The saga of Thursday June 6, 2024 in Kingston Upon Thames, England

The houseboat was located in a place called Kingston upon Thames. We walked around looking for our houseboat, then we saw it. It was a small trash colored green boat with a flat roof that you could stand on. We went inside and examined the place where we met the owner of the houseboat. His name was Archie. Archie gave us a tour, there were two couches that could be used as beds. One bed hanging from the ceiling and a stool so you could get on the bed, a kitchen just before the bed and finally one more bed that could fit two people. We got settled in then went to a restaurant just down the dock. The restaurant was called Riverside Vegetaria. We walked down the dock to go to Riverside Vegetaria. When we got there we decided to sit outside. We got the menu and saw what they had. My mom got a mango lassi and a spicy pepper thing that I don’t know what it’s called. My brother got an apple lassi and bread, I just got an apple lassi and ate some of the bread. The apple lassi was AMAZINGLY AMAZING. After we finished, we headed towards the boat. My two younger brothers had to go to the loo so they went at the restaurant. The reason they had to go to the restaurant bathroom was because our washroom in the houseboat didn’t flush and didn’t work. It smelled like durian mixed with rotten cheese. Once we learned that the bathroom didn’t work we thought to ourselves, this is going to be a loooooooooong five days.

My brothers came back after a few minutes and we sat on the couch, after long bus rides we definitely deserved a break. Unfortunately, there was no internet so we couldn’t play on our iPads and we were all annoyed. Instead, we played Prez. Prez is a card game where you have one deck and you deal out all of the cards in the deck into one pile per player. For us that was four piles, and whoever gets rid of their cards first wins. We played a lot of games of Prez. I won five of them and we played like fifteen rounds. Then, we went on the roof and then jumped down. It was really fun. After that, we went to bed.

It was really hard to go to bed because the beds weren’t really comfortable, at least for me. I had the couch bed. I woke up feeling really itchy. We thought it was mosquito bites because there were lots of mosquitoes in the houseboat. We really needed to do laundry so we walked to the laundromat, about twenty minutes away. Our mom dropped us off at a cafe because it was next door to the laundromat while she went to do the laundry. We did some journaling, which is basically you write in these 280 page journals our mom made. Then we did screens and played Brawlstars because there was finally WiFi. (BrawlStars is a game on our iPads). After laundry we went to a park and my younger brother scraped his knee right before we got to the park we were walking to. It was a pretty big park and we played on it. Then we walked some more and saw an ice cream truck. My mom said we might get ice cream, but we also saw this thing that was five pounds where you could jump on a trampoline while attached to something, kind of like bungee jumping, and there was also a bouncy house. You could go on one of them for fifteen minutes. I went in the bouncy house with one of my younger brothers while my older brother and another younger brother went on the trampoline. I would have gone on the trampoline but I wasn’t feeling it then. We used our own money for it. Sadly, we didn’t get ice cream. Then we walked back and went to the same restaurant. I had the bread. It was yummy yummy in my tummy.

The next day, we woke up and met up with my mommy’ friends Carine and Simo. Carine was from London and Simo was from Morocco. We were walking to Henry the VII’s Tudor Mansion. I had no idea what that was. I have to be honest. We walked on this trail and there were lots and lots of black raspberries. Simo picked them and we all ate them. Simo’s awesome because he’s a cool nature boy. We got lost and then found our way. Simo found poop and picked up the deer poop and then tried flinging it at us. It was gross, but also kind of funny. We went through the gates and got our tickets. Then we explored the Henry VII exhibit. There was this really cool thing that showed how many animals and wine they would eat and drink in a year at their feasts. It was like 100,000 glasses of alcohol, 10,000 cows, and 1,000 bulls. It was crazy. I was like, “those guys are weird. Who could even eat that much?” It’s a rhetorical question, don’t answer that.

I stayed with my mom to watch these period actors showing Queen Victoria I and Sophia the daughter of the maharaj at the time talking about Sophia wanting women’s rights. It was raining outside so the rest of my brothers didn’t want to stay and watch. But it was juicy. We left when it ended. Then we walked back home. Carine and Simo didn’t come back with us. It was sad. 😭When we got home our toilet was not fixed. We left the trash green colored houseboat and went to a graying, bluish house where my mom’s other friend lived in Hendon.