Stand-Alone Trip Report: Virginia & Alex’s London Trip (August 2024)

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VIRGINIA: Welcome to Where I Long To Be, a Magical Trip Report Podcast.

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VIRGINIA: My name is Virginia, and I am your host.

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VIRGINIA: We have made it to the end of season three, so this will be the only episode today, the season finale.

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VIRGINIA: Thank you all for your support.

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VIRGINIA: I have hit so many milestones during season three, and I cannot wait to see what season four is going to hold.

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VIRGINIA: As a reminder, I am going to be taking a break for the rest of January, so season four will start on Monday, February 3rd.

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VIRGINIA: Today's episode has been a long time coming.

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VIRGINIA: We meant to record and publish this earlier in the fall, but with our schedules and the fact that I interviewed a lot of people who had seasonally themed trips planned, I put it off.

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VIRGINIA: So now you will finally get to hear the details of our family trip to London, August 24th through September 1st.

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VIRGINIA: This trip was a combination gift for part of Alex's Christmas last year, and it was also in celebration of his eighth grade graduation.

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VIRGINIA: Alex has been asking to go to London for so long, because he became obsessed with the Harry Potter series at a very young age.

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VIRGINIA: In fact, his fifth birthday was Harry Potter themed, and his love of the series is really still going just as strong today.

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VIRGINIA: So that's about a decade of wanting to visit London.

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VIRGINIA: Along with Alex, this was also my first trip to London, while my husband Charles had been a number of times and even lived there for a few months after college.

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VIRGINIA: If you were wondering how I am tying this into my magical trips theme, for the podcast, it's based on the fact that we devoted a whole day to touring the Warner Brothers Studios where Harry Potter was filmed, along with all of the other London activities we did.

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VIRGINIA: I hope you enjoy this episode.

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VIRGINIA: And now let's get to my conversation with Alex.

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VIRGINIA: Welcome back to the show, Alex.

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ALEX: Thank you for having me.

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VIRGINIA: Listeners, we are recording on one microphone just because it's easier to sit next to each other.

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VIRGINIA: So hopefully that will work out in terms of the sound.

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VIRGINIA: But we are here today to discuss our trip that we took to London.

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VIRGINIA: And that trip was Saturday, August 24th through Sunday, September 1st.

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VIRGINIA: First of all, how did we decide on these dates?

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VIRGINIA: Well, Alex is a very busy kid.

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ALEX: Very.

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VIRGINIA: And immediately upon finishing the eighth grade, the very next day he left for sleepaway camp.

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ALEX: Oh yeah.

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VIRGINIA: So we had basically no time over the summer.

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VIRGINIA: And then August, August, August is always busy for my work.

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VIRGINIA: So I had to look at the month of August and say, which is going to be the least disruptive.

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VIRGINIA: And that was the last week in August.

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VIRGINIA: So that's really how we came to these dates as the dates we were going to go.

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VIRGINIA: So in terms of planning for this trip, the first thing we had to consider was where were we going to stay?

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VIRGINIA: And I did a lot of research on this and was looking at Airbnbs and vacation home rentals and all of that kind of stuff.

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VIRGINIA: And ultimately, we decided on an American Chain Hotel, which was not my intention at all.

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VIRGINIA: But we got a very good deal on the DoubleTree by Hilton in London's Chelsea neighborhood.

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VIRGINIA: It is the location that's on Imperial Wharf Road.

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VIRGINIA: And we decided on that because we got a great deal and it included breakfast every single morning.

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ALEX: Oh yes, that breakfast was super good.

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VIRGINIA: Yeah.

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ALEX: They had these amazing hash browns that I couldn't get enough of.

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ALEX: And though that was mostly what we would have for breakfast each day, it was really good.

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VIRGINIA: And that's why we decided on it, because we thought everything's going to be very expensive when we're there anyway.

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VIRGINIA: But if we can have the breakfast built into our hotel stay, then it would just be not only convenient because it's right downstairs in the hotel lobby, but it would save us some money.

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VIRGINIA: And it turned out to be a really good hotel breakfast, which I interviewed some people who are from the UK recently.

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VIRGINIA: I believe it was Beth and Leoni and their impression of what breakfast was going to be like.

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VIRGINIA: They were expecting something more hearty and like an actual full breakfast.

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VIRGINIA: And they were surprised when they did not get that in Orlando.

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VIRGINIA: But I can understand why they expected to get that, because we totally had a complete breakfast.

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VIRGINIA: It was, what was it?

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VIRGINIA: It was the hash browns that you love so much.

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ALEX: Hash browns, beans and toast, which is classic up there, apparently.

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ALEX: Then there was sausage and bacon, all this really good stuff.

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ALEX: They had these really good waffles too, actually, like sugar waffles or something.

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VIRGINIA: Yeah.

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VIRGINIA: And grilled tomatoes.

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VIRGINIA: I really liked the tomatoes.

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ALEX: I didn't have the tomatoes.

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VIRGINIA: I know you're not a tomato person, but I am.

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VIRGINIA: So it was really good.

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VIRGINIA: So it turned out to be a good choice, even though I was hoping to get something a little bit more British in terms of location.

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VIRGINIA: Speaking of location, the location was pretty good.

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VIRGINIA: The Chelsea neighborhood was fairly easy to get to from all of the things we wanted to see.

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VIRGINIA: It was like a 20-30 minute train ride to get into the major points of interest, which for us, because we're from New York City, it did not bother us at all because that's not a very long train ride for us.

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VIRGINIA: So it was pretty convenient.

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VIRGINIA: Now, the rooms themselves, I will say, were very small, were they not?

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ALEX: Yeah, they were pretty small.

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VIRGINIA: They were tiny.

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ALEX: They were tiny.

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VIRGINIA: We also, in looking at hotels, discovered that the beds that come in hotel rooms there, it's a little strange, in my opinion, just because it's not what I'm used to.

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VIRGINIA: A lot of the rooms had two twin beds in them.

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VIRGINIA: And so that was a challenge in itself, was to find a hotel that had beds that would accommodate us as a family of three.

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VIRGINIA: So one of the benefits of this DoubleTree was that it had one full size bed and one twin bed.

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VIRGINIA: So for a family of three, that was fine.

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VIRGINIA: There was hardly any drawer space, so we really did not have much room to spread out or anything, like we kind of had our suitcases like open in the corner and we're using those as drawers because there were no drawers or hardly any drawers.

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VIRGINIA: But it was fine, we were not in the room that much anyway.

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VIRGINIA: So I thought that was fine.

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ALEX: Yeah, pretty chill.

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VIRGINIA: It was a chain, so we kind of knew what we were getting.

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VIRGINIA: So all in all, happy with the hotel.

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VIRGINIA: One odd thing I did remember is that when we got there, there was literally one towel in the bathroom and there were three of us.

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VIRGINIA: So we had to request extra towels we brought to the room.

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VIRGINIA: So I don't know what they thought we were going to do with one towel when there were three of us and they knew that there were three of us in the room.

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VIRGINIA: So that was a little funny.

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VIRGINIA: But anyway, let's talk about our planning for the trip.

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VIRGINIA: Before we started making any plans, I said we need some way to kind of narrow this down as to what we're going to be doing so that we don't get overwhelmed.

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VIRGINIA: So I said let's all three of us each pick what our priority is, and then we'll definitely go see a Western show.

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VIRGINIA: But anything we get done above and beyond that is just icing on the cake.

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VIRGINIA: So my priority was going to tea, and your priority was?

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ALEX: The Harry Potter Studio Tour.

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VIRGINIA: Yes, of course.

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ALEX: We'll get to that.

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VIRGINIA: Then dad's priority was?

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ALEX: Something music related.

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VIRGINIA: Anything music related because he is quite literally the biggest music fan we will probably ever know in our lives.

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ALEX: Oh yeah.

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ALEX: He was hoping to go for a concert or something.

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VIRGINIA: Yeah.

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VIRGINIA: So those were our priorities.

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VIRGINIA: Then like I said, we decided we'd go see a West End show, but we weren't going to get tickets for that until the last minute because we were going to see what was available and what was a good deal and that sort of thing.

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VIRGINIA: So I guess let's get into our day-to-day things.

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ALEX: Let's do it.

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VIRGINIA: Starting with Saturday, August 24th.

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VIRGINIA: Do you want to walk through our travel day?

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ALEX: Yes.

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ALEX: If you have tuned in before, you know my love of airports is endless.

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ALEX: So this is an exciting topic for me.

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ALEX: This was Saturday the 24th, and our flight was scheduled for 8:20 AM out of JFK on Virgin Airlines, and it was first time flying Virgin for us.

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ALEX: And yeah, I actually really liked the flight.

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ALEX: It was quite elegant.

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VIRGINIA: Yeah, it was different.

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ALEX: Yeah, like we hopped on the flight and we just like, like the moment I heard a British accent over the, what's it called?

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VIRGINIA: The speaker.

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ALEX: The speaker.

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ALEX: Wow, I just forgot speaker.

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ALEX: The moment we both heard the British accent, we were like, oh my God, it's happening.

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VIRGINIA: Here we come.

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ALEX: Well, I guess this was all of us, but we all got four hours of sleep.

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VIRGINIA: Yes, we were up the night before trying to get finished packing, and as usual, it took a lot longer than we thought it would.

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VIRGINIA: So four hours of sleep is what we got.

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ALEX: Got up at 4.15.

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ALEX: We aimed to leave for the airport at five.

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ALEX: We left by 5.20, got to the airport and dad parked the car.

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ALEX: Like always, he's the parker of the family.

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ALEX: So I dropped our luggage while we waited for him and he got...

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VIRGINIA: Well, you and I dropped it together.

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ALEX: Well, yeah.

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VIRGINIA: I didn't let you just do the whole thing by yourself.

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ALEX: Well, dad got back at the airport at around 6.30.

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ALEX: And because we're TSA PreCheck, me and my mother over here got in line to get a bite to eat and coffee while dad went through the regular line.

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VIRGINIA: Yes, because regular listeners know that Charles does not have PreCheck.

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VIRGINIA: And I do not hesitate to leave him behind while I go through with my PreCheck.

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ALEX: Oh, that's mean.

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VIRGINIA: Hey, it's not mean.

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VIRGINIA: I know I've interviewed plenty of people who do the exact same thing.

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VIRGINIA: And on the plus side, because we had already gone through, you and I were able to get in line for food.

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ALEX: That is true.

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ALEX: So, okay.

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ALEX: We boarded around 7.45 and our flight left on time ish.

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ALEX: And it was just under six hours, which is kind of a surprise, because I kind of expect the flight to be longer.

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ALEX: Our breakfast service on the plane was a breakfast sandwich, a small yogurt, a small granola bar.

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ALEX: And lunch was choice of chicken and rice or vegetarian pasta.

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ALEX: It came with a roll in butter, cheese and crackers, small salad and chocolate pudding, which was actually really good.

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VIRGINIA: Yeah, I think the food on the plane was fairly good.

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ALEX: I like the chicken and rice, yeah.

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VIRGINIA: Yeah.

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ALEX: I thought it was pretty good.

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ALEX: Yeah.

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ALEX: Well, this is movies my mom watched.

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ALEX: She watched Wicked Little Leathers and Leathers and Mother's Instinct.

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ALEX: She slept for an hour.

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ALEX: I did not sleep at all, of course, because just that cool.

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VIRGINIA: Were you watching anything?

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VIRGINIA: I can't remember.

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ALEX: I don't even know.

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ALEX: It's all blurred to me.

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ALEX: I just chilled.

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ALEX: You watched the last episode of Shakespeare biography series about Shakespeare.

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VIRGINIA: That was when we were almost ready to land, and I found a Shakespeare biography series.

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VIRGINIA: I knew I did not have time to watch the whole thing, but I was getting pumped for landing in London, so I watched the last episode, and it was just talking about Shakespeare's life and getting me excited.

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ALEX: Yeah.

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ALEX: We landed around 8 p.m.

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ALEX: London time.

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ALEX: It was dark out, and we crossed the border easily, walked through customs with nothing to declare, so easy.

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ALEX: We took a cab to the hotel.

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VIRGINIA: Yeah, and I made a note that the cab cost 77 pounds plus tip, and it was about a 25-minute drive.

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VIRGINIA: So I didn't think that was too bad, considering what we're used to paying in New York City.

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ALEX: We checked in and got bags to the room.

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ALEX: We had a...

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ALEX: I actually remember this.

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ALEX: This was pretty good.

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ALEX: We had dinner at Italian slash Lebanese place.

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VIRGINIA: Which to be fair, that's a very odd combination.

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VIRGINIA: It was literally half Italian, half Lebanese.

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ALEX: Yeah, not normal.

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VIRGINIA: It was good.

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ALEX: A lot of people there were smoking.

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ALEX: Yeah.

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VIRGINIA: Well, it was also a hookah place.

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ALEX: Yeah.

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VIRGINIA: So people were smoking hookah.

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VIRGINIA: It wasn't like they were just smoking cigarettes, but that's still kind of strange.

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ALEX: I was just like staring at people just casually doing that.

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ALEX: And I was like, I'm not with my family.

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ALEX: Then we went back to our room for bed.

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ALEX: Nothing that eventful on our arrival.

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VIRGINIA: All right.

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VIRGINIA: So Sunday, August 25th, our first full day, we got up around 9 a.m.

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VIRGINIA: Had breakfast at the hotel, which like we said, was pretty good.

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VIRGINIA: It was a little odd that like to get coffee, you had to ask them for it because it was included.

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VIRGINIA: It was just like it was kind of hidden away and you had to ask for it.

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VIRGINIA: It was a little strange.

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VIRGINIA: But overall, I would give the breakfast more like eight and a half out of ten stars.

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ALEX: Yeah, I'd say around eight and a half as well.

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VIRGINIA: So from there after we finished our breakfast, we walked to the Gloucester Street Station, which was actually about an hour long walk from our hotel.

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VIRGINIA: But we really kind of wanted a little bit of a walk and to get to know the area.

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VIRGINIA: So we were fine with that.

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VIRGINIA: So we took that walk and our goal was to get on one of the big bus tours.

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VIRGINIA: So like the double decker bus tours that would kind of show us all around London and that we could get the lay of the entire city.

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VIRGINIA: On the way, we stopped at a Starbucks and I only made a note of this because it was my first pumpkin drink of the season.

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VIRGINIA: So that was exciting.

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VIRGINIA: After we got our Starbucks, we made it over to the Gloucester Road station and we got on to the hop on hop off bus and we saw...

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ALEX: We saw a giant toy store, the famous one called Hamley's Toy Store.

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VIRGINIA: Yes, it was huge.

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ALEX: And oh my God, when I tell you, my nostalgic child mind, whatever, got excited.

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ALEX: I was like, mom, dad.

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ALEX: I didn't even tell you anything.

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ALEX: You just looked at me and I looked back at you.

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ALEX: We were like, okay.

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VIRGINIA: I guess we have to stop there.

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ALEX: Yeah, I guess we got to stop now.

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VIRGINIA: Well, you know what?

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VIRGINIA: You grew up here going to FAO Schwartz.

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VIRGINIA: Of course, FAO Schwartz here in the city is very different now.

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VIRGINIA: It was like the new one that we have over there by Rockefeller Center is really tiny.

00:14:05.880 --> 00:14:11.680
VIRGINIA: But when you were very little, we went to the original FAO Schwartz because that's what we still had here and it was huge.

00:14:11.680 --> 00:14:14.740
VIRGINIA: So that's kind of what you were used to is that giant.

00:14:14.740 --> 00:14:17.160
ALEX: Yeah, I think Hamley's is better though.

00:14:17.620 --> 00:14:24.300
ALEX: It had a basement, a basement and we kind of went to the store for a sec.

00:14:24.300 --> 00:14:30.880
ALEX: I looked at Legos because I was looking for a cool Lego set to make because it's Legos.

00:14:30.880 --> 00:14:34.040
VIRGINIA: We were only in there about 10 minutes before what happened.

00:14:34.140 --> 00:14:38.320
ALEX: I got a migraine, yeah, just like my father before me.

00:14:38.320 --> 00:14:43.080
ALEX: He also got a migraine in London when he lived in there for about two months.

00:14:43.080 --> 00:14:45.520
ALEX: And I guess I was, I guess it runs in the family.

00:14:45.520 --> 00:14:46.840
ALEX: So I had a migraine.

00:14:46.840 --> 00:14:47.520
ALEX: I just like saw it.

00:14:47.520 --> 00:14:48.660
ALEX: I was like, nope, we're out of here.

00:14:48.660 --> 00:14:54.920
ALEX: And me and my father took the cab back to the hotel.

00:14:54.920 --> 00:14:55.240
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:14:55.240 --> 00:15:02.300
VIRGINIA: When Alex is going to get a migraine, he sees the aura and then it's like immediately he has to stop what he's doing and go lie down.

00:15:02.900 --> 00:15:08.520
VIRGINIA: So it took about two minutes to decide, okay, he needs to go back to the hotel.

00:15:08.520 --> 00:15:11.360
VIRGINIA: Charles has been to London a lot of times before.

00:15:11.360 --> 00:15:14.400
VIRGINIA: And so he volunteered to take him back to the hotel.

00:15:14.400 --> 00:15:19.480
VIRGINIA: And then I just was going to stay out and kind of explore on my own since I had never been before.

00:15:19.480 --> 00:15:30.960
VIRGINIA: So they went back to the hotel and I walked over to the Liberty department store, which I was super excited to see because I had been reading about it and it was on my list of things to do.

00:15:31.800 --> 00:15:37.860
VIRGINIA: I ended up stopping and getting a little bit of lunch at this little Asian fast food place that was called Itzu.

00:15:37.860 --> 00:15:38.920
VIRGINIA: And it was actually really good.

00:15:38.920 --> 00:15:44.580
VIRGINIA: It was like a very healthy sort of fast food place to dip in and get something to eat.

00:15:44.580 --> 00:15:50.840
VIRGINIA: After that, I went to another place that was on my goal list, which was Fortnum and Mason.

00:15:50.840 --> 00:15:52.780
VIRGINIA: And that was lovely.

00:15:52.780 --> 00:15:54.380
VIRGINIA: I was so excited to be there.

00:15:54.380 --> 00:15:57.580
VIRGINIA: I got a lot of tea and brought that home with me.

00:15:57.580 --> 00:16:00.540
VIRGINIA: So that was one more thing on my to do list that I checked off.

00:16:01.100 --> 00:16:02.800
VIRGINIA: From there, I walked around.

00:16:02.800 --> 00:16:17.500
VIRGINIA: I got a snack and ended up walking over to Lester Square to hop on the Underground because by that point, Charles and Alex were ready and they were up and about and were going to meet me at the Camden Town Station.

00:16:17.500 --> 00:16:23.100
VIRGINIA: And our plan was to go to a pub for dinner because that was something on our list that we all were interested in doing.

00:16:23.100 --> 00:16:32.740
VIRGINIA: So unfortunately, the pubs that were in this particular neighborhood would not let Alex in due to his age, which was very strange because it was not late at night or anything.

00:16:32.740 --> 00:16:34.600
VIRGINIA: It was still fully bright out.

00:16:34.600 --> 00:16:37.320
VIRGINIA: It was, I want to say, it was like dinner time.

00:16:37.320 --> 00:16:38.560
VIRGINIA: It was like maybe 6 p.m.

00:16:38.560 --> 00:16:40.440
VIRGINIA: or something, but they said no.

00:16:40.440 --> 00:16:44.740
VIRGINIA: So we walked around and we ended up finding a Mexican restaurant that was actually really good.

00:16:44.740 --> 00:16:46.980
ALEX: Yeah, I actually thought it was really good.

00:16:46.980 --> 00:16:48.400
VIRGINIA: Yeah, it was tasty.

00:16:48.400 --> 00:16:50.420
VIRGINIA: I wish I remembered what the name of it was.

00:16:50.420 --> 00:16:51.080
ALEX: Yeah, me too.

00:16:51.080 --> 00:16:52.200
ALEX: It was super good.

00:16:52.200 --> 00:16:58.560
ALEX: We had these tacos and two of the tacos were like, okay, pretty good, pretty good.

00:16:58.560 --> 00:16:59.560
ALEX: It could be better.

00:16:59.560 --> 00:17:05.960
ALEX: But then one of the tacos was like shrimp or something, some kind of like fish.

00:17:05.960 --> 00:17:06.500
ALEX: I don't know.

00:17:06.500 --> 00:17:07.220
VIRGINIA: Oh, it was fish.

00:17:07.260 --> 00:17:08.040
ALEX: Yeah, it was fish.

00:17:08.040 --> 00:17:08.820
VIRGINIA: It was a fish taco.

00:17:08.820 --> 00:17:10.280
ALEX: It was so good though.

00:17:10.280 --> 00:17:10.600
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:17:10.600 --> 00:17:11.600
ALEX: I just...

00:17:11.600 --> 00:17:14.160
VIRGINIA: If I can find the name of the restaurant, I will put it in the show notes.

00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:22.720
VIRGINIA: And then after that, we walked over and we found a little sort of franchise type dessert place called Treats with a Z.

00:17:22.760 --> 00:17:24.740
VIRGINIA: So Treats.

00:17:24.740 --> 00:17:27.060
ALEX: So quirky and different.

00:17:27.060 --> 00:17:27.600
VIRGINIA: But it was good.

00:17:27.600 --> 00:17:30.500
VIRGINIA: It was like kind of over the top style desserts.

00:17:30.500 --> 00:17:30.720
VIRGINIA: And so...

00:17:30.720 --> 00:17:32.040
ALEX: It was very good though.

00:17:32.040 --> 00:17:33.320
VIRGINIA: Yeah, we had those.

00:17:33.560 --> 00:17:34.180
VIRGINIA: It was really good.

00:17:34.180 --> 00:17:37.080
VIRGINIA: And then we took the Overground Train back to our hotel.

00:17:37.080 --> 00:17:40.360
VIRGINIA: And that was the train that was closest to our hotel was the Overground.

00:17:40.360 --> 00:17:46.020
VIRGINIA: And we can talk more about the trains later, but let's get back to the itinerary.

00:17:46.020 --> 00:17:49.020
VIRGINIA: So Monday, August 26th.

00:17:49.020 --> 00:17:49.940
VIRGINIA: You want to take that?

00:17:49.940 --> 00:17:50.340
ALEX: Yeah, sure.

00:17:50.640 --> 00:17:53.420
ALEX: So on Monday, we got up and had breakfast.

00:17:53.420 --> 00:17:58.700
ALEX: We took a train to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard, which was actually pretty cool.

00:17:58.700 --> 00:18:04.520
ALEX: Like, I didn't think I'd be that interested in it, but it was pretty flashy and cool.

00:18:04.720 --> 00:18:06.000
VIRGINIA: There were a lot of people there.

00:18:06.620 --> 00:18:07.420
ALEX: Oh, God.

00:18:07.420 --> 00:18:07.920
VIRGINIA: Terrible.

00:18:07.920 --> 00:18:17.300
VIRGINIA: I thought it was really cool, but the one thing I was worried about the entire time was that somebody was going to try to pickpocket us, because apparently that's a big thing there.

00:18:17.460 --> 00:18:21.080
VIRGINIA: So I was just very conscious of my bag and everything.

00:18:21.080 --> 00:18:22.100
ALEX: It wasn't even that for me.

00:18:22.100 --> 00:18:26.260
ALEX: It's just so many people were fighting to get a look at the guards.

00:18:26.260 --> 00:18:30.220
VIRGINIA: Yeah, and unfortunately, I'm short, so I couldn't see a whole lot.

00:18:30.220 --> 00:18:31.780
ALEX: We know.

00:18:31.780 --> 00:18:34.440
VIRGINIA: But I held my phone up and took some pictures.

00:18:34.440 --> 00:18:39.100
ALEX: Then we walked to tea, to our little tea reservation we had.

00:18:39.100 --> 00:18:40.400
ALEX: We had some tea.

00:18:40.400 --> 00:18:43.740
VIRGINIA: And it was, I'll tell how we got this reservation.

00:18:43.860 --> 00:18:47.640
VIRGINIA: So we had tea at the Clermont, which is a hotel.

00:18:47.640 --> 00:18:50.420
VIRGINIA: And it's like two blocks from Buckingham Palace.

00:18:50.420 --> 00:18:58.180
VIRGINIA: So I sort of picked it and combined it with our Buckingham Palace activities because of its proximity to the palace.

00:18:58.180 --> 00:19:04.740
VIRGINIA: It had really good reviews and it was very affordable compared to a lot of the teas that I had been looking at.

00:19:04.740 --> 00:19:13.860
VIRGINIA: So like Fortnum and Mason and those sorts of places were like in the 85 to $90, I think a person.

00:19:13.860 --> 00:19:19.960
VIRGINIA: And this one I believe was like $60 a person or something like that.

00:19:19.960 --> 00:19:25.280
VIRGINIA: Hi, I'm just breaking in to say that the tea was actually even more affordable than that.

00:19:25.280 --> 00:19:29.720
VIRGINIA: I looked it up and it was 40 pounds a person, which is about 50 US dollars.

00:19:29.720 --> 00:19:32.700
VIRGINIA: Okay, carry on.

00:19:32.700 --> 00:19:33.680
VIRGINIA: It was very good.

00:19:33.680 --> 00:19:35.660
VIRGINIA: I thought it was beautiful.

00:19:35.660 --> 00:19:36.260
ALEX: Yes.

00:19:36.260 --> 00:19:37.260
VIRGINIA: It was really pretty.

00:19:37.260 --> 00:19:38.100
ALEX: Really good, yeah.

00:19:38.240 --> 00:19:43.140
VIRGINIA: And the food was good and the tea was good and it was just amazing.

00:19:43.460 --> 00:19:48.280
VIRGINIA: And from that, this was Alex's very first time to ever go to tea like that.

00:19:48.280 --> 00:19:50.820
VIRGINIA: I learned that he likes tea too.

00:19:50.820 --> 00:19:51.940
ALEX: I love tea.

00:19:51.940 --> 00:19:52.400
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:19:52.400 --> 00:19:54.380
ALEX: Wait, I thought you knew that before we had the tea.

00:19:54.380 --> 00:20:00.820
VIRGINIA: No, I knew that you liked drinking tea, but I didn't know that you would enjoy having the tea and the scones and the little sandwiches.

00:20:00.820 --> 00:20:02.020
ALEX: Oh yeah, I love that.

00:20:02.020 --> 00:20:02.720
ALEX: It's great.

00:20:02.720 --> 00:20:03.440
VIRGINIA: It was amazing.

00:20:03.440 --> 00:20:05.180
ALEX: It was very relaxing for me.

00:20:05.180 --> 00:20:05.340
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:20:07.500 --> 00:20:13.940
ALEX: Soon after that, I think, we went on a tour in Buckingham Palace, which was really cool, actually.

00:20:13.940 --> 00:20:17.760
ALEX: I was blown away by all this cool stuff in there.

00:20:17.840 --> 00:20:23.920
ALEX: I was like, oh, is that like, wow, huge, huge palace.

00:20:23.920 --> 00:20:24.860
ALEX: It was great.

00:20:24.860 --> 00:20:25.860
ALEX: I thought it was really cool.

00:20:25.860 --> 00:20:28.420
ALEX: They had the huge outdoor area.

00:20:28.420 --> 00:20:30.580
ALEX: We took these, what's it called?

00:20:30.620 --> 00:20:36.380
ALEX: These like voice things where we put like headphones in and it would tell us about different things in the palace.

00:20:36.380 --> 00:20:38.880
VIRGINIA: Like a headphone set like you get on many tours.

00:20:38.960 --> 00:20:40.700
ALEX: Yeah, it was pretty cool though.

00:20:40.700 --> 00:20:49.720
ALEX: It explained different like pictures and stuff, paintings, all this elegant things that I couldn't afford in my life.

00:20:49.720 --> 00:20:57.740
VIRGINIA: So the tour of Buckingham Palace and the Harry Potter Studio are the two things that I bought tickets for in advance of us going on this trip.

00:20:57.920 --> 00:21:03.640
VIRGINIA: So when I bought the tickets for Buckingham Palace, I had to choose like an entry time.

00:21:03.640 --> 00:21:08.180
VIRGINIA: And I opted for the package that came with the headphones for all three of us.

00:21:08.180 --> 00:21:14.500
VIRGINIA: And then we also got souvenir Buckingham Palace, like booklets or something, which is on your shelf in your room.

00:21:14.500 --> 00:21:15.240
ALEX: Yeah.

00:21:15.240 --> 00:21:17.520
ALEX: Anyways, Buckingham Palace was really cool.

00:21:17.520 --> 00:21:19.240
ALEX: I quite enjoyed that tour.

00:21:19.240 --> 00:21:23.040
ALEX: I think that was probably my second favorite on the trip.

00:21:23.040 --> 00:21:24.580
ALEX: We'll get to the Harry Potter one later.

00:21:26.160 --> 00:21:30.200
ALEX: Then I was a little down that I couldn't go back to the toy store.

00:21:30.200 --> 00:21:31.100
VIRGINIA: Hamley's.

00:21:31.100 --> 00:21:33.360
VIRGINIA: Yeah, because we weren't really close to it.

00:21:33.360 --> 00:21:36.360
VIRGINIA: And I knew that on another day we would be close to it.

00:21:36.360 --> 00:21:39.680
VIRGINIA: And Alex kept asking to go back because he had only been in it for 10 minutes.

00:21:39.680 --> 00:21:43.300
ALEX: Plus, plus I had a dream about going back to it.

00:21:43.300 --> 00:21:44.980
ALEX: And it was glorious.

00:21:44.980 --> 00:21:45.960
ALEX: It was a great dream.

00:21:45.960 --> 00:21:47.420
ALEX: And I was like, dang, I got to go back.

00:21:47.420 --> 00:21:47.920
VIRGINIA: I know.

00:21:47.920 --> 00:21:50.760
VIRGINIA: And I kept saying, don't worry, we will go back.

00:21:50.760 --> 00:21:51.540
VIRGINIA: I promise you.

00:21:51.540 --> 00:21:52.840
VIRGINIA: But he was just itching to go back.

00:21:52.940 --> 00:21:54.700
VIRGINIA: So he was a little a little down.

00:21:54.700 --> 00:21:57.780
VIRGINIA: But the plan after Buckingham Palace was to go to Harrods.

00:21:57.780 --> 00:21:58.280
ALEX: Yeah.

00:21:58.280 --> 00:22:04.920
ALEX: And so we went to Harrods, different version of a toy store, which I, it's an adult toy store.

00:22:05.840 --> 00:22:06.880
VIRGINIA: Oh, that made it sound bad.

00:22:06.880 --> 00:22:09.440
VIRGINIA: No, it was not an adult toy store.

00:22:09.440 --> 00:22:11.460
ALEX: No, let's just like continue.

00:22:11.460 --> 00:22:13.780
VIRGINIA: It was a very luxurious department store.

00:22:13.780 --> 00:22:14.500
ALEX: Yes, luxurious.

00:22:14.500 --> 00:22:16.560
VIRGINIA: I'm sure that many people know what Harrods is.

00:22:17.160 --> 00:22:23.900
VIRGINIA: I was a little shocked at exactly how expensive things were in there because I live in New York City.

00:22:23.900 --> 00:22:27.360
VIRGINIA: I frequently go to places like that that are expensive.

00:22:27.360 --> 00:22:31.300
VIRGINIA: I just had no clue how Harrods would be in comparison to that.

00:22:31.380 --> 00:22:32.000
VIRGINIA: I think it was-

00:22:32.000 --> 00:22:34.960
ALEX: Yeah, very small for a toy store.

00:22:34.960 --> 00:22:37.540
VIRGINIA: Well, it wasn't a toy store, it was a department store.

00:22:37.540 --> 00:22:41.080
ALEX: Department store, but there is a toy store area and it was pretty small.

00:22:41.080 --> 00:22:41.960
VIRGINIA: It was hot in there.

00:22:41.960 --> 00:22:46.620
ALEX: Although there was a tech area which me and dad went to for a while.

00:22:46.640 --> 00:22:48.040
ALEX: It was pretty cool.

00:22:48.380 --> 00:22:50.700
ALEX: We just looked at all this cool stuff and yeah.

00:22:50.700 --> 00:22:56.780
VIRGINIA: The only thing I bought was a little nutcracker ornament from the Christmas section.

00:22:56.780 --> 00:23:05.120
VIRGINIA: Not to hang on my tree, but to just display out a tiny little nutcracker, and it was not very big and it was, I want to say, 30 or $40.

00:23:05.120 --> 00:23:06.800
VIRGINIA: That was my little souvenir from Harrods.

00:23:07.700 --> 00:23:13.840
VIRGINIA: I was thinking when I went there, I was like, well, maybe I'll buy myself a luxury handbag.

00:23:13.840 --> 00:23:16.460
VIRGINIA: Then I got there and I was like, no.

00:23:17.200 --> 00:23:17.920
ALEX: That's insane.

00:23:17.920 --> 00:23:18.180
VIRGINIA: No.

00:23:18.180 --> 00:23:19.420
VIRGINIA: I'm not doing that here.

00:23:19.420 --> 00:23:20.160
ALEX: Okay.

00:23:20.160 --> 00:23:27.080
ALEX: But after that, we went to a pub that actually allowed children in there, which was actually, it was very delicious.

00:23:27.080 --> 00:23:29.820
ALEX: We finally had fish and chips in London.

00:23:29.820 --> 00:23:31.120
ALEX: It was great.

00:23:31.120 --> 00:23:33.720
ALEX: It was as magical as I imagined it.

00:23:35.220 --> 00:23:37.320
VIRGINIA: I'm going to say something maybe a little controversial.

00:23:37.360 --> 00:23:39.800
ALEX: What?

00:23:39.800 --> 00:23:46.340
VIRGINIA: I prefer the fish and chips in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal to the ones we had in actual London.

00:23:46.340 --> 00:23:47.660
ALEX: That's insane.

00:23:47.660 --> 00:23:47.980
VIRGINIA: Sorry.

00:23:47.980 --> 00:23:49.460
ALEX: The ones in London were so good.

00:23:49.460 --> 00:23:51.080
VIRGINIA: It's how I feel.

00:23:51.080 --> 00:23:51.840
ALEX: Okay.

00:23:51.840 --> 00:23:54.900
ALEX: I'm going to move on.

00:23:54.900 --> 00:23:57.560
ALEX: Then after the pub, we went back to the hotel.

00:23:57.560 --> 00:24:02.540
ALEX: My dad and my mom had a drink at the bar and left me alone.

00:24:02.540 --> 00:24:05.220
VIRGINIA: No, you wanted to play on your phone.

00:24:05.220 --> 00:24:06.020
ALEX: No, I was alone.

00:24:06.320 --> 00:24:07.700
ALEX: Well, I did want to play on my phone.

00:24:07.700 --> 00:24:08.460
ALEX: That is true.

00:24:08.460 --> 00:24:09.960
ALEX: Yeah.

00:24:09.960 --> 00:24:10.340
ALEX: Yeah.

00:24:10.340 --> 00:24:22.080
ALEX: Then they went to a little market right across the street from us, and they grabbed some cool, unique London treats to enjoy and share.

00:24:23.400 --> 00:24:25.740
ALEX: One of them I was excited about.

00:24:25.740 --> 00:24:26.840
ALEX: I tried it.

00:24:26.840 --> 00:24:28.740
ALEX: Half of it was supposed to taste like milk.

00:24:28.740 --> 00:24:31.920
ALEX: The other half was supposed to taste like strawberry.

00:24:31.920 --> 00:24:33.220
ALEX: Did not like the milk side.

00:24:33.860 --> 00:24:35.740
ALEX: We'll just say that.

00:24:35.740 --> 00:24:39.180
ALEX: We didn't really have a feel for it.

00:24:39.180 --> 00:24:39.600
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:24:39.980 --> 00:24:45.920
VIRGINIA: It was fun going to a little store like that and seeing all the different kinds of candy and stuff that we don't have here.

00:24:45.920 --> 00:24:49.480
VIRGINIA: So that was a good time.

00:24:49.480 --> 00:24:59.000
VIRGINIA: Since you mentioned your phone, I will just say that I thought that getting our phone set up for being able to be used over there was super easy.

00:24:59.000 --> 00:25:07.480
VIRGINIA: We have AT&T and I just called in advance, and said we wanted to get the international thing added on.

00:25:07.480 --> 00:25:08.620
VIRGINIA: I don't think you even have to call.

00:25:08.620 --> 00:25:13.720
VIRGINIA: I think if you have AT&T and you just start using your phone in a different country, it automatically kicks in.

00:25:13.720 --> 00:25:19.560
VIRGINIA: It was something like, I want to say like $10 per phone per day.

00:25:19.560 --> 00:25:27.080
VIRGINIA: So that to me was well worth it because then all three of us could use our phones like normal, we could text, we could look at the Internet.

00:25:27.080 --> 00:25:28.580
VIRGINIA: Yeah, I thought that was a pretty good deal.

00:25:28.580 --> 00:25:36.820
VIRGINIA: I know that some people do like an e-SIM card or something, which I've only heard of since coming back, which sounds like it would be even more affordable.

00:25:36.820 --> 00:25:43.740
VIRGINIA: But not knowing that in advance, $10 a person per day was not that bad to me.

00:25:43.740 --> 00:25:44.420
VIRGINIA: All right.

00:25:44.420 --> 00:25:50.260
VIRGINIA: Tuesday, August the 27th, we got up early this day and ended up leaving the hotel by 8am.

00:25:50.260 --> 00:25:57.960
VIRGINIA: So we had our breakfast at the hotel, left by 8 because we had a Tower of London appointment at 9am.

00:26:00.040 --> 00:26:00.360
VIRGINIA: Oh, yeah.

00:26:00.360 --> 00:26:01.560
ALEX: That was really cool.

00:26:01.560 --> 00:26:02.700
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:26:02.700 --> 00:26:13.160
VIRGINIA: I had read in advance that when you go into the Tower of London, you go into this big open yard and then there's all these different buildings that you can go into and everything.

00:26:13.860 --> 00:26:19.300
VIRGINIA: I had read in advance that the Crown Jewels, which you can see there, that the line gets really built up.

00:26:19.300 --> 00:26:22.860
VIRGINIA: I think 9am was the first tour of the day.

00:26:22.860 --> 00:26:29.480
VIRGINIA: We were there right at the beginning and I told them, I was like, we have to go see the Crown Jewels first just because the line will get built up.

00:26:29.480 --> 00:26:32.740
VIRGINIA: So we went over there and that was really cool.

00:26:32.740 --> 00:26:34.000
ALEX: It was very shiny.

00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:34.780
ALEX: Yeah.

00:26:34.780 --> 00:26:41.160
VIRGINIA: And they had that one section where you were kind of going through the bigger things and you stood on that little moving walkway.

00:26:41.160 --> 00:26:42.160
VIRGINIA: Do you remember that?

00:26:42.320 --> 00:26:49.760
ALEX: Yeah, it was kind of annoying there because it just kind of kept you moving along and you didn't really have that much time to just admire.

00:26:49.760 --> 00:26:52.540
ALEX: Kind of just brought you there for like 10 seconds and you were off.

00:26:52.540 --> 00:26:54.920
VIRGINIA: Yeah, it was still very cool to see and I thought it was funny.

00:26:54.920 --> 00:26:56.640
VIRGINIA: I was like, we're rope dropping the Crown Jewels.

00:26:56.880 --> 00:26:57.820
ALEX: Yes, we are.

00:26:57.820 --> 00:27:02.760
ALEX: I thought Tower of London was better than Buckingham Palace, now that I think about it.

00:27:02.760 --> 00:27:07.660
ALEX: There was like different armors and like they told the story of, what's it called?

00:27:07.660 --> 00:27:08.720
ALEX: King Richard?

00:27:08.720 --> 00:27:11.860
VIRGINIA: Richard and the two princes that we had killed.

00:27:11.860 --> 00:27:14.680
VIRGINIA: And we saw the place that supposedly they were killed.

00:27:14.680 --> 00:27:15.740
ALEX: Pretty cool.

00:27:15.740 --> 00:27:16.860
VIRGINIA: It's pretty gruesome.

00:27:16.860 --> 00:27:23.700
VIRGINIA: Alex is not familiar with this story, but I've done some Shakespeare and was excited to fill him in on all the details about that.

00:27:24.240 --> 00:27:30.720
VIRGINIA: And then we got to see the armor, like you said, and it was Henry the Apes armor.

00:27:30.720 --> 00:27:32.780
VIRGINIA: It was a big suit of armor.

00:27:32.780 --> 00:27:33.900
VIRGINIA: And I don't just mean white.

00:27:33.900 --> 00:27:36.300
VIRGINIA: I mean, like he was very tall, in my opinion.

00:27:36.300 --> 00:27:38.180
ALEX: There was also like other cool things.

00:27:38.180 --> 00:27:41.300
ALEX: Like they had like old like swords and stuff.

00:27:41.300 --> 00:27:43.180
VIRGINIA: And there was some kid armor too.

00:27:43.180 --> 00:27:43.640
VIRGINIA: That was funny.

00:27:43.640 --> 00:27:44.720
ALEX: Yeah, that was kind of funny.

00:27:44.720 --> 00:27:51.920
ALEX: And then there was also, there was like a whole collection they had where they had like guns covered with jewels.

00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:53.520
ALEX: And that was really cool for me.

00:27:53.680 --> 00:27:56.780
ALEX: I like, I took pictures of them because it was really cool to me.

00:27:56.780 --> 00:28:01.480
ALEX: They had one that was like, they had like blue diamonds on them and yellow diamonds on it.

00:28:01.480 --> 00:28:02.740
ALEX: I thought it was really nice.

00:28:02.740 --> 00:28:03.600
ALEX: Yeah.

00:28:03.600 --> 00:28:05.540
VIRGINIA: Definitely well worth visiting.

00:28:05.540 --> 00:28:06.160
ALEX: Definitely.

00:28:06.160 --> 00:28:06.720
ALEX: Oh yeah.

00:28:06.720 --> 00:28:18.640
ALEX: And I just, for like part of it, whenever I got like a little bored of a certain area, like about animals that they kept in there, I kind of just played Madfoot on my phone, which is like a soccer card collecting game.

00:28:18.640 --> 00:28:21.060
ALEX: But I thought that was a really cool tour.

00:28:21.060 --> 00:28:22.480
VIRGINIA: And we had the headphones for this too.

00:28:22.560 --> 00:28:33.380
VIRGINIA: Like anytime there's, if we're on a tour anywhere and there's an option to get headphones to learn more about what we're seeing, I always opt for that because I'm like, you can listen to it, you can not listen to it, but at least you have it in case you want to hear more about something.

00:28:33.380 --> 00:28:34.720
VIRGINIA: And I used it like the whole time.

00:28:34.720 --> 00:28:41.540
VIRGINIA: From there, we went to a nearby restaurant called the COPPA Club, C-O-P-P-A Club.

00:28:41.540 --> 00:28:41.800
VIRGINIA: And-

00:28:41.800 --> 00:28:43.120
ALEX: I don't remember this actually.

00:28:43.120 --> 00:28:48.500
VIRGINIA: It was where we initially were gonna sit outside and then we were like, oh, it's way too sunny and bright.

00:28:48.500 --> 00:28:49.980
VIRGINIA: And so we asked to go inside.

00:28:49.980 --> 00:28:51.080
ALEX: No, that was pretty cool.

00:28:51.080 --> 00:28:51.440
VIRGINIA: It was good.

00:28:51.720 --> 00:28:53.120
ALEX: We sat on like a couch and ate.

00:28:53.120 --> 00:28:55.620
VIRGINIA: Yeah, they had like comfy couches with a table.

00:28:55.620 --> 00:28:56.840
VIRGINIA: So we sat there.

00:28:56.840 --> 00:28:57.560
VIRGINIA: It was very good.

00:28:57.560 --> 00:29:02.960
VIRGINIA: And then we went next door to this place called Paul Le Cafe Three Quays.

00:29:02.960 --> 00:29:07.180
VIRGINIA: That was where we got some dessert and some coffee after that.

00:29:07.180 --> 00:29:10.760
VIRGINIA: And do you remember what dad did when we were there?

00:29:10.760 --> 00:29:11.740
ALEX: What did he do?

00:29:11.740 --> 00:29:17.700
VIRGINIA: He fell asleep with his head down on the counter and took like a 30 minute nap in the coffee place.

00:29:17.700 --> 00:29:18.980
ALEX: Oh yeah.

00:29:19.140 --> 00:29:19.660
VIRGINIA: It was really funny.

00:29:19.660 --> 00:29:21.700
ALEX: Oh yeah, I remember that.

00:29:21.700 --> 00:29:28.360
VIRGINIA: And then we were kind of killing time because we from there had a tour scheduled for the Tower Bridge.

00:29:28.360 --> 00:29:29.500
VIRGINIA: So we went and did that.

00:29:29.500 --> 00:29:30.320
VIRGINIA: That was really cool.

00:29:30.320 --> 00:29:36.440
VIRGINIA: It was a lot of climbing, lots of steps, but they had that section in the bridge where you could look down.

00:29:36.440 --> 00:29:40.680
VIRGINIA: It was like a glass section and you learned all about how the Tower Bridge was built.

00:29:40.680 --> 00:29:42.020
VIRGINIA: I thought it was super cool.

00:29:42.020 --> 00:29:42.580
ALEX: Yeah.

00:29:42.580 --> 00:29:43.600
ALEX: It was very nice.

00:29:43.600 --> 00:29:46.300
ALEX: It was like they filmed like all sorts of movies there too.

00:29:46.300 --> 00:29:46.920
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:29:47.160 --> 00:29:49.480
ALEX: Like any movie, everything.

00:29:49.480 --> 00:29:57.680
VIRGINIA: When we got to the other side, there was this little section of beach that you could get down to by this back way that I had seen on TikTok.

00:29:57.680 --> 00:29:58.900
VIRGINIA: If I can find that video.

00:29:58.900 --> 00:30:05.640
VIRGINIA: If TikTok still exists by the time, I guess we're recording this on literally January 1st.

00:30:05.640 --> 00:30:07.860
ALEX: I don't know why they're taking on TikTok.

00:30:07.860 --> 00:30:11.340
ALEX: Frankly, I don't really care what kind of accusations they have.

00:30:13.000 --> 00:30:19.360
VIRGINIA: Anyway, I will find the TikTok I'm talking about and put the link in the show notes so in case you want to see this.

00:30:19.360 --> 00:30:28.480
VIRGINIA: But it was sort of the directions on how to get down to this little beach where you could take pictures with the Tower Bridge behind you without any people or anything.

00:30:28.480 --> 00:30:31.360
VIRGINIA: It was just like a very easy place to get good photos.

00:30:31.360 --> 00:30:32.940
VIRGINIA: And so we went there.

00:30:32.940 --> 00:30:38.400
VIRGINIA: And then after that is when we finally went back to Hamley's Toy Store.

00:30:38.500 --> 00:30:41.440
ALEX: Yes, Hamley's, woo.

00:30:41.440 --> 00:30:45.300
ALEX: That was the day after the dream I had about going back to Hamley's.

00:30:45.300 --> 00:30:46.480
ALEX: Glorious dream.

00:30:46.480 --> 00:30:47.900
ALEX: Amazing.

00:30:47.900 --> 00:30:49.500
ALEX: We went back to Hamley's.

00:30:49.500 --> 00:30:52.840
ALEX: We just looked around again and I found a Lego set.

00:30:52.840 --> 00:30:54.200
ALEX: It was a Venom Lego set.

00:30:54.200 --> 00:30:55.940
ALEX: It was really cool.

00:30:55.940 --> 00:30:57.560
ALEX: It was really cool, actually.

00:30:57.560 --> 00:31:00.440
ALEX: And yeah, that's what we did at Hamley's.

00:31:00.440 --> 00:31:06.700
VIRGINIA: And from there, we walked over to Carnaby Street and we had dinner at a place called Dirty Bones, which was really good.

00:31:06.760 --> 00:31:08.840
VIRGINIA: They had really nice cocktails.

00:31:08.840 --> 00:31:10.640
VIRGINIA: I don't remember what we ate specifically.

00:31:10.640 --> 00:31:12.680
VIRGINIA: I just remember the cocktails were very good.

00:31:12.680 --> 00:31:22.600
VIRGINIA: And earlier that day, I had gotten on my TodayTix app, which is an app that we use here in New York City too, but you can set it to be London if you're going to be in London.

00:31:22.600 --> 00:31:32.540
VIRGINIA: And so we did that and I had gotten us three tickets to see Hello Dolly in the West End, starring Imelda Sestantin, who is-

00:31:32.600 --> 00:31:34.060
ALEX: An incredible actress.

00:31:34.060 --> 00:31:38.540
VIRGINIA: Professor Umbridge in the Harry Potter movies, for those of you who are not aware.

00:31:38.540 --> 00:31:44.140
VIRGINIA: And we were just so excited to be able to see her in something on the stage.

00:31:44.140 --> 00:31:45.220
VIRGINIA: And it was great.

00:31:45.220 --> 00:31:47.900
VIRGINIA: Hello Dolly is not one of my favorite shows, I will be honest.

00:31:47.900 --> 00:31:48.220
ALEX: Really?

00:31:48.220 --> 00:31:49.740
ALEX: I thought it was super good.

00:31:49.740 --> 00:31:55.580
VIRGINIA: I think the book is a little, it just needs more to it.

00:31:55.580 --> 00:32:01.840
VIRGINIA: But like the storyline, like the book of the musical, like the actual story.

00:32:02.380 --> 00:32:04.220
VIRGINIA: I think the music is great.

00:32:04.220 --> 00:32:06.680
VIRGINIA: I think everybody who is in it was fantastic.

00:32:06.680 --> 00:32:08.520
VIRGINIA: It's just not one of my favorite musicals.

00:32:08.520 --> 00:32:18.160
VIRGINIA: But it was fun to see it because that put on your Sunday best song that is in the movie Wall-E is from that musical.

00:32:18.180 --> 00:32:19.840
VIRGINIA: So that was fun.

00:32:19.840 --> 00:32:22.660
VIRGINIA: And it was our very first West End show.

00:32:22.660 --> 00:32:23.540
ALEX: It was really good.

00:32:23.540 --> 00:32:24.820
ALEX: I enjoyed it a lot.

00:32:24.820 --> 00:32:25.460
VIRGINIA: Yep.

00:32:25.460 --> 00:32:28.820
VIRGINIA: And after that, we went back to the hotel.

00:32:28.920 --> 00:32:29.200
VIRGINIA: All right.

00:32:29.200 --> 00:32:32.420
VIRGINIA: Now here's your big day here.

00:32:32.420 --> 00:32:32.820
VIRGINIA: Wait.

00:32:32.820 --> 00:32:34.640
VIRGINIA: Wednesday, August 28th.

00:32:34.640 --> 00:32:36.120
ALEX: Which day was this?

00:32:36.120 --> 00:32:37.000
ALEX: Oh my God.

00:32:37.000 --> 00:32:38.140
VIRGINIA: It was Harry Potter Day.

00:32:38.140 --> 00:32:39.080
ALEX: This is Harry Potter.

00:32:39.080 --> 00:32:40.500
ALEX: Yes.

00:32:40.500 --> 00:32:41.400
ALEX: Okay.

00:32:41.400 --> 00:32:48.840
ALEX: So we left it around in the morning, like nine-ish, and we took the train over to Warner Brothers Studio.

00:32:48.840 --> 00:33:01.420
VIRGINIA: I want to say the train ride in total was like an hour and a half, maybe a little less than that because we had to take the Overground Train from where we were and transfer a couple of times.

00:33:01.420 --> 00:33:01.940
ALEX: Yeah.

00:33:01.940 --> 00:33:02.960
VIRGINIA: But it wasn't too bad.

00:33:02.960 --> 00:33:03.420
ALEX: Yeah.

00:33:03.420 --> 00:33:10.860
ALEX: But we got there, we took a bus up to the tour, and it was super cool taking the bus just for me.

00:33:10.860 --> 00:33:11.120
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:33:11.120 --> 00:33:12.040
ALEX: I don't know why.

00:33:12.040 --> 00:33:14.180
ALEX: I just really enjoyed taking the bus there.

00:33:14.180 --> 00:33:14.400
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:33:14.400 --> 00:33:18.080
VIRGINIA: They have this free shuttle for anybody who's coming to the studio.

00:33:18.080 --> 00:33:23.680
VIRGINIA: So when you get off at the train station, you just go out to the little bus stop, and then it takes you over.

00:33:23.680 --> 00:33:29.440
VIRGINIA: When you get there, you walk up to the studio, and do you remember the wands?

00:33:29.440 --> 00:33:30.000
ALEX: Oh, yeah.

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:35.540
ALEX: They have these giant wands that signal a little path up to the studio.

00:33:36.900 --> 00:33:39.260
ALEX: That was pretty cool, very detailed.

00:33:40.420 --> 00:33:45.280
ALEX: Immediately, we saw the chess pieces from Wizards Chess.

00:33:45.280 --> 00:33:45.760
VIRGINIA: Right on front.

00:33:45.760 --> 00:33:47.340
ALEX: From Sorcerer's Stone.

00:33:47.340 --> 00:33:48.680
ALEX: Back to the bus ride really quick.

00:33:48.680 --> 00:33:54.940
ALEX: I just want to say that bus ride up to there made me feel like I was in Harry Potter because I just looked out the window and I saw all those little houses.

00:33:56.700 --> 00:33:59.340
ALEX: It reminded me of the Dursley's House.

00:34:00.880 --> 00:34:08.760
VIRGINIA: Once again, I signed us up for the package where we got the souvenir booklets and the things to listen to the tour.

00:34:08.760 --> 00:34:13.660
VIRGINIA: Then they had a Starbucks that was right there at the lobby.

00:34:13.660 --> 00:34:18.120
VIRGINIA: We sat and had coffee while we waited for our turn to enter.

00:34:18.120 --> 00:34:20.100
ALEX: It was a butter beer-flavored coffee.

00:34:20.100 --> 00:34:21.740
VIRGINIA: Yeah, it was like a butter beer latte.

00:34:21.760 --> 00:34:22.840
ALEX: I didn't really care for it.

00:34:23.360 --> 00:34:25.160
VIRGINIA: It was okay.

00:34:25.160 --> 00:34:28.740
ALEX: The tour, just gonna say this, was incredible.

00:34:28.740 --> 00:34:29.940
ALEX: It was an amazing tour.

00:34:29.940 --> 00:34:35.460
ALEX: We saw all the costumes and wands and learned so much stuff about it.

00:34:35.460 --> 00:34:38.060
ALEX: They used like nine fluffies or something.

00:34:38.060 --> 00:34:38.940
ALEX: I don't know.

00:34:38.940 --> 00:34:41.080
ALEX: The dog, you know, fang.

00:34:41.080 --> 00:34:45.000
ALEX: They used a lot of fangs for the movies.

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:55.160
VIRGINIA: They had a lot of the special effects stuff so you could see how they made the makeup for all of the goblins.

00:34:56.680 --> 00:34:58.860
ALEX: They had like a mini Diagon Alley in there.

00:34:58.860 --> 00:35:00.520
ALEX: Diagon Alley.

00:35:00.520 --> 00:35:10.680
ALEX: They also had Gringotts, which Gringotts is actually one of my favorite parts because they had this cool effect where they would have a dragon come down from the roof or something and just like shoot fire at you.

00:35:10.680 --> 00:35:11.100
VIRGINIA: You know what?

00:35:11.100 --> 00:35:20.760
VIRGINIA: It was cool, but I will say having been to the Wizarding World at Universal and riding the Gringotts ride there, it looked exactly like that.

00:35:20.760 --> 00:35:26.760
VIRGINIA: So that was to me one of the least impressive things just because I felt like I had done it.

00:35:26.760 --> 00:35:29.000
ALEX: No, it was just like, it was cool.

00:35:29.000 --> 00:35:44.600
ALEX: Because Wizarding World is like, it's more interactive and it's more about the experience rather than just like, well, they were both more about the experience, but Wizarding World is more of like interactive, while the other like the studio tour is more just like looking at all this cool stuff.

00:35:45.220 --> 00:35:56.240
VIRGINIA: They had all the sets from like the Common Rooms, from like the Gryffindor Common Room, they had Snape's Classroom, they had everything.

00:35:56.240 --> 00:36:00.840
ALEX: Yeah, like also like some of the costumes, like looking at them in person.

00:36:01.320 --> 00:36:06.200
ALEX: I said this out loud, like I walked up to one of the costumes, like they were super short.

00:36:06.200 --> 00:36:08.600
ALEX: They had like the costumes from the third movie.

00:36:08.600 --> 00:36:14.640
ALEX: I was like, oh, these costumes are like, like they had to like match the size of the actors.

00:36:14.640 --> 00:36:18.340
ALEX: And I was like, whoa, these look much smaller in person.

00:36:18.380 --> 00:36:20.300
ALEX: Cause they look super tall in the movies and stuff.

00:36:20.300 --> 00:36:23.420
VIRGINIA: Right, you can't really get a sense of how tall somebody is.

00:36:23.420 --> 00:36:27.860
VIRGINIA: But when you see their costumes standing there on a mannequin, you can see exactly how tall they are.

00:36:27.860 --> 00:36:28.600
VIRGINIA: What else did we see?

00:36:28.600 --> 00:36:29.660
VIRGINIA: They had-

00:36:29.660 --> 00:36:31.200
ALEX: A giant dragon.

00:36:31.200 --> 00:36:32.480
VIRGINIA: They had a giant dragon.

00:36:32.480 --> 00:36:33.640
VIRGINIA: They had-

00:36:33.640 --> 00:36:35.340
ALEX: They had, what's it called?

00:36:35.340 --> 00:36:36.740
VIRGINIA: Dumbledore's Office.

00:36:37.920 --> 00:36:41.680
ALEX: They had the dark forest, which was really cool.

00:36:41.720 --> 00:36:42.320
VIRGINIA: Oh, yeah.

00:36:42.320 --> 00:36:44.040
ALEX: They had the giant spider.

00:36:44.040 --> 00:36:47.080
VIRGINIA: This whole dark forest that you actually walked through.

00:36:47.080 --> 00:36:52.200
VIRGINIA: And it kind of felt like, so for anybody who's been to Universal, like how many times can I reference Universal in this?

00:36:52.200 --> 00:36:54.060
VIRGINIA: But I'm not going to say Harry Potter this time.

00:36:54.060 --> 00:37:05.340
VIRGINIA: If you've been to Universal Studios and you've ridden the ET ride, where it feels like you're walking through a forest and it's dark and kind of like damp, that's what this felt like.

00:37:05.340 --> 00:37:13.520
VIRGINIA: And then you would come around a corner and you would see Aragog, the spider, and then you would see, what else?

00:37:13.520 --> 00:37:14.820
VIRGINIA: I mean there's just all kinds of stuff.

00:37:14.820 --> 00:37:18.700
ALEX: They had like Voldemort's costumes and stuff.

00:37:20.300 --> 00:37:22.540
ALEX: Overall, it was a really good tour.

00:37:22.540 --> 00:37:24.440
ALEX: I quite enjoyed it.

00:37:24.440 --> 00:37:28.140
VIRGINIA: Yeah, we spent, so we got there at 11.30.

00:37:28.140 --> 00:37:30.480
VIRGINIA: That's when our tour started, it was 11.30.

00:37:30.480 --> 00:37:33.120
VIRGINIA: And we ended up leaving around 4.30.

00:37:33.780 --> 00:37:36.980
VIRGINIA: And we honestly could have spent more hours there.

00:37:36.980 --> 00:37:38.700
VIRGINIA: I mean, there was so much to see.

00:37:38.700 --> 00:37:41.660
VIRGINIA: It was just, we were there for a long time.

00:37:41.660 --> 00:37:42.760
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:37:42.760 --> 00:37:44.040
VIRGINIA: What else did they have there?

00:37:44.040 --> 00:37:45.580
VIRGINIA: So, oh yeah.

00:37:45.580 --> 00:37:52.620
ALEX: Like they took us into the first room where we watched a little video of the people, the actors like talking about it.

00:37:52.620 --> 00:37:53.940
ALEX: And then once the video was over-

00:37:53.940 --> 00:37:54.940
VIRGINIA: Wait, wait, hold on, hold on.

00:37:54.940 --> 00:37:55.920
VIRGINIA: Spoiler alert.

00:37:55.920 --> 00:37:56.560
ALEX: Spoiler alert.

00:37:56.560 --> 00:38:06.400
VIRGINIA: So if you plan to go to the Warner Brothers Studio tour, at any time in the near future and you don't want to be spoiled, please skip ahead like 60 seconds.

00:38:06.400 --> 00:38:07.220
ALEX: Yeah.

00:38:07.220 --> 00:38:10.460
VIRGINIA: So we're sitting watching this little film about-

00:38:10.460 --> 00:38:12.260
ALEX: Them just like talking about what it was.

00:38:12.800 --> 00:38:15.740
ALEX: And we're just sitting there and then they finish.

00:38:15.740 --> 00:38:23.100
ALEX: At the end, the screen that they were talking about it on lifts up and then we see the Great Hall.

00:38:23.200 --> 00:38:24.260
VIRGINIA: The doors to the Great Hall.

00:38:24.260 --> 00:38:25.420
ALEX: The doors to the Great Hall.

00:38:25.420 --> 00:38:29.160
ALEX: And then they open the doors for you and it's crazy.

00:38:29.160 --> 00:38:30.600
VIRGINIA: You literally walk into the Great Hall.

00:38:30.880 --> 00:38:31.360
ALEX: It's so cool.

00:38:31.360 --> 00:38:33.000
VIRGINIA: And it's literally where they filmed it.

00:38:33.000 --> 00:38:34.620
VIRGINIA: I mean, it was just amazing.

00:38:34.620 --> 00:38:43.460
VIRGINIA: And they had all these mannequins at the front wearing the costumes of all the faculty so you could see sort of the size of all of the actors that were up there.

00:38:43.680 --> 00:38:50.320
VIRGINIA: And then from there, you walked into a section where you got to see sort of how they made the sets.

00:38:50.320 --> 00:38:53.140
VIRGINIA: It was like blueprints and photos and all that kind of stuff.

00:38:53.140 --> 00:38:58.000
VIRGINIA: And then from there, you went into the classrooms and seeing costumes and everything.

00:38:58.100 --> 00:39:04.400
VIRGINIA: And sort of at the halfway point of the tour, you get to a little cafe where you can stop and have lunch if you want.

00:39:04.400 --> 00:39:05.680
ALEX: Yeah, the cafe was pretty good.

00:39:05.680 --> 00:39:06.620
ALEX: They had butter beer there.

00:39:06.620 --> 00:39:07.460
VIRGINIA: Yeah, they had butter beer.

00:39:07.460 --> 00:39:08.800
VIRGINIA: They had like fish and chips.

00:39:08.800 --> 00:39:11.780
VIRGINIA: They had burgers, that sort of thing.

00:39:11.780 --> 00:39:15.480
VIRGINIA: So we had lunch and we had butter beers.

00:39:15.480 --> 00:39:23.680
VIRGINIA: We got more souvenir butter beer cups that are basically just like the ones we have here in New York for the Harry Potter store.

00:39:23.680 --> 00:39:24.920
VIRGINIA: And so we did that.

00:39:25.020 --> 00:39:31.640
VIRGINIA: And then once you're done at the cafe, if you choose to stop when you exit the cafe, you're outside.

00:39:31.640 --> 00:39:36.900
VIRGINIA: And outside, they have a giant night bus that you can walk through.

00:39:36.900 --> 00:39:42.420
VIRGINIA: They have the Dursley's House and the Privet Lane, like a couple of the little houses are there.

00:39:42.420 --> 00:39:46.320
VIRGINIA: And you can actually walk through the Dursley's House and walk out the back.

00:39:46.320 --> 00:39:51.680
VIRGINIA: And then you get to walk through the Herbology Greenhouse.

00:39:51.680 --> 00:39:53.740
ALEX: We saw the, what's it called?

00:39:53.800 --> 00:39:54.740
VIRGINIA: The Flying Car.

00:39:54.740 --> 00:39:55.700
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:39:55.700 --> 00:39:58.500
ALEX: We saw, we actually took a picture in that.

00:39:58.500 --> 00:40:01.720
ALEX: We also saw the Weasley's House, what's it called?

00:40:01.720 --> 00:40:02.240
ALEX: The Borough.

00:40:02.240 --> 00:40:02.820
VIRGINIA: The Borough.

00:40:02.820 --> 00:40:03.020
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:40:03.340 --> 00:40:06.560
ALEX: They had like a miniature version of it.

00:40:06.560 --> 00:40:15.740
VIRGINIA: And then from there, when you go into the second half of the tour, when you go back inside, that is when you're seeing all of the special effects things.

00:40:15.740 --> 00:40:29.680
VIRGINIA: They had tiny little Voldemort, you know, like when he's like a little shriveled thing in the movie, like you see the little animatronic and it's moving and breathing and they have all of this sort of behind the scenes information on how they did all that.

00:40:29.680 --> 00:40:42.120
VIRGINIA: And then you go in and you see the Hogwarts Express and you could walk through some of the cars and you see how they built that there because they just had a couple of cars.

00:40:42.120 --> 00:40:44.700
VIRGINIA: And then that was kind of towards the end of it.

00:40:44.700 --> 00:40:51.840
VIRGINIA: But I mean, we literally, like I said, we spent about six hours there, five, six hours and we could have spent more time than that.

00:40:51.840 --> 00:41:02.380
VIRGINIA: So if you are really into Harry Potter, I would say get an earlier tour time, take into account how long it'll take you to get there, but get an earlier tour time and just plan to spend the entire day there.

00:41:02.380 --> 00:41:03.920
VIRGINIA: Because well worth it.

00:41:03.920 --> 00:41:07.020
ALEX: Definitely.

00:41:07.020 --> 00:41:09.480
VIRGINIA: After that, we went back to our room.

00:41:09.480 --> 00:41:14.920
VIRGINIA: We were back in our room by about 630 and we took a little bit of a rest.

00:41:15.200 --> 00:41:20.900
VIRGINIA: Then dad wanted to do something music-related because of course that was his goal.

00:41:20.900 --> 00:41:29.100
VIRGINIA: He had found a jazz club that was called 606 Jazz Club, and it was within walking distance of our hotel.

00:41:29.100 --> 00:41:29.560
VIRGINIA: We went there.

00:41:29.560 --> 00:41:33.640
VIRGINIA: It was almost like a speakeasy because it did not look like anything from the outside.

00:41:33.640 --> 00:41:35.940
VIRGINIA: You just had to know what address to go to.

00:41:36.380 --> 00:41:38.560
VIRGINIA: I'll try to find a link for it and put it in the show notes.

00:41:38.560 --> 00:41:39.380
VIRGINIA: But it was cool.

00:41:39.380 --> 00:41:41.760
VIRGINIA: It was like real jazz and it was a restaurant.

00:41:41.760 --> 00:41:44.300
VIRGINIA: We had dinner and Alex came with us.

00:41:44.860 --> 00:41:47.120
ALEX: I didn't really like the food all that much.

00:41:47.120 --> 00:41:47.740
VIRGINIA: It was okay.

00:41:47.740 --> 00:41:55.320
ALEX: That's just me though because I like some kind of meat thing and I don't really like steak or anything because I love the taste.

00:41:55.320 --> 00:41:57.260
ALEX: I just hate the texture of steak.

00:41:57.260 --> 00:41:57.660
VIRGINIA: You know what?

00:41:57.660 --> 00:41:58.440
VIRGINIA: That's true.

00:41:58.440 --> 00:42:02.660
VIRGINIA: I will say that I can't remember exactly what I had, but I remember thinking the food was pretty good.

00:42:02.660 --> 00:42:08.680
VIRGINIA: But I do remember when we were looking at the menu that you were having a very hard time ordering something that you thought you would like.

00:42:08.680 --> 00:42:11.840
VIRGINIA: So anyway, it was fine.

00:42:12.320 --> 00:42:16.840
VIRGINIA: He got it and it was like, all right, eat whatever you want of it and we'll get you more food later.

00:42:16.840 --> 00:42:20.620
VIRGINIA: And then I think Alex and I ended up leaving early.

00:42:20.620 --> 00:42:24.720
VIRGINIA: We finished eating and then we were ready to go back to the hotel and chill.

00:42:24.720 --> 00:42:29.860
VIRGINIA: And Charles stayed behind and continued to enjoy the music for a little bit longer.

00:42:29.860 --> 00:42:31.000
VIRGINIA: And that was the end of that day.

00:42:31.000 --> 00:42:31.600
VIRGINIA: All right.

00:42:31.600 --> 00:42:33.500
VIRGINIA: Thursday, August 29th.

00:42:33.500 --> 00:42:35.780
VIRGINIA: This was our Shakespeare Day.

00:42:35.780 --> 00:42:37.700
ALEX: Oh, this was really cool actually.

00:42:37.700 --> 00:42:38.180
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:42:38.180 --> 00:42:41.700
VIRGINIA: So we took a train and we went over to tour Shakespeare's Globe.

00:42:41.960 --> 00:42:45.720
VIRGINIA: Theatre, which of course is not the original because the original burned down.

00:42:45.720 --> 00:42:50.200
VIRGINIA: But they used the building plans and recreated the whole thing.

00:42:50.200 --> 00:42:52.420
VIRGINIA: Like it even has a fast roof and everything.

00:42:52.420 --> 00:42:53.980
VIRGINIA: It was so cool.

00:42:53.980 --> 00:42:57.700
VIRGINIA: Alex being a drama student was very interested.

00:42:57.700 --> 00:43:00.400
ALEX: And hopefully, upcoming actor.

00:43:00.400 --> 00:43:00.880
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:43:00.880 --> 00:43:01.820
VIRGINIA: Well, you are an actor.

00:43:01.820 --> 00:43:03.240
VIRGINIA: You're on the show right now.

00:43:03.240 --> 00:43:04.660
ALEX: Like as a career choice.

00:43:04.660 --> 00:43:04.980
ALEX: I mean.

00:43:04.980 --> 00:43:05.240
VIRGINIA: Right.

00:43:05.240 --> 00:43:06.180
VIRGINIA: Well, yes.

00:43:06.180 --> 00:43:07.300
VIRGINIA: When you grow up.

00:43:07.300 --> 00:43:08.540
ALEX: We'll see.

00:43:08.540 --> 00:43:09.280
VIRGINIA: But it was really cool.

00:43:09.280 --> 00:43:10.000
VIRGINIA: We took the tour.

00:43:10.200 --> 00:43:12.300
VIRGINIA: We got to see the stage.

00:43:12.300 --> 00:43:16.200
VIRGINIA: We got to kind of see behind the scenes of stuff a little bit.

00:43:16.200 --> 00:43:18.420
VIRGINIA: There were some people rehearsing out on the stage.

00:43:18.420 --> 00:43:20.980
VIRGINIA: They were doing some show that involves some kids.

00:43:20.980 --> 00:43:23.740
VIRGINIA: So it was a couple of kids that were in the show.

00:43:23.740 --> 00:43:25.120
VIRGINIA: It was their first day rehearsing.

00:43:25.120 --> 00:43:35.620
VIRGINIA: So they had the kids up on the stage and were just kind of like getting them used to being on the stage and like having them kind of say things to try to like see how loud they could project their voices.

00:43:36.260 --> 00:43:40.240
VIRGINIA: And we were asked not to take photos or anything while they were up there for the kids' privacy.

00:43:40.240 --> 00:43:41.560
VIRGINIA: So of course we did not.

00:43:41.560 --> 00:43:44.380
VIRGINIA: We did get to take pictures before they came out though.

00:43:44.380 --> 00:43:47.940
VIRGINIA: They gave us a warning like, oh, there's going to be kids out here rehearsing in like five minutes.

00:43:47.940 --> 00:43:53.420
VIRGINIA: So please take all the photos you want to take of the stage right now, because you're not going to be allowed to take of them once the kids come out.

00:43:53.420 --> 00:43:54.720
VIRGINIA: They had a really nice store.

00:43:54.720 --> 00:43:57.560
VIRGINIA: And I'm always a fan of like a museum gift store.

00:43:57.560 --> 00:43:58.880
VIRGINIA: They always have the coolest things.

00:43:58.880 --> 00:44:03.280
VIRGINIA: So I got a mug and a t-shirt that says, a plague upon both your houses.

00:44:03.780 --> 00:44:05.660
ALEX: A plague upon both your houses.

00:44:05.660 --> 00:44:07.080
VIRGINIA: Because I love Romeo and Juliet.

00:44:07.080 --> 00:44:13.060
VIRGINIA: And then I got a tote bag with my purchase that says Shakespeare is my bag.

00:44:13.640 --> 00:44:15.680
ALEX: And what did you get?

00:44:15.680 --> 00:44:23.220
ALEX: I got a Deadpool comic based off of Shakespeare because Deadpool and Wolverine had just come out and I was obsessed with Deadpool at the time.

00:44:23.220 --> 00:44:24.580
ALEX: I was like, oh Deadpool.

00:44:24.580 --> 00:44:28.900
VIRGINIA: Yeah, so it was like a graphic novel that was Wolverine and Deadpool.

00:44:28.900 --> 00:44:30.800
ALEX: No, not Wolverine and Deadpool, just Deadpool.

00:44:31.040 --> 00:44:35.960
VIRGINIA: Well, okay, so Deadpool, but I can't remember what Shakespeare play it is, but it was like the story.

00:44:35.960 --> 00:44:41.400
VIRGINIA: It was a Shakespeare play, but with Deadpool as the character, which I thought was kind of interesting.

00:44:41.400 --> 00:44:56.940
VIRGINIA: And then you also got a book about Shakespeare's theatre and those times, which I got him specifically because like I said, he is a drama student and I thought this is going to come in handy when he studies Shakespeare in the next four years at his Performing Arts High School.

00:44:58.200 --> 00:45:06.060
VIRGINIA: So after that, we walked over to Borough Market because obviously it's Borough Market, you have to see it.

00:45:06.060 --> 00:45:10.960
VIRGINIA: And so we went over there, but unfortunately, it was so busy and overwhelming.

00:45:10.960 --> 00:45:12.960
VIRGINIA: And I had thought, oh, we're going to go to Borough Market.

00:45:12.960 --> 00:45:15.320
VIRGINIA: We're going to each get kind of what we want to eat.

00:45:15.320 --> 00:45:17.680
VIRGINIA: And it's going to be great.

00:45:17.680 --> 00:45:18.940
VIRGINIA: There were so many people there.

00:45:18.940 --> 00:45:20.080
VIRGINIA: I could not handle it.

00:45:20.080 --> 00:45:21.020
VIRGINIA: It was too overwhelming.

00:45:21.880 --> 00:45:22.440
ALEX: Oh, my God.

00:45:22.440 --> 00:45:29.960
ALEX: This is where we were going to go get something, but then we realized our show, we had to get to our show really fast.

00:45:29.960 --> 00:45:30.540
VIRGINIA: No.

00:45:30.540 --> 00:45:30.820
ALEX: No?

00:45:30.820 --> 00:45:31.740
VIRGINIA: No, that's a different day.

00:45:31.740 --> 00:45:32.840
ALEX: When was that?

00:45:32.840 --> 00:45:36.420
ALEX: Oh, that was the other show that we saw, third one.

00:45:36.420 --> 00:45:36.900
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:45:36.900 --> 00:45:37.220
ALEX: Yeah.

00:45:37.220 --> 00:45:39.260
ALEX: We'll talk about that later.

00:45:40.360 --> 00:45:42.700
VIRGINIA: Anyway, so we went over there.

00:45:42.700 --> 00:45:49.240
VIRGINIA: We ended up getting something from a different place, just like a little restaurant that was near Borough Market, but it was just like a normal restaurant.

00:45:49.880 --> 00:45:55.360
VIRGINIA: And then Charles and Alex were tired, so they decided to go back to the hotel for a nap.

00:45:55.360 --> 00:45:58.460
VIRGINIA: But of course, I'm Virginia, can't stop, won't stop.

00:45:58.460 --> 00:46:01.440
VIRGINIA: And I was like, I'm going to stay out and do my thing.

00:46:01.440 --> 00:46:04.360
VIRGINIA: You guys go back and relax.

00:46:04.360 --> 00:46:12.860
VIRGINIA: And so while they were off to take their nap, I continued walking around in the Borough Market area and I really wanted to see Bridget Jones' apartment.

00:46:12.860 --> 00:46:14.820
VIRGINIA: So I had looked up where that was.

00:46:14.820 --> 00:46:21.620
VIRGINIA: I took a picture of Bridget Jones' apartment door, and then I ended up walking around and I was kind of ready for a snack at that point.

00:46:21.620 --> 00:46:31.020
VIRGINIA: So I found a little kind of coffee shop chain called Gale and had a lovely pot of tea and some scones.

00:46:31.020 --> 00:46:32.520
VIRGINIA: So that was nice.

00:46:32.520 --> 00:46:37.020
VIRGINIA: From there, I was walking and I saw the Tate Modern.

00:46:37.020 --> 00:46:39.020
VIRGINIA: And so I thought, I'm going to go in the Tate Modern.

00:46:39.020 --> 00:46:43.520
VIRGINIA: And I'm normally not a modern art kind of person at all.

00:46:43.520 --> 00:46:46.680
VIRGINIA: I prefer more classic style of art.

00:46:46.860 --> 00:46:48.480
VIRGINIA: But it was right there.

00:46:48.480 --> 00:46:49.640
VIRGINIA: So I went in.

00:46:49.640 --> 00:46:55.520
VIRGINIA: And when I got up to the top of the escalator in the museum, there was a sign that said Free Tour.

00:46:55.520 --> 00:46:59.000
VIRGINIA: And I can't resist the word free or tour.

00:47:00.060 --> 00:47:07.920
VIRGINIA: So it turned out they had these people who were like experts in art and they would just do tours every once in a while.

00:47:07.920 --> 00:47:10.200
VIRGINIA: And the tours are never the same.

00:47:10.480 --> 00:47:14.020
VIRGINIA: It's basically the person who's leading the tour decides what part they want to show you.

00:47:14.720 --> 00:47:19.240
VIRGINIA: And so we ended up having a group of maybe like 12 to 15 people.

00:47:19.240 --> 00:47:23.620
VIRGINIA: And she was like, we're going to see five or six different pieces.

00:47:23.620 --> 00:47:29.180
VIRGINIA: And we got these little fold out stool type chairs that we got to carry with us.

00:47:29.180 --> 00:47:35.840
VIRGINIA: And so every time we got in front of a piece that we were going to be stopping at, we all got to just set our little stool chair things down and sit.

00:47:35.840 --> 00:47:38.560
VIRGINIA: And then she would explain the background of the art.

00:47:38.560 --> 00:47:40.780
VIRGINIA: And I really enjoyed that.

00:47:40.940 --> 00:47:49.120
VIRGINIA: So it made me feel like at some point in this new year, I really would like to go see more art here in my own city where I live.

00:47:49.120 --> 00:47:53.580
VIRGINIA: Because typically when I want to see art, I go to the Met and the Met's amazing.

00:47:53.580 --> 00:47:59.820
VIRGINIA: But we also have a lot of other museums here in the city that I don't frequent just because I like the Met so much.

00:47:59.820 --> 00:48:03.640
VIRGINIA: So I'm going to expand my options now that I saw how cool that tour was.

00:48:03.640 --> 00:48:08.920
VIRGINIA: From there, we ended up getting tickets to see Shrek, the musical.

00:48:08.920 --> 00:48:09.720
ALEX: Shrek the musical.

00:48:10.540 --> 00:48:18.480
VIRGINIA: I got it on Today Ticks and I will say, when I got it on Today Ticks, I did not realize it was not a West End show.

00:48:18.480 --> 00:48:24.580
VIRGINIA: It was more like off West End, but it was very hard to tell what was West End and what was not.

00:48:24.580 --> 00:48:26.540
VIRGINIA: It was a professional production.

00:48:26.540 --> 00:48:27.680
VIRGINIA: It was a huge theater.

00:48:27.680 --> 00:48:33.000
VIRGINIA: It was just 30 minutes away from the West End theaters.

00:48:33.000 --> 00:48:42.880
VIRGINIA: This is the place where we sat down to have dinner and then realized, oh no, we're not going to have enough time because I realized exactly how far away we were.

00:48:43.720 --> 00:48:46.500
VIRGINIA: We quickly said, you know what?

00:48:46.500 --> 00:48:48.040
VIRGINIA: I'm sorry we can't order here.

00:48:48.040 --> 00:48:49.040
VIRGINIA: We put our stuff down.

00:48:49.040 --> 00:48:49.760
ALEX: This was also…

00:48:49.760 --> 00:48:51.820
ALEX: We left.

00:48:51.820 --> 00:48:53.820
ALEX: We went to Chinatown here, right?

00:48:53.820 --> 00:48:54.180
VIRGINIA: Yes.

00:48:54.180 --> 00:48:58.840
VIRGINIA: We were trying to eat in Chinatown and then we ended up leaving, getting on the train.

00:48:58.840 --> 00:49:04.200
VIRGINIA: I said, let's just go to the neighborhood where the theatre is and then we will find something to eat quick there.

00:49:04.340 --> 00:49:04.920
VIRGINIA: So when we got there…

00:49:04.920 --> 00:49:09.240
ALEX: I'm pretty sure this was the day that we saw that crazy guy.

00:49:09.240 --> 00:49:10.520
VIRGINIA: It might have been.

00:49:10.520 --> 00:49:14.140
ALEX: I think so because I don't remember which day it was.

00:49:14.140 --> 00:49:16.880
ALEX: I'm pretty sure it was this day though.

00:49:16.880 --> 00:49:23.480
ALEX: We were kind of just like chilling in Chinatown and I was having some boba.

00:49:23.480 --> 00:49:27.260
ALEX: My dad was with me and this was before you met up with us.

00:49:27.260 --> 00:49:35.020
ALEX: There was a crazy guy just like walking around, screaming at people, being like, you're f-ing ugly, you're f-ing ugly.

00:49:35.040 --> 00:49:37.180
VIRGINIA: Yeah, he clearly had mental issues.

00:49:37.180 --> 00:49:42.260
ALEX: No, yeah, but he kept walking around, yelling at, like it was mostly just women.

00:49:42.260 --> 00:49:44.440
ALEX: And he was just yelling at them.

00:49:44.440 --> 00:49:48.760
ALEX: And then we walked away to go eat and we just sat down.

00:49:48.760 --> 00:49:51.040
ALEX: And then you saw the guy before this.

00:49:51.040 --> 00:49:53.780
VIRGINIA: And then he came up right behind dad.

00:49:53.780 --> 00:49:58.700
ALEX: He came up right behind dad and just started staring him down.

00:49:58.760 --> 00:50:03.460
ALEX: And you noticed, you noticed, and you were, you noticed and you just like grabbed his hand.

00:50:03.460 --> 00:50:06.860
VIRGINIA: Like Charles, Charles don't look behind you.

00:50:06.860 --> 00:50:08.780
ALEX: Don't look behind you.

00:50:08.780 --> 00:50:11.820
ALEX: And then the dude walked away.

00:50:11.820 --> 00:50:15.420
VIRGINIA: Yeah, he didn't scream at us, but he was looking like he might.

00:50:15.420 --> 00:50:16.760
VIRGINIA: And he was thinking about it.

00:50:16.760 --> 00:50:17.660
ALEX: He's like, yeah, I don't know.

00:50:17.660 --> 00:50:19.420
ALEX: Should I scream at these people or?

00:50:19.420 --> 00:50:22.460
VIRGINIA: That's when I looked at my phone and said, let's just see where the theater is.

00:50:22.460 --> 00:50:24.360
VIRGINIA: Just so we know where we're walking to after this.

00:50:24.360 --> 00:50:26.340
VIRGINIA: And then turns out it was not going to be a walk.

00:50:26.340 --> 00:50:27.220
VIRGINIA: It was going to be a train ride.

00:50:27.740 --> 00:50:32.840
VIRGINIA: So we left the restaurant, we took the train and it was a very big theatre.

00:50:32.840 --> 00:50:36.880
VIRGINIA: So when I say it wasn't West End, it was still a huge theatre.

00:50:36.880 --> 00:50:40.060
VIRGINIA: It was definitely professional production.

00:50:40.060 --> 00:50:45.060
VIRGINIA: One thing about theatres in London is you do not get a play bill like you do here in the United States.

00:50:45.060 --> 00:50:46.620
ALEX: No, you got to pay for stuff like that.

00:50:46.620 --> 00:50:47.240
VIRGINIA: Right.

00:50:47.240 --> 00:50:51.680
VIRGINIA: Here, you get a play bill just for going to the show and it's free and it's small.

00:50:51.720 --> 00:50:58.220
VIRGINIA: There, they are bigger things but you have to pay for them and they're like $15, $20 or something.

00:50:58.220 --> 00:50:59.900
VIRGINIA: So I did not up to get one at Shrek.

00:50:59.900 --> 00:51:02.260
VIRGINIA: Once I realized it wasn't West End, I was like, I'm not going to get this.

00:51:02.260 --> 00:51:07.820
VIRGINIA: I had bought it at Hello Dolly, but I wasn't going to pay for it for this.

00:51:07.820 --> 00:51:10.880
VIRGINIA: So as a result, I had no idea who was in the show.

00:51:10.880 --> 00:51:15.820
VIRGINIA: So the next day, I kind of was like, oh, let me just look and see who is in the show online.

00:51:15.820 --> 00:51:22.620
VIRGINIA: So I looked it up and I can't remember who, like the main people were playing Shrek and Fiona.

00:51:22.620 --> 00:51:34.080
VIRGINIA: But the person playing the donkey was Todrick Hall, which if you're familiar with Todrick Hall, he is known for making fun music videos that sometimes incorporate Disney stuff.

00:51:34.080 --> 00:51:38.120
VIRGINIA: So he did this one Beauty and the Beast parody music video.

00:51:38.120 --> 00:51:40.640
VIRGINIA: If I can find it, I'll put it in the show notes.

00:51:40.640 --> 00:51:41.580
VIRGINIA: But he's so much fun.

00:51:41.580 --> 00:51:45.720
VIRGINIA: I was like, I had no idea that's who I was watching the entire time, obviously, because he was dressed as donkey.

00:51:45.720 --> 00:51:47.980
VIRGINIA: And so it's not like I could see his face.

00:51:47.980 --> 00:51:48.740
VIRGINIA: But he was really good.

00:51:48.800 --> 00:51:53.540
VIRGINIA: So that just to give you an idea, like it was definitely a professional production.

00:51:53.540 --> 00:51:55.280
VIRGINIA: It just wasn't West End.

00:51:55.280 --> 00:51:58.020
VIRGINIA: So then, Alex, you want to do this day?

00:51:58.040 --> 00:52:01.940
VIRGINIA: So this is Friday, August the 30th.

00:52:01.940 --> 00:52:10.940
ALEX: OK, we slept in, left the hotel at around 11, and we took for the first time ever an Uber boat, which is really weird for me.

00:52:10.940 --> 00:52:12.480
VIRGINIA: Yeah, we don't have Uber boats here in the US.

00:52:12.480 --> 00:52:16.080
ALEX: I was kind of just reading my comic that morning that I got the Deadpool one.

00:52:16.360 --> 00:52:18.900
ALEX: We went to Westminster.

00:52:18.900 --> 00:52:23.620
ALEX: We intended on taking photos and then go to the British Museum.

00:52:23.620 --> 00:52:27.540
ALEX: Instead, we bought tickets to Westminster.

00:52:27.540 --> 00:52:28.720
VIRGINIA: Westminster Abbey.

00:52:28.720 --> 00:52:31.540
ALEX: Westminster Abbey for you and me.

00:52:31.540 --> 00:52:34.520
ALEX: And dad went to a record store.

00:52:34.520 --> 00:52:42.960
VIRGINIA: Yeah, so we took the Uber boat to the Westminster stop, and our plan was to get off there and then go to the British Museum.

00:52:42.960 --> 00:52:45.580
VIRGINIA: And we really just wanted to take the boat ride and get good photos.

00:52:45.720 --> 00:52:48.960
VIRGINIA: But when we got off, you know, Westminster Abbey is right there.

00:52:48.960 --> 00:52:50.000
VIRGINIA: Charles has been before.

00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:53.860
VIRGINIA: He really did not feel like he needed to go again, particularly.

00:52:53.860 --> 00:52:55.400
VIRGINIA: I can't remember how much it cost.

00:52:55.400 --> 00:52:59.180
VIRGINIA: I mean, it might have been like $30 a person, but he was like, I don't need to see it again.

00:52:59.180 --> 00:53:03.320
VIRGINIA: And I said, well, Alex and I should go because we haven't been to it.

00:53:03.320 --> 00:53:06.100
VIRGINIA: So we are going to do it.

00:53:06.100 --> 00:53:11.440
VIRGINIA: So he went to a record store he was interested in while Alex and I toured the Abbey.

00:53:12.460 --> 00:53:14.180
VIRGINIA: And then we went to go meet back up with him.

00:53:14.300 --> 00:53:18.980
VIRGINIA: And we were on the hunt for the couple of locations that we had heard inspired.

00:53:18.980 --> 00:53:19.460
VIRGINIA: What was it?

00:53:19.460 --> 00:53:21.120
VIRGINIA: Had inspired Diagon Alley.

00:53:21.120 --> 00:53:22.080
VIRGINIA: Oh, yeah.

00:53:22.080 --> 00:53:25.340
ALEX: That was pretty cool, but I don't know.

00:53:25.340 --> 00:53:27.920
ALEX: Some of them, like one of them was kind of let down for me.

00:53:27.920 --> 00:53:32.120
VIRGINIA: Yeah, there was one called Cecil's Court, which was kind of disappointing.

00:53:32.120 --> 00:53:33.740
ALEX: It was pretty sad.

00:53:33.740 --> 00:53:35.520
VIRGINIA: It was little and it did not feel like it.

00:53:35.520 --> 00:53:40.160
VIRGINIA: And then we went to another place that was very close by called Godwin's Court.

00:53:40.700 --> 00:53:42.480
VIRGINIA: And that was actually better.

00:53:42.480 --> 00:53:45.040
VIRGINIA: And you could tell why it had inspired.

00:53:45.160 --> 00:53:48.140
VIRGINIA: It was one of the places that had inspired Diagon Alley.

00:53:48.140 --> 00:53:53.740
VIRGINIA: And then we finally made it to a restaurant in Chinatown, where we could actually sit and enjoy our meal.

00:53:53.740 --> 00:53:58.240
VIRGINIA: And the place we went was called Sha Xian Delicacies.

00:53:58.240 --> 00:54:03.140
VIRGINIA: So it was S-H-A-X-I-A-N Delicacies.

00:54:03.140 --> 00:54:04.240
VIRGINIA: And it was very good.

00:54:04.240 --> 00:54:07.100
ALEX: So after that, what was it?

00:54:07.100 --> 00:54:08.500
VIRGINIA: Dad wanted to go see more music.

00:54:08.800 --> 00:54:12.100
ALEX: Dad wanted to go see more music in Camden.

00:54:12.100 --> 00:54:19.600
ALEX: Well, me and you saw this really good another West End show called Kathy and Stella's Solve a Murder.

00:54:19.600 --> 00:54:21.900
ALEX: Honestly, it was really good.

00:54:21.900 --> 00:54:22.880
VIRGINIA: It was so good.

00:54:22.880 --> 00:54:27.300
ALEX: It was like about these two people, like two people just chilling.

00:54:27.300 --> 00:54:30.660
ALEX: And they have their own little podcast where they talk about murders.

00:54:30.660 --> 00:54:33.140
ALEX: And they kind of just like break things down for you.

00:54:33.140 --> 00:54:35.060
ALEX: And they are obsessed with murder.

00:54:35.060 --> 00:54:40.360
VIRGINIA: So when we were looking at Today Ticks, I kept going back to this one because I was like, oh, this is cute.

00:54:40.360 --> 00:54:41.300
VIRGINIA: It's about podcasters.

00:54:41.300 --> 00:54:43.300
ALEX: Because you are obsessed with podcasts.

00:54:43.700 --> 00:54:45.540
VIRGINIA: And Alex was like, I don't want to.

00:54:45.540 --> 00:54:50.500
VIRGINIA: And then finally, I twisted his arm, not literally, but he agreed to go.

00:54:50.500 --> 00:54:58.620
VIRGINIA: And then as soon as we were watching it, I think maybe the first number finished and he leaned over and he was like, this is actually really good.

00:54:58.620 --> 00:54:59.660
ALEX: I did.

00:54:59.660 --> 00:55:01.000
ALEX: It was really funny too.

00:55:01.000 --> 00:55:02.700
ALEX: It was a great show.

00:55:02.700 --> 00:55:03.480
VIRGINIA: It was hilarious.

00:55:03.480 --> 00:55:04.720
ALEX: I loved it so much.

00:55:04.720 --> 00:55:09.220
ALEX: I wasn't expecting it to be that good, honestly, because I don't like podcasts.

00:55:09.420 --> 00:55:10.020
VIRGINIA: What?

00:55:10.020 --> 00:55:10.800
ALEX: No, no, no.

00:55:10.800 --> 00:55:13.420
VIRGINIA: He says as he sits here recording a podcast.

00:55:13.420 --> 00:55:15.380
ALEX: No, no.

00:55:15.780 --> 00:55:16.940
ALEX: Let's backtrack.

00:55:16.940 --> 00:55:21.840
ALEX: I don't like listening to podcasts, but I like being on them, you know, you know?

00:55:21.840 --> 00:55:23.020
VIRGINIA: Okay, I'll take that.

00:55:23.020 --> 00:55:23.740
VIRGINIA: I'll take that.

00:55:23.740 --> 00:55:25.460
VIRGINIA: So anyway, well worth it.

00:55:25.460 --> 00:55:26.400
VIRGINIA: Highly recommend.

00:55:26.400 --> 00:55:36.320
VIRGINIA: I don't know how long it's playing for, but if you go to London and you see that Kathy and Stella solve a murder is an option for you, definitely check it out.

00:55:36.580 --> 00:55:37.300
ALEX: Well worth it.

00:55:37.300 --> 00:55:38.420
VIRGINIA: So funny.

00:55:38.420 --> 00:55:44.120
VIRGINIA: From there, we met back up with Charles and we all took the train home together.

00:55:44.120 --> 00:55:46.520
VIRGINIA: And by home, I mean to the hotel.

00:55:46.520 --> 00:55:48.260
ALEX: To the Dollar Tree.

00:55:48.260 --> 00:55:48.840
VIRGINIA: The DoubleTree.

00:55:48.860 --> 00:55:49.860
ALEX: The DoubleTree.

00:55:49.860 --> 00:55:50.480
VIRGINIA: The Dollar Tree.

00:55:50.480 --> 00:55:52.240
ALEX: I almost said Dollar Tree.

00:55:54.120 --> 00:55:55.160
VIRGINIA: Oh my goodness.

00:55:55.160 --> 00:55:55.940
VIRGINIA: All right.

00:55:55.940 --> 00:55:57.280
VIRGINIA: We're almost at the end of this, folks.

00:55:57.280 --> 00:55:57.640
VIRGINIA: All right.

00:55:57.640 --> 00:56:04.920
VIRGINIA: So Saturday, August 31st, we got up early because this was our last full day and we really wanted to have time for the day.

00:56:05.140 --> 00:56:11.780
VIRGINIA: So we had breakfast at the hotel and then this was the day that we decided to go back and give it a second try going to the British Museum.

00:56:11.780 --> 00:56:14.820
VIRGINIA: So we took the train there, went to the British Museum.

00:56:14.820 --> 00:56:15.540
VIRGINIA: It was cool.

00:56:15.540 --> 00:56:18.940
VIRGINIA: We saw lots of Egyptian things.

00:56:19.100 --> 00:56:22.680
VIRGINIA: I can't say that there are that many British things in the British Museum.

00:56:22.680 --> 00:56:23.160
ALEX: No.

00:56:23.160 --> 00:56:25.960
VIRGINIA: They're from other places that they have stolen.

00:56:25.960 --> 00:56:28.560
VIRGINIA: Yes.

00:56:28.560 --> 00:56:30.900
VIRGINIA: But it was interesting and we got to see the Rosetta Stone.

00:56:30.900 --> 00:56:31.540
ALEX: Pretty cool.

00:56:31.540 --> 00:56:33.160
VIRGINIA: Charles was super excited about.

00:56:33.240 --> 00:56:33.900
ALEX: Of course.

00:56:34.040 --> 00:56:35.120
ALEX: He's a history guy.

00:56:35.120 --> 00:56:35.720
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

00:56:35.720 --> 00:56:40.360
VIRGINIA: Then of course, I had to check out the museum store because you know how I love a museum store.

00:56:40.360 --> 00:56:47.260
VIRGINIA: Then while we were there, we saw that there was a cafe in the museum and that they had afternoon tea.

00:56:47.260 --> 00:56:47.800
VIRGINIA: Yes.

00:56:47.800 --> 00:56:53.440
VIRGINIA: So I said, what if we do one more afternoon tea while we're here?

00:56:53.440 --> 00:56:54.780
ALEX: I said yes immediately.

00:56:54.780 --> 00:56:56.440
VIRGINIA: Yes immediately.

00:56:56.440 --> 00:56:57.720
VIRGINIA: It was good.

00:56:57.720 --> 00:56:58.280
ALEX: Really good.

00:56:58.280 --> 00:57:01.160
VIRGINIA: It was not as good as the first two we had in Clermont.

00:57:02.060 --> 00:57:03.080
ALEX: But it was good.

00:57:03.320 --> 00:57:04.020
VIRGINIA: It was good.

00:57:04.020 --> 00:57:06.160
VIRGINIA: I was glad that we did one more tea.

00:57:06.160 --> 00:57:07.480
VIRGINIA: We wanted to see one more show.

00:57:07.480 --> 00:57:13.320
VIRGINIA: Like we kept looking at TodayTix thinking, let's squeeze one more show in because you and I love shows.

00:57:13.320 --> 00:57:14.620
VIRGINIA: Yes.

00:57:14.620 --> 00:57:23.660
VIRGINIA: We just weren't seeing any that we were excited enough about and we were realizing how early we were going to have to get up the next morning to go to the airport.

00:57:23.660 --> 00:57:28.500
VIRGINIA: So we just decided to call it an early night and go back to the hotel and get packed.

00:57:28.500 --> 00:57:33.980
VIRGINIA: So when we got back to the hotel, we decided let's figure out where we're going to have some dinner.

00:57:33.980 --> 00:57:40.660
VIRGINIA: Charles found a good pizzeria that was within walking distance, and it was called Santa Maria Pizzeria.

00:57:40.660 --> 00:57:47.580
VIRGINIA: I have to say, I did not hold out a whole lot of hope for good pizza in London, since we are such pizza snobs here.

00:57:47.580 --> 00:57:48.380
ALEX: Yeah.

00:57:48.380 --> 00:57:51.320
VIRGINIA: But this was really good.

00:57:51.320 --> 00:57:57.240
VIRGINIA: Perfect crust, I would say it definitely gives New York pizza a run for its money.

00:57:57.240 --> 00:57:58.200
VIRGINIA: It was delicious.

00:57:58.260 --> 00:57:59.660
ALEX: Oh, no.

00:57:59.660 --> 00:58:00.480
VIRGINIA: No, I thought it was really good.

00:58:00.480 --> 00:58:04.220
ALEX: No, we're just gonna, so let's not make them New Yorkers.

00:58:04.300 --> 00:58:04.840
VIRGINIA: Oh, no, no, no.

00:58:05.200 --> 00:58:06.920
VIRGINIA: It wasn't better then.

00:58:06.920 --> 00:58:08.220
VIRGINIA: It was just really good.

00:58:08.220 --> 00:58:13.200
VIRGINIA: And I think part of the reason it was good was because it was surprising that it was decent pizza.

00:58:14.420 --> 00:58:17.640
VIRGINIA: But anyway, it was a nice little walk from the hotel.

00:58:17.640 --> 00:58:19.060
VIRGINIA: The only downside to this meal is-

00:58:19.060 --> 00:58:21.020
ALEX: Oh my God, I remember this.

00:58:21.020 --> 00:58:22.040
ALEX: This was insane.

00:58:22.100 --> 00:58:23.300
VIRGINIA: Yeah, so this-

00:58:23.300 --> 00:58:24.740
ALEX: I just looked over and I'm like-

00:58:24.740 --> 00:58:28.380
VIRGINIA: So this restaurant was very inclusive.

00:58:28.380 --> 00:58:32.640
VIRGINIA: And they had some pride flags or something hanging outside.

00:58:32.640 --> 00:58:35.260
VIRGINIA: And some random guy walking past-

00:58:35.260 --> 00:58:36.160
ALEX: A biker.

00:58:36.160 --> 00:58:38.120
VIRGINIA: Yeah, he was on a bike.

00:58:38.120 --> 00:58:41.760
ALEX: He picked up a table and chucked it at the glass.

00:58:41.760 --> 00:58:42.580
VIRGINIA: At the window, yes.

00:58:42.580 --> 00:58:43.140
VIRGINIA: At the window.

00:58:43.140 --> 00:58:43.600
VIRGINIA: It was insane.

00:58:43.600 --> 00:58:51.200
VIRGINIA: And it seemed like it was because he was upset to see a pride flag, which was really disappointing to see in a major city like London.

00:58:51.480 --> 00:58:52.820
ALEX: I mean, it's London, but.

00:58:52.820 --> 00:59:01.240
VIRGINIA: I mean, yeah, but like in most major cities, that's not really a thing, you know, because like that is everywhere.

00:59:01.240 --> 00:59:05.620
VIRGINIA: And so it was totally normal for us to walk up and be like, oh, here's this pizza place.

00:59:05.620 --> 00:59:06.660
VIRGINIA: It looks amazing.

00:59:06.660 --> 00:59:10.080
VIRGINIA: And then it happened to have pride flags on it.

00:59:10.080 --> 00:59:13.580
VIRGINIA: And this guy picked up the, like one of the outdoor tables and chucked it at the window.

00:59:13.580 --> 00:59:17.320
VIRGINIA: Now, thank God, I don't think it broke the window.

00:59:17.320 --> 00:59:19.440
ALEX: If it did, then cops would have been called.

00:59:19.580 --> 00:59:22.080
VIRGINIA: Well, I mean, they should have called the cops anyway.

00:59:22.080 --> 00:59:24.080
VIRGINIA: But he was on a bike, so he did it.

00:59:24.080 --> 00:59:26.020
VIRGINIA: And then he like left.

00:59:26.020 --> 00:59:35.960
VIRGINIA: I think he broke a table or something, but he thankfully did not break the window, which is good because literally on the inside of the window, you know, were people eating inside like we were.

00:59:35.960 --> 00:59:38.000
VIRGINIA: There were tables right there.

00:59:38.000 --> 00:59:44.100
VIRGINIA: So you can only imagine what that could have done had the glass shattered onto these people who were sitting inside eating.

00:59:44.100 --> 00:59:48.240
VIRGINIA: Anyway, all that to say, it was really disappointing to see something like that happening.

00:59:48.400 --> 00:59:50.380
VIRGINIA: But it was a very good dinner.

00:59:50.380 --> 00:59:55.680
VIRGINIA: And I will put the link in the show notes because it was really good.

00:59:55.680 --> 00:59:57.340
VIRGINIA: So happy with that.

00:59:57.340 --> 01:00:02.040
VIRGINIA: Then finally, our departure day, Sunday, September 1st.

01:00:02.040 --> 01:00:05.720
VIRGINIA: I know Alex at this point was beginning to feel like we lived there.

01:00:05.720 --> 01:00:12.200
ALEX: No, like in the time that we spent there, it actually felt normal living there.

01:00:13.040 --> 01:00:16.420
ALEX: At that point, I was just like, yeah, I pretty much live here now.

01:00:16.420 --> 01:00:18.200
ALEX: I just got used to it really fast.

01:00:18.200 --> 01:00:19.500
VIRGINIA: Yeah, he was really enjoying it.

01:00:19.500 --> 01:00:23.700
VIRGINIA: But I thought all good things must come to an end.

01:00:23.700 --> 01:00:24.200
ALEX: Yeah.

01:00:24.200 --> 01:00:27.700
ALEX: So we got up around five and we took an Uber.

01:00:27.700 --> 01:00:28.960
ALEX: I was on time and-

01:00:28.960 --> 01:00:38.240
VIRGINIA: Yeah, I scheduled this Uber, which I would recommend if you're doing an early morning flight like that, use the schedule feature on the Uber because I knew in advance the Uber was going to be there.

01:00:38.240 --> 01:00:39.140
VIRGINIA: I wouldn't have to wait for it.

01:00:39.140 --> 01:00:42.600
VIRGINIA: It's like I knew exactly what time it was coming and they were on time.

01:00:42.600 --> 01:00:43.560
ALEX: Yeah.

01:00:43.560 --> 01:00:49.200
ALEX: We had a traditional English breakfast in the airport.

01:00:49.200 --> 01:00:53.820
ALEX: We had beans and toast and stuff and I got another Lego set.

01:00:54.500 --> 01:00:55.800
ALEX: It's like a London Lego set.

01:00:55.940 --> 01:00:58.000
VIRGINIA: Yeah, London themed Lego set.

01:00:58.000 --> 01:01:02.940
VIRGINIA: The breakfast we had was at a restaurant called The Curator and that was Terminal 3.

01:01:02.940 --> 01:01:06.520
VIRGINIA: If you're looking for a good breakfast in Terminal 3, I highly recommend.

01:01:06.520 --> 01:01:07.600
VIRGINIA: Security was fast.

01:01:07.600 --> 01:01:09.940
VIRGINIA: We didn't really have any trouble with that.

01:01:11.040 --> 01:01:12.340
ALEX: We got on the plane.

01:01:12.340 --> 01:01:15.160
ALEX: We took off and watched Harry Potter.

01:01:15.160 --> 01:01:16.440
VIRGINIA: Yeah, I watched Harry Potter.

01:01:16.440 --> 01:01:17.800
VIRGINIA: Were you watching Harry Potter too?

01:01:17.800 --> 01:01:19.240
ALEX: I think so.

01:01:19.720 --> 01:01:22.140
ALEX: We landed on time and that was it.

01:01:22.140 --> 01:01:23.160
ALEX: End of our trip.

01:01:23.160 --> 01:01:23.800
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

01:01:23.860 --> 01:01:24.860
VIRGINIA: We were sad it was over.

01:01:24.860 --> 01:01:28.060
VIRGINIA: Alex has been asking to go back ever since we got back.

01:01:28.060 --> 01:01:32.780
ALEX: It was honestly one of the coolest trips I've ever taken.

01:01:32.780 --> 01:01:42.660
ALEX: Aside from Disney, I wouldn't say a lot better than Disney, but I think this was on the same level as going to Disney for the first time.

01:01:42.660 --> 01:01:43.000
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

01:01:43.000 --> 01:01:45.360
ALEX: Because it was just that everything was amazing for me.

01:01:45.360 --> 01:01:46.780
ALEX: Yeah.

01:01:46.780 --> 01:01:51.660
ALEX: I don't know the same about you, if it's the same for you, but I would definitely go back or maybe.

01:01:51.660 --> 01:01:53.820
VIRGINIA: Oh, I for sure would go back.

01:01:53.820 --> 01:01:54.500
ALEX: No, yeah.

01:01:54.500 --> 01:01:55.660
VIRGINIA: No hesitation.

01:01:56.360 --> 01:02:02.560
VIRGINIA: Well, I guess I would say my only hesitation is there are a lot of places in the world I still want to go.

01:02:02.560 --> 01:02:07.600
VIRGINIA: And so I would love to go back to London, but there's also a lot of other places I would like to go to.

01:02:08.300 --> 01:02:10.540
ALEX: But London for me was just an amazing trip.

01:02:10.540 --> 01:02:11.720
ALEX: I loved it so much.

01:02:11.720 --> 01:02:12.120
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

01:02:12.120 --> 01:02:18.680
ALEX: Just think, I just like, sometimes I will go on my phone and I'll just look up London on TikTok and I'll just start scrolling through all these other things.

01:02:18.680 --> 01:02:20.360
ALEX: So I was kind of obsessed at that point.

01:02:20.360 --> 01:02:27.960
VIRGINIA: So I did put the idea into Alex's head that when he goes to college that he should consider doing a study abroad semester or something.

01:02:27.960 --> 01:02:34.780
VIRGINIA: And that could be, that could be a lot of fun, especially if you're majoring in acting because there's lots of opportunities there for that.

01:02:34.780 --> 01:02:35.040
VIRGINIA: Okay.

01:02:35.040 --> 01:02:39.040
VIRGINIA: I made a couple of notes about some things, like differences that I noticed in London.

01:02:39.040 --> 01:02:42.700
VIRGINIA: So these are just like a random list of notes.

01:02:42.700 --> 01:02:50.900
VIRGINIA: But number one, when I was watching the news in London, I noticed that a lot of the anchors wore patterns, which we do not see here.

01:02:50.900 --> 01:02:51.660
VIRGINIA: Like all of the anchors-

01:02:51.660 --> 01:02:52.120
VIRGINIA: Wait, hold on.

01:02:52.120 --> 01:02:54.520
ALEX: Why were you paying attention to the patterns?

01:02:54.520 --> 01:02:56.660
VIRGINIA: Just because it stood out to me as being different.

01:02:56.660 --> 01:03:03.060
VIRGINIA: So when I watched the news here, all of the anchors wear solid colors because it's just like a cleaner look.

01:03:03.060 --> 01:03:08.860
VIRGINIA: And I noticed they were just like all wearing patterns and it just stood out to me as being not what I was used to.

01:03:08.860 --> 01:03:16.080
VIRGINIA: The subway, aka the underground and the overground, there were hardly any homeless people on it.

01:03:16.080 --> 01:03:16.760
VIRGINIA: I noticed that.

01:03:16.760 --> 01:03:18.360
ALEX: Pretty clean subways.

01:03:18.360 --> 01:03:27.440
VIRGINIA: Because I think you have to tap in and tap out when you ride the subway because you tap in and then wherever you tap out, it charges you based on how far you went.

01:03:27.440 --> 01:03:28.900
VIRGINIA: And maybe that contributed to it.

01:03:29.880 --> 01:03:33.360
VIRGINIA: But yeah, hardly any homeless people on the trains.

01:03:33.360 --> 01:03:38.640
VIRGINIA: They have fabric seats on the trains, which were comfy, comfy, but weird, right?

01:03:38.640 --> 01:03:42.220
VIRGINIA: Like I was thinking the whole time, like how do you never do this?

01:03:42.220 --> 01:03:44.860
VIRGINIA: New York could never like how do you, how would you clean those?

01:03:44.860 --> 01:03:48.460
VIRGINIA: Like if somebody spills something or whatever.

01:03:48.460 --> 01:03:53.920
VIRGINIA: Here's one thing I really did not like about their trains is that only about 50 percent of them are air-conditioned.

01:03:55.380 --> 01:03:59.120
VIRGINIA: So yeah, and in New York, all of our trains are air-conditioned.

01:03:59.120 --> 01:04:05.460
VIRGINIA: If it's not air-conditioned, it's because the air-conditioning is broken and it's usually isolated to a single car or something.

01:04:05.460 --> 01:04:09.680
VIRGINIA: So you know to go to a different car and then you'll have air-conditioning.

01:04:09.680 --> 01:04:13.320
VIRGINIA: But this was like you had a 50-50 chance of having air-condition.

01:04:13.320 --> 01:04:27.700
VIRGINIA: The other thing I noticed that is like in New York, a lot of times when we go somewhere, we get on the train and we can either get where we're going just by riding on the one train and then just walking from wherever we happen to get off, or maybe we transfer once.

01:04:27.700 --> 01:04:39.240
VIRGINIA: In London, based on the way that their train patterns and their tracks are set up, I would say we were consistently transferring like two to three times to get where we were going, just because you had to.

01:04:39.240 --> 01:04:46.620
VIRGINIA: So we'd ride a couple of stops, get on a different train, ride a couple of stops, get on a different train, and that was just different to me.

01:04:46.620 --> 01:04:48.560
VIRGINIA: The buses were very nice.

01:04:49.320 --> 01:05:00.820
VIRGINIA: They had USB charging, so you could charge your phone if you wanted, and they were two levels, which was kind of cool, and they were very clean, and I really liked the buses.

01:05:00.820 --> 01:05:04.640
VIRGINIA: A lot better, I thought, than our New York City buses, by far.

01:05:04.640 --> 01:05:11.660
ALEX: Although we got pretty lucky, we didn't have any bad run-ins, except for a few loud teenagers, and that was it.

01:05:11.720 --> 01:05:19.240
ALEX: But, you know, usually those buses are supposed to be like kind of shady at night, but we didn't have that bad of an experience.

01:05:19.240 --> 01:05:20.420
VIRGINIA: No, they were really clean.

01:05:20.420 --> 01:05:21.720
VIRGINIA: I felt very safe on them.

01:05:21.720 --> 01:05:23.480
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

01:05:23.480 --> 01:05:24.620
VIRGINIA: Public bathrooms.

01:05:24.620 --> 01:05:29.040
VIRGINIA: There are a lot more public bathrooms there than there are here in the city.

01:05:29.040 --> 01:05:31.980
VIRGINIA: We hardly have any public bathrooms in New York City.

01:05:31.980 --> 01:05:36.560
VIRGINIA: You basically have to go into a Starbucks, and go into a hotel, whatever.

01:05:36.560 --> 01:05:37.800
VIRGINIA: There's just not a whole lot.

01:05:37.800 --> 01:05:44.120
VIRGINIA: So there, I noticed that they did have more, and some of them you had to pay to go into, which I would love to have here.

01:05:44.120 --> 01:05:51.540
VIRGINIA: I would willingly have bathrooms where I had to pay 50 cents just to go in, because those were very clean.

01:05:51.540 --> 01:05:56.060
VIRGINIA: Like, they had staff there cleaning it the entire time because you had to pay to go in there.

01:05:56.060 --> 01:05:58.720
VIRGINIA: It was like they paid to keep it up.

01:05:58.720 --> 01:06:00.660
VIRGINIA: The toilet paper was all single sheets.

01:06:00.660 --> 01:06:08.680
VIRGINIA: I don't know if you noticed that, but like, when I went into the bathroom, it wasn't like a roll where you could pull off as much as you needed.

01:06:08.780 --> 01:06:11.160
VIRGINIA: It was just like a piece at a time.

01:06:11.160 --> 01:06:13.660
VIRGINIA: So I was not used to that.

01:06:13.660 --> 01:06:15.540
VIRGINIA: I was a little surprised.

01:06:15.540 --> 01:06:19.460
VIRGINIA: None of the lids on the toilets that I came across had soft close feature.

01:06:19.460 --> 01:06:22.860
VIRGINIA: So you go to put the lid down and it would slam down.

01:06:22.860 --> 01:06:25.920
VIRGINIA: And so I just was surprised by that.

01:06:25.920 --> 01:06:32.240
VIRGINIA: And then there were no auto flush toilets, which I mean, maybe there are some there, but I did not see any.

01:06:32.240 --> 01:06:34.580
VIRGINIA: They were all like a wave at a sensor.

01:06:34.580 --> 01:06:36.800
VIRGINIA: You like waved at it to make it flush.

01:06:37.320 --> 01:06:43.240
VIRGINIA: Whereas here in the US., a lot of them are auto flush, which a lot of people do not like, especially little kids.

01:06:43.240 --> 01:06:49.180
VIRGINIA: Little kids get scared of the auto flush toilet because they think like the toilet is going to eat them or something.

01:06:49.180 --> 01:06:51.420
VIRGINIA: So I liked that you had to wave at it.

01:06:51.420 --> 01:06:53.340
VIRGINIA: It took me a minute to understand what I had to do.

01:06:53.340 --> 01:06:55.020
VIRGINIA: But anyway, I thought that was good.

01:06:55.020 --> 01:07:08.100
VIRGINIA: Just some general things I notice is that pretty much every restaurant we went in, the tables were really close together, kind of packed in there, which is not something I mean, I guess I'm used to it in some ways here in the city.

01:07:08.100 --> 01:07:11.700
ALEX: I mean, then again, we recently went to another tea place.

01:07:11.700 --> 01:07:11.960
ALEX: Yeah.

01:07:11.960 --> 01:07:17.620
VIRGINIA: So we did have tea recently here in New York, and we were at a place where the tables were very close together.

01:07:17.620 --> 01:07:19.520
VIRGINIA: So I'm not saying that doesn't happen here.

01:07:19.520 --> 01:07:20.260
VIRGINIA: It's New York City.

01:07:20.260 --> 01:07:21.000
VIRGINIA: It's tight.

01:07:21.000 --> 01:07:21.980
VIRGINIA: There are tables close.

01:07:21.980 --> 01:07:28.280
VIRGINIA: It was just something that I consistently noticed at pretty much every restaurant we went there was how close the tables were together.

01:07:28.280 --> 01:07:39.440
VIRGINIA: And then the last thing I wrote down that I noticed was, I mean, I know when you go into a department store, even here in the US, like if you walk through the perfume section, it's perfumey smelling, right?

01:07:39.440 --> 01:07:43.720
VIRGINIA: But they generally only spray you if you want to be sprayed.

01:07:43.720 --> 01:07:47.740
VIRGINIA: And what I noticed there was, it's not like they were attacked spraying you.

01:07:47.740 --> 01:07:54.800
VIRGINIA: I didn't get sprayed against my will, but it seemed like they were spraying the perfume even when people weren't walking past.

01:07:54.800 --> 01:08:02.600
VIRGINIA: And so the overwhelming scent of perfume, if you were anywhere near the perfume section of a store, was way too much.

01:08:02.700 --> 01:08:05.960
VIRGINIA: If you have allergies of any kind, I did not like it.

01:08:05.960 --> 01:08:10.200
VIRGINIA: And I'm normally somebody who's fine smelling, a little perfume walking through a department store.

01:08:10.200 --> 01:08:13.580
VIRGINIA: But every time I went through one there, I was like, get me out of here.

01:08:13.580 --> 01:08:15.140
VIRGINIA: It was just too much.

01:08:15.140 --> 01:08:16.800
VIRGINIA: So those were my general notes.

01:08:17.040 --> 01:08:28.180
VIRGINIA: Any other general notes you want to mention about things that you found that were different or that you liked or you really didn't like or just any final thoughts from Alex?

01:08:28.180 --> 01:08:32.220
ALEX: Honestly, it was like, it was basically just New York for me.

01:08:32.220 --> 01:08:35.600
ALEX: Because New York, I've lived in it my whole life.

01:08:35.600 --> 01:08:36.500
ALEX: I was born here.

01:08:36.500 --> 01:08:38.840
ALEX: It gets boring after a while.

01:08:38.840 --> 01:08:42.280
ALEX: Not much to see, like tourists.

01:08:42.280 --> 01:08:44.040
ALEX: But this place was new.

01:08:44.040 --> 01:08:45.480
VIRGINIA: No, but please come visit our city.

01:08:45.480 --> 01:08:47.080
ALEX: Oh, yeah, please do.

01:08:47.080 --> 01:08:49.180
ALEX: Like, you keep the economy rolling for us.

01:08:49.180 --> 01:08:56.440
ALEX: But London was kind of just like New York, except like sometimes quieter or sometimes cleaner, sometimes more dangerous.

01:08:56.920 --> 01:08:57.760
VIRGINIA: Shorter buildings.

01:08:57.760 --> 01:08:59.120
ALEX: Shorter buildings, definitely.

01:08:59.120 --> 01:08:59.900
VIRGINIA: More historic.

01:08:59.900 --> 01:09:02.140
ALEX: A lot less hectic, more historic.

01:09:02.140 --> 01:09:05.320
ALEX: They were really built upon their history.

01:09:05.320 --> 01:09:06.840
ALEX: They kept it classy.

01:09:06.840 --> 01:09:09.520
ALEX: And it was just a really cool experience.

01:09:09.520 --> 01:09:14.780
ALEX: And I really felt like I was living there at one point, which is why I was super upset while we were leaving.

01:09:14.780 --> 01:09:16.720
ALEX: And I would love to go back there.

01:09:16.720 --> 01:09:23.440
ALEX: And if I do go back there one day and I love it to the point where I'm like, okay, this place is amazing.

01:09:23.760 --> 01:09:26.600
ALEX: I'm going to try to do this for college or something.

01:09:26.600 --> 01:09:32.400
ALEX: Or maybe if I really love it, per chance I could buy a house there.

01:09:32.400 --> 01:09:34.800
ALEX: It's just, I loved it there.

01:09:35.140 --> 01:09:38.020
ALEX: Like from that short time, I was like, wow, it's great.

01:09:38.200 --> 01:09:41.940
VIRGINIA: I will say it's probably been at least every two weeks or so.

01:09:41.940 --> 01:09:43.880
VIRGINIA: Alex says, can we go back to London?

01:09:43.880 --> 01:09:46.380
ALEX: Yes, like once every two weeks.

01:09:47.540 --> 01:09:49.380
ALEX: Anyways, that's it.

01:09:49.600 --> 01:09:53.460
VIRGINIA: All right, well, this was so much fun recounting our trip.

01:09:53.460 --> 01:09:58.720
VIRGINIA: Like I said, today's January 1st, and we obviously went at the very end of August.

01:09:58.720 --> 01:10:04.960
VIRGINIA: So we have procrastinated about recording this, but luckily my notes for our trip were very detailed.

01:10:04.960 --> 01:10:11.120
VIRGINIA: So we were able to sit down here and talk through it, but it's kind of like, it took me back.

01:10:11.120 --> 01:10:14.200
ALEX: Recording is a little longer than we hoped for.

01:10:14.200 --> 01:10:18.760
VIRGINIA: Yes, we were aiming for a shorter recording than this, but you know what?

01:10:19.040 --> 01:10:20.500
VIRGINIA: It is what it needed to be.

01:10:20.820 --> 01:10:30.080
VIRGINIA: We went through all the things we wanted to talk about, and this is going to be the only episode today because this is the final episode of Season 3.

01:10:30.080 --> 01:10:32.740
ALEX: Oh, I'm the final episode of Season 3, the finale.

01:10:32.740 --> 01:10:33.780
VIRGINIA: It's the season finale.

01:10:33.780 --> 01:10:37.760
ALEX: Yeah, you just end off with the best guest, seriously.

01:10:37.760 --> 01:10:40.360
VIRGINIA: Well, you're a co-host.

01:10:40.360 --> 01:10:41.680
ALEX: I am?

01:10:41.680 --> 01:10:43.680
VIRGINIA: I'm going to mark you as a co-host for this episode.

01:10:43.680 --> 01:10:44.400
ALEX: Oh, cool.

01:10:44.440 --> 01:10:44.560
VIRGINIA: Yeah.

01:10:44.560 --> 01:10:45.060
ALEX: Okay.

01:10:45.060 --> 01:10:46.140
ALEX: I'm a co-host now, guys.

01:10:46.140 --> 01:10:46.620
VIRGINIA: I do.

01:10:46.820 --> 01:10:51.080
VIRGINIA: When you do intros and outros for other episodes, I mark you as a co-host.

01:10:51.620 --> 01:10:54.880
VIRGINIA: Then before when you've been on the show, I've marked you as a guest.

01:10:54.880 --> 01:10:57.420
VIRGINIA: So you can be co-host for this episode.

01:10:57.420 --> 01:10:59.080
ALEX: Huzzah.

01:10:59.080 --> 01:10:59.820
VIRGINIA: Huzzah.

01:10:59.820 --> 01:11:00.440
VIRGINIA: All right.

01:11:00.440 --> 01:11:02.480
VIRGINIA: That is all for today then.

01:11:02.480 --> 01:11:04.640
ALEX: Thank you for having me on to the show again.

01:11:04.640 --> 01:11:07.100
VIRGINIA: Thank you for coming and now you have to go to bed.

01:11:07.100 --> 01:11:07.480
VIRGINIA: Yeah, I do.

01:11:07.480 --> 01:11:08.780
VIRGINIA: You have school tomorrow.

01:11:08.780 --> 01:11:09.960
ALEX: Oh, God.

01:11:09.960 --> 01:11:11.140
ALEX: Winter break just ended.

01:11:11.140 --> 01:11:11.560
VIRGINIA: I know.

01:11:11.560 --> 01:11:12.600
ALEX: I need a minute, okay?

01:11:12.600 --> 01:11:13.260
VIRGINIA: I know.

01:11:13.260 --> 01:11:13.920
VIRGINIA: Thank you, Alex.

01:11:14.140 --> 01:11:15.320
VIRGINIA: I love you.

01:11:15.320 --> 01:11:16.060
ALEX: I love you too.

01:11:16.060 --> 01:11:16.900
ALEX: You're my favorite.

01:11:16.900 --> 01:11:18.080
VIRGINIA: You're my favorite.

01:11:18.080 --> 01:11:19.600
ALEX: Yeah.

01:11:19.600 --> 01:11:20.240
VIRGINIA: All right.

01:11:20.240 --> 01:11:20.880
VIRGINIA: Goodbye.

01:11:20.880 --> 01:11:23.080
VIRGINIA: Goodbye.

01:11:23.080 --> 01:11:25.860
VIRGINIA: Thank you all for sticking with me for another season.

01:11:25.860 --> 01:11:34.200
VIRGINIA: During the rest of the January break, I hope you will visit the website, which is whereilongtobepodcast.com and get some time to catch up on past episodes.

01:11:34.200 --> 01:11:53.400
VIRGINIA: Please also make sure to follow along with me on Instagram as I head down to Walt Disney World, January 22nd through 27th with my girl gang, the Disney dames, which besides me includes Jeanette, Maria and Nancy and our newest dame, Chrissy, who represents the Philly branch.

01:11:53.400 --> 01:12:02.900
VIRGINIA: If you or someone you know has a trip coming up for yourself, and would like to be a trip report guest, I am currently looking for people traveling in April 2025 and beyond.

01:12:02.900 --> 01:12:08.880
VIRGINIA: The link to submit to be a guest is on the website and also in the show notes for this week's episode.

01:12:08.880 --> 01:12:18.160
VIRGINIA: I need at least a month's notice in advance when someone submits to be a guest, so I recommend if you are interested, please go ahead and submit today.

01:12:18.160 --> 01:12:18.880
VIRGINIA: All right.

01:12:18.880 --> 01:12:21.140
VIRGINIA: That is a wrap on season 3.

01:12:21.140 --> 01:12:26.520
VIRGINIA: Until you hear from me again on February 3rd, keep daydreaming about where you long to be.