{"id":55156,"date":"2026-06-14T15:49:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T20:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=55156"},"modified":"2026-06-14T15:49:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T20:49:57","slug":"london-2026-day-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=55156","title":{"rendered":"London 2026 Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s time for summer vacation with the kids!!! We’ went to Asia last summer, and this summer we will be flying the other direction and going to Europe.<\/p>\n

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\nInto the Uber we go. We have a late flight out of Austin at 10:30pm.<\/p>\n

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\nThe airport is pretty empty. We are the last scheduled flight tonight out of the airport. Basically no line at baggage check…kids are already crazy.<\/p>\n

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\nEasy peasy, dropped off luggage and now we head to security.<\/p>\n

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\nLittle KL points.<\/p>\n

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\nThese kids are crazy.<\/p>\n

And boom just like that, we were through security. Literally no one in line ahead of us as we walked up to the Pre Check line. Wow…now we’ve got 2 hours to kill before we start boarding.<\/p>\n

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\nWe walked to our gate, most restaurants were closed or closing. So we had to walk all the way back to the center of the airport and get some alcoholic drinks at The Salt Lick.<\/p>\n

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\n3 shots worth of drinks at the airport, yeah that’ll be $60!!! Inflation is a bitch. Also, airport prices in general are a bitch.<\/p>\n

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\nFound our little spot, sat down and got cozy…then a family came and sat next to us and were coughing up a storm, so we decided to move.<\/p>\n

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\nMuch better.<\/p>\n

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\nRL brought a watch along for the trip…except, the battery is dead and she didn’t notice until now…<\/p>\n

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\nOur airplane had a mechanical issue where they had to reset the issue by starting the engine. Fortunately, that seemed to have solved it and we boarded only about 20 min late. Flying Premium Economy this time. 9.5 hours to London from Austin. the business class tickets shot up right after the Iran war started. It was just too much to justify for an under 10 hour flight, so these will do just fine.<\/p>\n

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\nAirplane sock gang.<\/p>\n

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\nAustin, see you back again in 3 weeks.<\/p>\n

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\nThe sleep mask from the airplane matches his hoodie perfectly.<\/p>\n

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\nAlright, it’s almost midnight, let’s get to bed. None of us slept well. The girls were probably too excited to sleep well, and every time they woke up, they also woke me up to ask me a question so I spent the whole flight getting woken up repeatedly.<\/p>\n

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\nActually, I take that back. Little KL actually slept the entire flight and woke up fairly refreshed just before landing.<\/p>\n

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\nBumpy ride on the way down into London. Uh oh, CL is feeling sick and got a throw up bag.<\/p>\n

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\nOh shit….PL is feeling sick with a throw up bag too.<\/p>\n

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\nLittle KL looked outside his window and pointed out the Tower Bridge.<\/p>\n

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\nCome on girls, let’s hang on, we are almost on the ground.<\/p>\n

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\nToo late….poor girl. Literally puked with less than like 30 seconds to go.<\/p>\n

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\nPoor baba now has to hold this bag of puke until we get to the terminal.<\/p>\n

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\nCL spent a while looking for her regular socks, then at last finally realized that she had stuffed them really deep down in her shoes.<\/p>\n

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\nDid not expect this. I know Heathrow is trying to expand, but did not expect to be disembarking via staircase to a bus.<\/p>\n

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\nFrom the ground, the 787 engine looks absolutely massive! It looks almost as big as the plane’s fuselage.<\/p>\n

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\nNow finally in the actual terminal.<\/p>\n

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\nWe got to immigration, and we went straight to the family with children line where we were the first in line. Again, couldn’t have been any faster!<\/p>\n

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\nExcited to be here, but really tired. All of our luggage made it!!<\/p>\n

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\nHeading to the tube to take us into central London. The kids know we are going to Paris, but they don’t know we are also visiting London this trip. They still think we are about to take the train to connect to Paris. Hah.<\/p>\n

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\nLook, blue sky here in London. Though, it’s supposed to rain later today and tomorrow as well.<\/p>\n

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\nAbout an hour to get into central London. LOL, everyone’s tired…except for PL I guess.<\/p>\n

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\nSuper long escalator up to the surface.<\/p>\n

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\nAhhh, this feels very familiar. We got above ground and CL immediately said that she loves London.<\/p>\n

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\nHey, we ate at that restaurant behind RL 4 years ago.<\/p>\n

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\nLooks about right for London.<\/p>\n

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\nAll trip so far, shoelaces keeps on coming undone…sigh.<\/p>\n

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\nPassed this at first but then eventually found the little alley that our airbnb is located off of.<\/p>\n

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\nCute. Love those barrel convex windows.<\/p>\n

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\nLet’s see how it looks inside.<\/p>\n

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\nThis is what $1,365.75 a night gets you in central London right by Trafalgar Square. It’s very cool inside and we are all a fan.<\/p>\n

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\nLook at this old timey toilet!<\/p>\n

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\nThe house is on multiple levels, and it even has a basement, which actually is my favorite part of the place.<\/p>\n

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\nDining room in basement.<\/p>\n

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\nCool, a pavement skylight.<\/p>\n

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\nThis part of the basement has the kitchen and is actually under the sidewalk outside. Love the dome shaped kitchen.<\/p>\n

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\nThen at the other side of the kitchen there’s a tiny low hallway that leads to a TV den.<\/p>\n

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\nHow awesome to watch TV in here for the kids. The TV is on the right side, not shown.<\/p>\n

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\nBack to ground floor and this leads to second floor. The kids are already trying to get the ants out of their pants.<\/p>\n

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\nMe and RL will sleep in this room. The floors are small so each floor only houses one single bedroom along with ensuite bathroom.<\/p>\n

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\nThen up to third floor.<\/p>\n

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\nThe girls will take this room. Those two doors leads to a toilet and a shower.<\/p>\n

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\nNow up to 4th floor.<\/p>\n

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\nThis will be Little KL’s room. He was the first one up here and he called it….then it led to a lot of fighting amongst the siblings who all wanted this room. Finally it’s been decided that LKL will get last pick of the room when we get to Paris since he got first pick here. Two\/Thirds of parenting is just playing mediator and trying to prepose scenarios where all kids are either mollified, equally happy, or equally unhappy.<\/p>\n

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\nFrom LKL’s room, there’s yet another staircase that leads up to the rooftop.<\/p>\n

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\nTada! A little rooftop patio. We should definitely try to have a family meal or coffee up here sometime.<\/p>\n

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\nIt’s late afternoon around 4ish, we should probably go get something to eat before the pubs start getting busy with the drinkers.<\/p>\n

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\nThis was the first pub RL and I ate\/drank at 4 years ago when we came here, it’ll be the first pub this time as well.<\/p>\n

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\nLet’s do this!! They even had a kids menu.<\/p>\n

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\nTired, but happy to finally be here.<\/p>\n

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\nCouldn’t decide on a beer, so flight of beer it is then.<\/p>\n

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\nStill tired. We are all fading really badly right now.<\/p>\n

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\nNurse us back to a better energy state, food.<\/p>\n

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\nThe fish and chips are soooo good here.<\/p>\n

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\nSteak for me.<\/p>\n

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\nThe poster\/sticker lined staircase down to the restrooms.<\/p>\n

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\nNow that we’ve got food in us, let’s stock up some food for later tonight when we get hungry again due to jetlag.<\/p>\n

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\nA Tesco Express just about 3min walk from our airbnb, nice.<\/p>\n

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\nAlso some liquor.<\/p>\n

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\nDropped the food off and now a quick around Covent Garden. RL and PL wanted to go visit Uniqlo…<\/p>\n

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\nAhhh yes. We’ll come here soon to eat I’m sure.<\/p>\n

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\nHey, I remember drinking at that pub last time!!<\/p>\n

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\nI’ver had one of the original cobblestone background photos on my phone for years and years. The kids wanted to recreate a photo for my background, but this time with them in it. Well, here we go…except CL needs to work on her smiles.<\/p>\n

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\nIs that not the prettiest TK Maxx (UK’s TJ Max) store ever?<\/p>\n

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\nIn Uniqlo, where I looked up in the atrium and saw some of the largest single pane skylights EVER. I guess they must not have hail or strong storms here.<\/p>\n

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\n3 floors of clothes, lots of shopping to be had. And lots of shopping indeed. We spent something like 450 pounds, which is like $600!!!! I don’t even think we bought that much clothes for the kids!! RL said it kills two birds with one stone, the kids needed clothes and now they feel like they got souvenirs from buying them here.<\/p>\n

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\nBack to our airbnb after destroying Uniqlo.<\/p>\n

\"\"We come back to find the one fatal flaw of our airbnb, the internet speed is back from late 1990s. It’s literally a crawl…I’m surprised we can even stream videos at all. The download sucks shit, but I can live with it, but the upload is truly despicable along with the shitty latency. This speed is so slow it’s going to cause a lot of trouble for me uploading photos needed for the blog. And not even that, this means I won’t be able to do video conference calls for my work either…fuck. Tried resetting the router and nothing helped, I’ve messaged airbnb host…but maybe it just sucks and can’t be fixed. I’ll either need to suck up my bandwith using my hotpot on my phone or go upload at a cafe with wifi somewhere.<\/p>\n

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\nOur haul from the Tesco earlier.<\/p>\n

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\nSeems like the building that our airbnb is in is over 300 year old.<\/p>\n

We have Westminster Abbey reservations tomorrow morning at 10:30am. We made sure to stay up really light in the hope that we’ll be able to sleep through the night so we all went to bed around midnight…except as I was trying to go to bed, my phone went off and it turns out the alarm had gone off at our house in Austin due to a motion sensor. I looked on video and didn’t see anything so seemed like it’s a false alarm. Reset the alarm…hoped for the best, and tried to go to sleep.<\/p>\n

To be continued at London 2026 Day 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s time for summer vacation with the kids!!! We’ went to Asia last summer, and this summer we will be flying the other direction and going to Europe. Into the Uber we go. We have a late flight out of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":55264,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-55156","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/55156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55156"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/55156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55727,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/55156\/revisions\/55727"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/55264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}