Notting Hill and Kensington

*We've had family in town (yay!) so I have a ton of posting to catch up on!

Saturday March 8

The day started out beautifully. We were excited to be headed to Portobello Road of Bedknobs and Broomsticks fame, and we had gotten out early enough to hopefully avoid most of the insane crowds we heard appear in the afternoon. Our train was in the station so we went to hop on when tragedy struck - Colton accidentally dropped his favorite (Thomas) train, Charlie onto the tracks below. Try as they might, Rob and Brent could not figure out a way to (legally and safely) retrieve him from the tracks. Colton was devastated, so Brent and Aubrey promised that they would try to find a replacement for him. We joked on the way about how in America, there is a character on the Thomas the Train show that is called Sir Toppam Hat (presumably because he wears a top hat) and Aubrey told us how here, where the show originated and they're not so afraid of being politically correct, he's called "the Fat Controller" there is also a character called "the Skinny Controller." Hahahah. Oh America, how you love to be politically correct.

We arrived in Notting Hill, the neighborhood of Portobello Road and instantly I was in love. All of the homes are so charming - with lovely gardens and brightly painted fronts and doors. We navigated through Notting Hill and arrived at Portobello Road with the song from the movie blaring in my head. It was exciting to see "the street where the riches of ages are sold - anything and everything a chap can unload, is sold off the barrows on Portobello Road."

 

The author George Orwell lived here (that's what the blue plaque says).

Below all of the brightly colored homes were the stores packed with all sorts of antique wares you could imagine!

This store front was my favorite, I think it was some sort of clothing store, but all of those vintage sewing machines...I die!

 The under and over pass for the train line.

By the time we left around noon, the place was absolutely crawling with people. We were glad to get out of there, so we walked a few blocks over to Kensington Gardens to let the kids play at the Diana Playground and to explore the gardens more and see the statues hidden within.

 

  Peter Pan sculpture

 

 The Italian Gardens. Prince Albert created them for Victoria.

Was it bright or is that a wink? ;)

 

We ended up at the Albert Memorial. Holy guacamole. This picture does not even show how huge and imposing this thing is. Albert is sitting in the middle of this pagoda thing and he is so huge and shiny looking out over one of his pet projects, the Royal Albert Hall. The kids had a blast playing on the steps of the memorial.

 

Next, we headed to Harrods to find a replacement for Charlie. There are a surprising lack of toy stores in London and Harrods has an amazing one. We finally got to see the "toy" cars that are for sale there. Can you imagine paying 40,000 pounds for a toy car that is not even street legal?!? That's like $60,000! They were fun to finally see though!

 They didn't have the exact same train, but Colton found a different one that he fell in love with, so all was right again with the world. Then we headed down to the basement to visit the Diana and Dodi memorial. Apparently Dodi's family owned Harrods at the time of their death, so they have a memorial to them there that includes her engagement ring, which is pretty amazing! (It's below the goblet in the photo below.)

We arrived back in Richmond on the other platform than the one we left on, and just for kicks we went to see if we could see Charlie. He was there, about 4 feet down and despite more plotting and planning between Rob and Brent, we decided to ask the station controller for help in rescuing Charlie. Well, the guy Aubrey got was the "grumpy controller" who did not smile and acted so annoyed the whole time while he rescued a little boy's train-conductor dreams from his train tracks. He didn't even crack a smile or even look kindly when Colton went to thank him! It was really sweet when Colton got Charlie back again he said "Sorry Charlie!" to him. What a happy day, especially for Colton who now has a new train for his collection :)