prince Albert or Ross Poldark, by Christmastime we had decided we were going to the UK.
We had a very successful trip, but it took painstaking planning.  Here I'm just going to throw out a whole bunch of information I found to be useful and hopefully it will be of benefit when planning your own UK vacation.

1)  Planning needs to start early and needs to be thorough.
The busiest time for tourism in London is mid July, when school gets out, through the month of August.  London literally is wall to wall people during this time, people from all over the world.  The person who doesn't plan is going to spend a lot of time in lines waiting for entry, and may be denied entry altogether.  People who don't plan whilst (UK term there) still in the US can also spend a lot of their precious time in London trying to decide "what to do" and then trying to arrange how to do it.  Better to have a streamlined plan.

Saint Paul's Cathedral

The first step is to procure all the books you can from your local library and write down ALL the things you might possibly want to do. You're going to have to prioritize and decide what is essential and what is impractical. Then depending on how many days you will be there, start piecing together an itinerary.  I had nearly 30 items on my list-but some things never made it to the plan (Highclere Castle, Selfridge's Department Store) and some things fell off even after the itinerary was made whilst already in London (afternoon tea, full English Breakfast, Evensong at Westminster Abbey).  I say the absolute minimum for seeing London and it's environs is five days and this could easily be expanded to seven at a slightly slower pace.  Our pace was grueling, but all told we managed to fit in about 18 things in 5 days.  I recommend purchasing a detailed street map of London, or making a copy of one out of a book. With a good way of seeing how attractions are laid out within the city, your days will be far more efficient.  It makes far more sense to see the London Eye and the Imperial War museum the same afternoon than to run from Westminster Abbey to Tower Bridge and back to the London Eye.
Once you know what you want to do and on what days, it is time to purchase tickets.  The popular attractions have time slots and fill fast. I recommend speedy booking for Churchill War Rooms, the Warner Bros Studios (the Making of Harry Potter), the State rooms at Buckingham Palace (if they are open) and for any popular theatre shows.  For Hamilton and BBC Proms it is critical to purchase tickets the minute they go on sale.  There are many other attractions that do not have time slots but allow you to use tickets anytime during the day.  These include St Paul's Cathedral, Tower of London, and Windsor Castle.  I still recommend the purchase of tickets in advance as these typically offer discounts and entry is quite a bit faster.  Basically, all the time standing in a ticket line is time WASTED!
There is an opportunity called the London Pass which basically allows you entrance to a long list of London attractions for a flat fee over a given number of consecutive days.  Though I could see how this might be beneficial if you had a very limited number of consecutive days and were travelling with kids under 11, it did not work for us.  It did not include the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace or the London Eye or Harry Potter, so we would have paid extra.  Even with the included admissions, which we did not accomplish on consecutive days, the cost did not add up to the price of the London Pass.  We also got to pick our times, not sure how this works with the London Pass.

2)  Decide where you are going to stay.
In order to not be travelling long distances into the city every day, it is best to stay in Central London and that is expensive.  Hotels for families are limited, in fact, I did not find one hotel in a decent area that could accommodate our family of five in one room.  I highly recommend looking at VRBO and Airbnb for a flat that allows you spread out a bit and make a little food and do some laundry.  Flats in desired neighborhoods like Knightsbridge and Mayfair are very expensive, but just staying one tube stop down the street can greatly drop your prices.  I'd say with taxes and cleaning fees and charges, we wound up paying about $350 a night for our two bedroom one bath apartment near Gloucester Road--and that was a steal.  When choosing a place you want access to a nearby Tube station.  This is critical, because the Tube is going to be a daily part of your life.

3)  Getting around
Forget renting a car. That would be ridiculous.  London and the surrounding areas have the finest in public transportation.  In fact, Central London has a congestion charge zone during business hours Monday through Friday.  If you operate a car in this area, you are charged 11.50 (roughly 14$) per day!  So no car.
It is very easy and safe to walk the streets of Central London to get from place to place.  We found Google maps walking feature to be a little tricky and somewhat delayed, so many times we found ourselves walking in the wrong direction or having missed a turn, so here's where that street map comes in handy again.

The London Underground is cheap, expansive, quick, and because everyone knows this, it's crowded all the time.  The tube is safe and gets you to wherever you want to go in London.  When using the Underground, you can pay as you go, which will run you about 4.9 pounds per ride, or about $6.50.  Multiply this by your family of five and the Tube is not really looking like such a good option.  The way to go is the Oyster Card, which is a preloaded card.  The kicker about the Oyster Card is that the fare reduced from the card is about 50% of the pay as you go fare.  The Oyster card also gets you discounts on the bus as well.  Anyway, for being in London 6 full days plus two half days, the only choice for us was the 7 day Travel Card in Zones 1-2.  The Travel card gave us unlimited tube and bus fare for about 50 pounds per adult (my son was cheaper).  To make this worth it (vs just buying the preloaded Oyster card) we had to take about 20

Our Local Tube Station

tube rides during the course of our 7 day stay.  I'm pretty darn sure we achieved this, but at any rate, to not have to quibble about riding the Tube when your feet were going to fall off because you didn't want to spend the money was quite liberating.  The money has already been spent.  Ride the tube as much as you darn well please, and we did.  I have heard this is ideal if you are staying 7 or more days, otherwise just get the Oyster card.
London has Uber and a lot of taxis, but these are neither fast nor cheap.
There are EXCELLENT websites and apps that will plan any route for you from point A to point B using a variety of means of transport, calculating costs and time it will take to get there.  Knowing how long it will take to get somewhere by foot, taxi, bus or tube is critical in planning your days.  Refer here back to those timed entries into those heavily visited attractions.  I like Transport for London's app and website,(tfl.gov.uk) and Rome2Rio.com.
Also available are Santander Cycles which are kind of all the rage but didn't go so well for me and my husband.  Think trying to cycle through London while trying to navigate holding your phone.

4) Data and Phones
It is pretty essential that at least one person in your party has access to data and calling at all times.
Data separate from wifi (which is in a lot of places but not everywhere) comes in pretty handy, mostly to access mobile tickets embedded in email and of course to navigate yourself around the UK and the streets of London, which can be tricky.  All plans and phones are different.  Iphones will work in the UK on a pay per use basis, but you are pretty much going to pay some really hefty fees.
For a short stay such as ours, AT&T offers an international day pass for 10 dollars a day per device, which is only billed if you use data (which I did every day) or make a call. I put the plan only on my phone.  The rest stayed in airplane mode.
It was indeed liberating for the kids to not have the ability to be plugged in all day.
One thing to be aware of is that when only one person in the group has data, the group needs to stay together and not get accidentally separated, because there is no way to text each other and find out where anyone is.  We found this out the hard way when my daughter (who should have known better) wandered ahead of us until we had no idea where she was.  We lost about 90 minutes trying to find her.  This could have been avoided obviously if she had had a data plan, or if she had just been smarter!
Some parents might think it's worth it to pay for international data on 5 phones for 10 days.  We did not.

5)  Theatre
London has an incredibly vibrant theatre scene which offers just about any show you could possibly want to see.  It is true that you can go to the Kiosk in Leicester Square and procure half priced tickets for shows the same evening.  This is fine if you really don't' care what you see.  The pickin's by this time are slim and some are not even offered at a discount.
If you have your heart set on seeing something special in London-get your tickets far in advance.  Look up the theatre's seating map and pricing and choose which seats you want and pay full price.  Make it a gift to yourself.
The hottest ticket in London is of course Hamilton at the Victoria Palace Theatre. On April 1 at 4 in

the morning (12:00 London time), I bought 5 tickets for August 1, but let me tell you, it was not all that easy.  Though most productions offer tickets far more than four months in advance, Hamilton does not.  They release tickets about a month at a time and give you about three days notice as to when they will be released.  I signed up for a twitter notification to find out when this day would be, then I went on multiple blogs and the theatre website to pick the best possible tickets in my price range.  Assuming you get tickets, you are required to pick them up at the theatre the day of the show with your photo ID, credit card, and email confirmation.  Then you walk right into the theatre.  This is all to avoid the selling of these tickets on the secondary market.
It was all worth it.  It's fantastic.

6)  More
-I would like to say quite quickly before you get tired of me that tipping is not expected.  If you order drinks and food at a bar, no tip is expected. If you like your service and food, 12% tip is the norm.  Watch that the 12.5% service charge is not included in the bill and double tip.  I heard that Americans are loved because they are such good tippers--well, we are used to much more expected gratuity and also tipping all the time.  Another fact is that there is no tax on food in restaurants. So from a budgetary standpoint, you can plan on spending up to 25% less on dining out, than you would here.
AND two things that are hard to come by are tap water/drinking fountains and free rest rooms.  We found really early on not to wait until the last minute and to have change on your person to access the public potties.  Even the private potties sometime require an access code.  One time we bought a banana just to get it.
This predicament can leave you quite sick, you don't drink because you don't want to get stuck and it's hot so you get how this can become problematic.
If you want tap water in a restaurant your have to ask for it--and don't ask for still water because then it's coming in a bottle.

7)  MUST SEES!!
Okay here is my list of must sees in London and the UK.  Some are more like experiences and they are in no particular order....
1)  the London Eye
2)  St Paul's Cathedral (make sure you take the 528 stairs to the top of the dome!)
3)  Churchill War Rooms and the Churchill Museum
4)  the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace
5) Westminster Abbey
6)  the Imperial War Museum
7)  Stonehenge  (ok, not really London)
8)  Pubs and pub food
9)  London Theatre
10)  The Tower of London

Honorable mention to Windsor Castle, Borough Market, the Hard Rock Cafe and the London Underground.  What missed my list were the museums, which I know are fabulous but just made us tired.  Also skipped the whole afternoon tea thing.  A friend of our put it best.."I am more interested in afternoon beers than afternoon tea."

This was long but I hope you enjoyed reading! Here are some more pictures!

 View from the London Eye

Buck House, please!

View from St. Paul's Cathedral

Westminster Abbey

Overlooking the Thames and the London Eye

Queen Victoria and Windsor Castle

London Calling!!

Can I please get some service??

Tower of London 

Winter Wonderland Sun Valley, ID February 15-20

Sun Valley Resort and Mount "Baldy"

Well, life has been moving pretty quickly in our household.  We went to Disneyland, then my daughter returned to school, then it rained an awful lot but we still managed to get to Fan Fest, then it was my birthday, then my dad had heart surgery, then it was February/Winter break/Ski week.  A month and a half of the new year had flown by.

When you are in college, you don't get a February break, so we were going to have one less kid to pay for if we wanted to go somewhere.  Another issue that reared its ugly head was that the baseball season had started and it was generally frowned upon to leave town.  We got on this right away, and our answer was that it was better to go earlier than later, so we decided to leave Friday February 15 and be back by the middle of the following week.  We thought this was a great shot at some destination skiing.

We looked at all the usual spots.  Mount Bachelor in Bend is by far the least expensive, but our time was limited so we did not have much interest in spending 9 hours in the car each way.  We also considered Whistler but to keep the air prices down we would haveto fly to Seattle and drive four hours.  Also not so fun after a school day.  Utah offered a lot of options, but the idea of staying in Salt Lake City and the limitations on alcohol in that state were less than appealing.  Sun Valley Idaho required a flight to Boise followed by a two hour drive north.  We could leave after school on Friday and be there by 10:30 pm, so Sun Valley, ID it was.

Staying in Sun Valley-

For a town of only like 3200 people, there sure are an awful lot of places you can stay.  A LOT of people own vacation rentals in the area and there are plenty to chose from.  The last time we were here my husband booked us in some crappy downtown motel and after one morning of a single once in a lifetime attempt at snowboarding which left me feeling like I had been run over by a truck AND beaten with a baseball bat, I insisted that we get out the flea bag roach coach and we moved to the Sun Valley Lodge.  At over $300 per night for a standard room with 2 queen beds, staying there was not practical this time, so we needed to look for a condo.
You can stay in lots of different areas, Elkhorn, River Run, downtown Ketchum, Warm Springs, etc.  They are all within 5 minutes drive of both ski areas and are all serviced by the free shuttle bus service.
We did not know too much about the area so after night after night of pouring over VRBO trying to decide on a place to stay we came upon the crown jewel of Sun Valley accomodations, a 2BR 2 bath Snowcreek condo.
This is the link to the VRBO listing.  but the pictures are not accurate--if this is even the same condo, it has been completely updated.  Regardless, it's the same owner. Ask to be put in his nicer condo.
Snow Creek is a good location anyway.  We walked to the SunValley Lodge in about 12 minutes.  If you want to ski at Dollar Mountain, which caters to less advanced skiers (and is a lot cheaper), all you have to do is carry your skis out the back door and there lies the lodge.  If you want to ski on the much larger Bald Mountain , lovingly referred to locally as "Baldy", you can either wait for the bus or hop in your car and drive 5 minutes.  Parking at the mountain is a piece of cake, so we drove all three days and never used the bus.
But listen, I cannot say enough about this condo.  It was not luxury so the price was reasonable, at what turned out to be about 275$ a night, but dang it had everything you needed!  The kitchen and the bathrooms had been remodeled.  All the appliances are brand new and there is a lovely foam mat which protects your feet from the cold tile.  The floors in the master bath are, wait for it, heated!  OMG!  Such comfort.  There is a washer and a dryer.  The kitchen is well stocked.  Oh, and speaking of stocked--I LOVED that the dry supplies from the last renters were not completely cleaned out.  We were happy to have some necessities, like flour, sugar, coffee, oil, bread crumbs, sandwich bags, aluminum foil, and also some NOT necessities like half a bottle of vodka, brownie mix, oatmeal packets and hot cocoa.  We made use of it all!
Another fabulous benefit of the unit was the HOT TUB.  More on the cold later but dang, the hot tub was absolutely essential or you would never emerge from the skiing induced ice block.  We went to the hot tub, about a 75 yard run in your swim suit and UGG boots in 18 degree weather, every evening.  About 15 feet from the hot tub was a heated changing room, which avoided the need to put on all your clothes in the freezing cold and give yourself a heart attack running back to the condo.
Anyway, we would stay again in a second.

Skiing:

Unlike Mount Bachelor, there is absolutely nothing budget about skiing in Sun Valley. When we got there during the peak President's day weekend, it did appear that a 3 of 5 day pass on Bald Mountain was about 466$.  466!  Even with a multiday pass that is more than 150$ per day.  Remember that at Bend our 3 of 5 day in 2014 worked out to less than 60$ per day!  We did get a significant discount using the website getskitickets.com, through which we purchased our tickets at about $353 for the same 3 of 5 pass, but we had to buy the non-refundable adult tickets for the four of us about 90 days in advance.  Did anyone say trip insurance!  We sure did!
Renting ski equipment also costs a pretty penny.  Renting at Sturtevants of Sun Valley in downtown Ketchum costs a rather steep 140$ for 4 days (we rented an extra day to allow us to get the skis in the middle of the day before).  We chose them because they did offer an online discount once again if we purchased the package 3 months in advance.  The total was 420$ instead of 560$, which brought down the price to like 26.25 a day, instead of 35$.  But then they tried to charge us the balance, and then gave us some line about that we were lucky because we got a 20% discount twice, and then another line about the discount not including the tax.  Whatever!!!  No matter what they were saying, the numbers didn't add up at all.  The guys were nice and the equipment was good but the business practices lame.  It would be our choice to not rent from them again.
Anyway, let's talk about that glorious ski area.  Yes, expensive.  Yes, cold.  But WHAT a glorious mountain and what a swank ski resort.
First lets talk about that mountain!  Baldy is a 3400 ft mountain from top to bottom with 2054 acres of skiable area.  There are 14 lifts, including one 8 person gondola and seven high speed quad chairs.  There is a fair division of green, blue and black runs.  We may have been lucky with regards to the weather, but the entire mountain from top to bottom has good snow, no icy faces, no windy ridges blasting your nuggies off.  A run the length of the mountain (including lift time) can take near 30 minutes.  Even on President's day and the week following, no lift lines-NONE, ZERO.  Three days, no waiting..just skiing.
And the ski resort itself...Yeah, you pay for it, but it has some serious amenities I have never seen anywhere.  All the bathrooms everywhere are spotless--no water on the floor, no mud tracked it.  Each stall is individual and fully enclosed, with room to put all your stuff.  The lodges, even on the top of the mountain, have roaring fireplaces, enormous flat screen TV's, and nice furniture.  There is kleenex and water everywhere.  The lockers are first come, first served and are FREE.  There is no banishing of those who bring their own lunches to outdoor picnic tables.  They are just as welcome as those who bought their food at the cafeteria (we brought our lunch every day).  A waitress comes by occasionally and asks if you need anything from the bar.  The cafeteria has a full salad buffet and lots of variety of sandwiches and entrees (but expensive, we passed).  The resort is connected to the bus line servicing the entire area.  My favorite amenity?  The WAGONS available to haul your stuff to and from your car or to the bus stop (which really isn't that far!).
Pretty much we all confessed--this is our new favorite place to ski!

 On Bald Mountain with Ketchum in the background

 Better stay bundled up!

Snow fo' days

Day of Rest:

Well, we got in really late on Friday night, and we still hadn't picked up our skis, so we decided our "day off" was going to be the first day we were there.
Besides getting our lift tickets, picking up our skis and picking up a few groceries at the charming downtown Atkinson Market, there is plenty to keep you occupied on a day off.  Honestly, you could just go to a base ski lodge and sit by the fire and drink beer and listen to music all day, but we decided to walk on over to Sun Valley Lodge and Village, about a 12 minute walk from our condo.
The Sun Valley Lodge is a large and comfortable hotel, with a restaurant and a bar in the lobby. The lobby overlooks a large outdoor ice rink.  Craig and I skated here 20 years ago.  Today in 2019, it was nearly 80$ for the four of us to skate--that's expensive.  The customer service was pretty paltry and the rink music was terrible, but heck, when do you to skate when it's actually snowing and 25 degrees?  It was fun and good exercise, so we skated the better part of two hours.
Sun Valley Village is home to cute shops and restaurants.  Ski wear, mountain resort wear, furniture, candy, jewelry--you can find it all down there.  Lots of parking available--handy when we chose to eat dinner here a few nights later.  We wandered into the little cafe Konditorei, which was packed at the lunch hour, to oooo and aaaah over the delicious looking pastries.
Slowly we made our way back to the condo and headed for that hot tub while making use of that leftover vodka!

 Outside iconic Sun Valley Lodge

Ice Skating at the Lodge

The mouth watering pastries at Konditorei!

COLD!!

OK.  For everything that was absolutely wonderful about this place, these were the lowest temperatures I ever endured in my entire life.  The lowest temperature we saw while there was minus 2 (Fahrenheit everyone) and that was at 845 in the morning putting boots on at the car in the morning in the parking lot of the ski area.  By 10 in the morning on the ski slopes it was 3 degrees. 3.  I was wearing 8 layers--a sports bra, a camisole, thermal underwear, a T shirt, a cotton turtleneck, a fleece half zip top and a fully lined ski jacket, double gloved and double socked up to the knee.  It was absolutely necessary to cover every portion of your face with scarf and goggles, or die, and FORGET taking a glove off to text or some other ridiculousness.  One thing I do have to say is that there was no wind and it did not seem to be horribly colder at the top of the mountain, what a relief.  Really, and I never thought I would do this-we went in once or twice just to literally thaw out--but of course I said it was to go to the bathroom.
In contrast to the outdoors, a lot of the indoor areas are overheated-making me and my eight layers almost sick.
The nightly run to and from the hot tub in about 16 degrees was interesting, but necessary, and walking to dinner in jeans and a sweater and no helmet or ski socks when it was approaching 10 degrees was also interesting.
Summary, it was CRAZY cold.  Watch the weather forecast and do not come here unprepared!  California it ain't!

Okay, well let's look at some pictures!!

 We had to poke Nicky to make sure he was breathing.

That sofa sure is nice!

Uh, yeah...that's cold

Snowy downtown Ketchum in the morning..

Thank you for reading this post!  Next trip is a college tour in April!