Highlights

• Family bonding time with my dad
• Excellent hotels and locations
• Amazing and seemingly endless things to see and do
• Drama free flights and airport transfers
• Cabs could hold all 5 of us plus our luggage! (Kids favorite story)
• Unexpectedly excellent weather
• Riding upstairs on the bus

Lowlights

• I messed up the suite upgrade cost in points
• Should have booked our room under my wife’s name instead of both rooms under my dad’s name to get points and elite night credits
• Dad was under the weather for a few days
• Didn’t get the airplane seat assignment we paid for

Wins

• Excellent redemption values on both hotels
• Amazing help from Perpetua with our reservations at Marriott Park Lane
• Oyster card was cheap, simple and convenient
• Excellent price on airfare
• • Received seat assignment refund after sending email complaint

• Lunch and dessert at Gatwick restaurant using Priority Pass

Takeaway

As I wrote up the diary posts I was shocked at just how much we were able to do in such a short time. There’s no wonder my dad wasn’t feeling great by the 4th day. We had worn him out!

This trip was as much about seeing the sights as it was about bonding with my dad. The kids don’t get many chances to see him so it was great to watch them get to know each other during the course of the trip.

For my dad, this trip was really eye opening for him. While he’s done a lot of travel within the US (we went on two separate family cross country trips when I was a kid) he hasn’t spent much time outside the US other than a trip to play golf at St Andrews in Scotland in 1999. For that trip he was mostly tagging along and didn’t get to do much sight seeing or experience much as far as being in a foreign country.

He is really a student of history and understood and appreciated the significance of what was around him in London. When he felt under the weather during the middle part of the trip he began to realize that if he wants to do more travel like this he needs to do it sooner rather than later. In fact, when he got home he started planning a Rhine River cruise with his wife. We may have successfully infected him with the travel bug!

Overall the trip went quite smoothly. With the exception of the seat assignments, I had nothing but great things to say about Norwegian. We got nonstop round trip flights to London for about $500 per person which is a pretty fantastic price during school vacation! Having a limited movie selection on an 8 hour flight is a “problem” firmly within the bounds of a first world problem.

The Mayfair Holiday Inn hotel we stayed in for the first 4 nights was in an amazing location for what we wanted to do. While the breakfast wasn’t free, it still worked for us very well. Getting those rooms on points saved us a lot of money.

The Marriott Park Lane where we stayed the final 5 nights was absolutely amazing. To be able to stay in a suite in such a luxurious hotel was quite a treat! The base rooms both got the 5th night free on points. I completely messed up the upgrade using points, but paying for the upgrade in cash turned out to be reasonably priced. We saved about $500/night per room by using points. The suite upgrade was about $300/night but it was 100% worth it. It was probably our favorite suites we’ve stayed in so far based on the relative size and location!

We couldn’t have been happier with the help we got arranging our reservations, either. Perpetua helped make sure the trip went smoothly and was memorable for all the right reasons. Everything about ours stay was perfect and we appreciated every minute of it. It also reminded me that the reservations people at many hotels have a lot of leeway with making arrangements, especially at higher end hotels. If we ever have questions or special requests I always try to contact them now. While I don’t expect anything from our requests, I’m often surprised.

As far as the sights and activities, we really did see a lot. While we spent many of the days going in separate directions, we also spent a lot of time together. The boys spent a lot of time in the parks, though they really enjoyed that. They enjoyed the museums they went to as well, especially the Science Museum. My dad and I really enjoyed most of the museums as well. We are both less interested in the museums focused on artifacts (British Museum, most art museums) and enjoy the ones that tell more of a story (Museum of London, Globe Theater). Luckily London has museums for all tastes!

The location of the hotels made it super easy to get around. I’m glad we didn’t go to some of the lower priced options we had originally considered, The hassle of getting around from those places was definitely not worth the cost savings, especially since we managed to get such great redemptions on the hotels we did stay at.

Overall it was an action packed trip that went very smoothly even though we played most days by ear. That worked better for us in the end. With so many things to do, we were never short on options so we could choose what we wanted to do. This included the side trip to Cambridge which was an awesome and memorable experience on its own. The trip opened my dad up to doing more travel, too which I view as a big win all by itself!