The day before you leave for a two-week trip is always a day for dreaming (and cleaning, packing, and scurrying) no matter what day of the week it is. Today happens to be a day like that. Tomorrow evening we catch the red-eye from Philadelphia Airport to Heathrow – London here we come!
As you can imagine, I’ve been working feverishly on our itinerary this weekend, celebrating our country’s independence by planning a trip back to the land whose “tyranny” we escaped. I’m still filling in some blanks for the later part of the trip when we’ll leave London and travel to Bristol, Oxford, and Windsor, but the London portion is pretty well mapped out. As I was working I periodically hopped on Twitter to ask questions of the many travel people I am connected with there and I got a great suggestion from Lisa of The World Is Calling (her blog is my latest crush – I think her husband takes the dreamy photos and I love her fun, friendly tone). She recommended I look at Fat Tire Bike Tours and once I did I knew that this would be the perfect thing for us.
I’ve written about how the last time I was in London Tommy and I experienced the double decker buses – how riding on them shifted my perspective and made me see the city in an entirely different way. I’m really looking forward to that happening again on the Royal London Bike Tour as we see attractions and parks I’ve visited before from the seat of a bicycle. We’ll start just north of Hyde Park, lunch in Trafalgar Square, with stops such as Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and Big Ben. It’s a perfect way for the boys to cover a lot of territory and get a sense of the city. They wouldn’t enjoy taking individual tours of all the monuments, museums, and churches we’ll see but will love biking to them, getting a quick overview from the guide, and then moving on.
Other plans for London include learning about Ancient Greece and Egypt at the British Museum, spending a morning touring the Tower of London, riding a boat to Greenwich, and enjoying high tea at Fortnum and Mason. But I think that it’s the bike ride I’m looking forward to most. I can’t wait to experience a city I know and love in a new way.
So what are your Monday dreams? Please feel free to share them below. Questions? See About Monday Dreaming.
Photo courtesy of markhillary via Flickr.
I've taken with my children and those I want to take. Explore and you'll find family travel tips, information about vacation destinations, and lots of stories about our adventures! 
So glad, Mara, that I could help you out! We adored our Fat Tire bike tour through the parks and past the major sites of London…but we were newbies. Eager to hear what the more experienced think! Your trip leaves me with a Monday dream of a return to England, and in particular, exploring the smaller villages and Lake District. Rolling, green hills…*sigh*
Mara! Just checking in on your blog and realizing that we will be in England at the same time. We leave later this week for two weeks….part of the time in the countryside and the rest in London. Wouldn’t it be funny to bump into each other? Have a great time! Love the idea of a bike tour. Off to check out the site you mentioned. We loved our Beligian bike trip earlier this year and talked about wanting to do something similar with our kids, but we may need to wait just a bit longer for our daughter to be ready for an outing like that.