{"id":2607,"date":"2017-08-02T12:09:39","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T16:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sunflowerit.ca\/travel\/auto-draft\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T15:07:40","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T19:07:40","slug":"winding-down-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sunflowerit.ca\/travel\/other-trips\/trips-europe\/europe-2017\/winding-down-in-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Winding down in London"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

2017.07.25 \u2013 2017.08.01 \u2013 London (England)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our week in London at Jessica\u2019s flat simply zoomed by even though our days were fairly light from a tourist perspective. Along the way, Jenny and Freddie (Jessica’s cat) became good friends – as we see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We got re-acquainted with the Tube and the city buses as we headed out on Tuesday 25th for some late afternoon shopping. Victoria and Jenny visited a few of their favorite clothes stores while I visited some bicycle shops. We were overwhelmed by the amount of shoppers on the streets on a Tuesday afternoon. Although London\u2019s streets didn\u2019t seem to be overly bike friendly, we noticed over the years following our visit of 2011, 2013 and 2015, a significant increase in cyclists braving the roads. We also noted that London\u2019s bike sharing program was clearly well established and very popular. Although many bicycle shops were selling high-end foldable bicycles that can be brought on the subway, even during rush hour, the vast majority of cyclists were using average road bicycles. We saw one tandem locked on the sidewalk. We had breakfast and our evening meals in the flat while catching up with Jessica\u2019s London life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday 26th, Jessica took the day off work to join us for the long awaited visit of the Warner Brothers Studio Tour London on The Making of Harry Potter<\/em>. We had bought our tickets on-line for the visit \u2013 some five months ago. We took an Uber to the studio some 20kms out of town while arriving well in time for our 11:15am scheduled entrance. We snapped a good number of pictures along the way, we even learned to fly a broom and we have video proof of it \u2013 well the studio has! We completed our visit of the two studios \u201cJ\u201d and \u201cK\u201d (for JK Rowlings) over a three hour period. We called again on Uber for our return ride to London. Following our visit, Jenny and I agreed to add to our retirement bucket list the viewing of every Harry Potter movie \u2013 failing to read the books.<\/p>\n\n\n