Wednesday, August 1, 2012

London





London

Yesterday I blogged about the Paris leg of our Paris/London/Rome journey, so if you missed that, you can read it here

I was pretty relieved to leave Paris behind when it was time to get on the train for London. It was a pleasant train ride other than the thirty minutes we spent under the English Channel. That part was sort of creepy. The train station in London was decked out in Olympics 2012 stuff and as soon as I realized we were at King's Cross Station I had a minor Harry Potter geek out moment. We exchanged our Euro for British Pounds and had a moment of silence for all the money lost in that transaction before heading out into the cold rainy night to find our hotel. London was meant to be our rest between Paris and Rome, and it was. London is beautiful and clean and shiny and friendly and... not Paris. They also get points for speaking English ;) We only had a handful of things we wanted to see in London, so we slept in and took our time and wandered leisurely through St. James park. Our hotel was in a really charming old house in a pretty neighborhood owned by a family. It seemed like most of the other hotel guests were not really guests, but people who lived in the flats long term. The whole house was very crooked, which I thought was kind of fun. I also liked the kettle and large quantity of tea in our room. We saw the double decker buses, Big Ben, the red phone booths, and of course some royal guard. With that out of the way I think it's safe to say we saw London, but we saw a few other things as well.




Olympic circles at King's Cross Station



Our adorable hotel







Big Ben and the London Eye



The British Museum: This is a must see if you go to London. It's just a really nice museum. The Sutton Hoo exhibit was really cool. Not to mention that ol' Rosetta Stone thing. Also, as this was about 3 weeks before the 2012 Olympics in London, the museum had some of the gold medals on display.



Sutton Hoo ceremonial helmet


2012 Olympic Gold Medals


Rosetta Stone

Buckingham Palace: We didn't go in, although there are tours available, so we just saw the main entrance of it. Unfortunately we were not able to have tea with Her Majesty the Queen, due to our busy schedule.



Buckingham Palace




Buckingham Palace (and uss)
St. James Park & Westminster Abbey: We really liked this park by the Palace. There were gardens and a bridge over the lake where we fed the baby swans. We walked through the park to get to Westminster Abbey. You can't go into the church after like..2pm, so we just saw the outside and played in the front lawn before heading to the cathedral and Starbucks.





Ugly Ducklings at St James park ;)



Shrubbery at St. James park




Side of Westminster Abbey




Nathan needed a beard rest, Sophie needed a wig.

Food: We ate at a cool Fish and Chips place where I had more tea and a pretty good Shepherd's Pie. Everyone else got fish and chips I think, except for mom. She probably had something weird. (feel free to chime in here, mom) I guess we didn't get any pictures of the food though. Check back soon for pictures of Rome! Muah!





Nathan and his beard.







Being touristy again







Riding the Tube







Mommy-ing at Westminster










Being silly at Westminster Abbey

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