Who knows when or where I first saw the London Rolling Bridge in Merchant Square but I am going to credit it to Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram. Isn’t it always social media that tends to inspire us nowadays for travel? It’s no wonder that there is always someone criticizing some ‘Influencer’ but really, I’m so thankful that I get daily travel adventure inspiration at the tip of my fingers. And I love that anyone can have the power to share or create. So when I found out we had a few days in London on one of the few days during the week that the London Rolling Bridge actually rolls, I knew we needed to see it for ourselves in real life.
The Hilton Paddington Station and Heathrow Express
In order to orchestrate a visit to the Heatherwick Rolling bridge I knew I needed to make some kind of excuse because my husband was a little unsure of how cool it might actually be. I found out that there was a hotel that we could stay at right in the Paddington Station. The Hilton London Paddington Station is literally right inside the station. And Paddington Station connects directly to Heathrow Airport by the Heathrow Express. (If you know you’re going to use the Heathrow Express and book it way in advance, you often save money too!). So this hotel was perfect for our last two nights in London.
I booked a club room too so we could try out the lounge. Sadly, the lounge at the Hilton London Paddington Station is a little underwhelming because there were not a lot of treats available outside the tea, breakfast and cocktail windows like there usually are at other lounges. I find it’s often hard to make the actual serviced time windows when you are sight-seeing in a city but most lounges still have quite a few options when they’re not full serviced-not so much at this one. But we stopped in around tea one afternoon and enjoyed the view of Paddington Station though and I know I would have always wondered what this experience was like if we hadn’t booked a club level room.
The London Rolling Bridge is only about a five minute walk away from the Hilton London Paddington Station hotel. Make sure you check on the website to make sure you know when it’s going to do it’s thing because these things do change over time. When we visited the Rolling Bridge and the Lift Bridge both open at 12 and 2pm on Wednesdays and Fridays. Our goal was to go to the Rolling Bridge at 11:30am just to make sure we got there and then go for lunch afterwards at Fountains Abbey, a pub where Alexander Fleming apparently used to visit. (The Alexander Fleming Museum is also right next door to the pub but this museum was only open on Monday-Thursday 10am-1pm when we were in London so we missed it.)
The Rolling Bridge and More at Merchant Square London
And I know I’ve been obsessing about just the rolling Bridge but Merchant Square, but the area where you find it in London is also really cool. There are canals that remind me of our Fremont area in Seattle or even maybe a little bit of Amsterdam or Venice (there is even part of this area called Little Venice). So while you are waiting for the bridge there are cafes to check out and shops to eat at-you might even wander down to Little Venice and see all the boats as you walk by. I wish I bought coffee at Darcie and May Green Artisanal Coffee on a beautiful colorful boat but now I have something to dream about for next time.
I also really wanted to take a boat ride picnic with the Go Boat company but we weren’t totally dressed for the weather. Again, if I am ever back in London in this area in summer or spring, I think this is definitely something I would like to do. The boats at Go Boat can hold up to 6 people and can even accommodate dogs and children.
The Fan Bridge at Merchant Square
The Fan Bridge is also pretty cool but this was not the bridge that got me to go to Merchant Square in the first place so I wasn’t as interested about the fan bridge until I saw it open in real life. It definitely opens like a fan. I noticed online that the Rolling Bridge and the Fan bridge were both scheduled to open at the same time. When we went to see the Rolling Bridge though we were told that the the Rolling Bridge went first and the Fan bridge went second. I don’t know if this is always the case but this way we got to see both bridges open. We were also early enough at the Rolling Bridge that we were given souvenir booklets that were pretty cool. I think there were maybe 25 people waiting for the Rolling Bridge the day that we visited and it didn’t feel very crowded.
And what is seeing the Rolling Bridge in Real Life Really like?
I have a video on my instagram of the rolling bridge that shows you how it actually unfolds. We took the video in Time Lapse because unless you are there in real life, you really don’t want to wait and watch this in real time. My kids and husband were impressed and we were all ready for lunch by the time we watched both bridges and walked the area some more. This is the type of thing that makes you really appreciate engineering and I wish there were more bridges in the world like the London Rolling Bridge.
(The day we visited the Rolling Bridge our theme for the day was “all the London Bridges” but there was a horrible terrorist attack on the London Bridge so we ended up changing our plans. One thing I realized while being in a city during a tragic event like this was that Twitter was our most valuable source of getting timely information in an emergency. By the time we actually saw things on the tv news we had already heard about it on Twitter. More and more, Twitter is always my first place to check when I need to know what is happening in real time.)
If you are planning a trip to London with kids and need more ideas, I put together a post that might help you as well, especially if you are traveling in winter. And if you have soccer fans like my kids and you are headed to England and have a car AND want to plan your trip around a soccer museum, we went to the National Football museum a few years ago and they still talk about this visit.
Do you travel the world to see things like the Rolling Bridge? I’d love to hear about some of the unusual things that make you travel to a place.
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)