Back to London: Remembering Our First Arrival After the Queen Mary 2

We are talking about London again. August is the loose plan, and the conversation sent me back through the photos from May 2022, when we walked off the Queen Mary 2 in Southampton with three small kids, a pile of luggage, and an Airbnb host who had stopped answering messages. Four years and thirty-some countries later, that first week on British soil still might be the most chaotic travel we have ever done, and we did it with the least experience we would ever have.

If you want the crossing itself, that story is in our Queen Mary 2 review. This is about what happened after the gangway.

Immigration in the middle of the Atlantic

The strangest part of arriving in England by ship is that you clear UK immigration days before you see England. Cunard runs border control onboard, mid-ocean, somewhere around the time the ship passes over the Titanic's resting place. Ours took two minutes. The officer asked how long we planned to stay in the UK, and I, a man who had just moved his entire family onto the Atlantic with no return ticket, said "uhhhh, maybe a month." He was polite about it, told us the weather had been beautiful all month, and waved us through. No stamp, which still bothers me.

Harper, then our youngest at two, spent the last sea day insisting she wanted to go on a ship. When we told her she was on one, she laughed at us. "We're not on a ship." Hard to argue with someone who has never seen the outside of the thing she is standing in.

The host who never answered

We came down the gangway in Southampton around 9:30 in the morning on May 22, 2022. Our Airbnb host had gone silent, so we spent the next five hours moving a luggage mountain around the city: Burger King, a pirate-themed playground, the Westquay mall. My shorts, bought new for the trip, would not stay up anymore. I am possibly the only person in Cunard's history to lose weight on a crossing.

The girls handled the wait better than we did. Somewhere in those five hours, Lily and Cora split their first-ever Coca-Cola at the mall food court, a small glass bottle they treated like contraband. Lindsay, meanwhile, discovered land sickness is real. After a week of the ground moving, solid pavement feels wrong for days.

We ended up staying in Southampton five days, partly to recover and partly because I journaled "No where to stay!" while hunting London accommodation two days before we needed it. Booking ahead was not yet part of our skill set. The full Southampton stretch, Peppa Pig World included, is in our land legs post.

The train that had no seats

Getting out of the Southampton Airbnb took a 2.5-hour scramble. The Uber that showed up was too small for all of us, so we split: Lindsay took Lily and the luggage to the station while I walked across Southampton with Harper and Cora. The train to London was standing room only. We wedged ourselves between cars with the bags until the girls found jump seats, changed at Clapham Junction at a pace I would not attempt today, and rolled into the city.

The apartment made up for the train. Two bedrooms and a kitchenette felt like a palace after a ship cabin, and the first order of business was fish and chips and a candy shop. Priorities were clear even then.

Three days in London

Our timing was accidental and terrible. We arrived in the final days before the Platinum Jubilee, so half of Westminster was barricades and scaffolding. We never got near Buckingham Palace. What we did get: croissants in Hyde Park while the girls chased birds, the Princess Diana Memorial Playground, a standoff with tube turnstiles that did not want to accept the kids' tickets, and the London Eye from a bridge so crowded that Harper fell asleep in the middle of it.

The girls' highlight was not Big Ben. It was the Jungle Cave restaurant, with its animatronic gorillas and fake thunderstorms, followed by all seven floors of Hamleys until closing time. Mediocre themed-restaurant food, three delighted children, and a long wait for a cab that ended in crepes. We wrote up those days in our London post at the time, back when the channel had fewer than 100 subscribers.

August, again

So that is what we are weighing a return against. Our autumn plans already put us in Europe, and August in London closes a loop: same city, same five people, four more years of practice. The girls who split one Coke now have opinions about itineraries. Harper, who did not believe she was on a ship, wants to see the one thing we missed, which is the inside of the Buckingham Palace gates without a Jubilee in the way.

The bigger question is what comes after London. Last time we saw exactly two English cities and left for France. This time we are looking at trains north, maybe Scotland, and we keep circling Ireland on the map, which would be a completely new country for all of us. If you have done Ireland with kids, the comments are open and we will read all of them.

In 2022 we arrived in London exhausted, underbooked, and holding our own pants up. It was still one of the best weeks we have ever had. We are curious what the city looks like when we show up knowing what we are doing. There is a decent chance the answer is that we still do not, and that the girls sit on the luggage anyway.