London continued...

Here we are continuing our trek through London. There were so many things to see and do and look at. The architecture in London is amazing. It's hard not to stare at all the beauty, actually it was very hard to stop and look as there were more people there than I have ever seen in my life. I can only imagine how the kids felt being constantly toted along in between big people and tucked in and around just to walk on the sidewalks. I have never, in my life, seen so many people and tourists everywhere we went.

So, did you know that Big Ben is just the bell inside the tower (that no one knows the name of)? We are told this every time we tell anyone that we saw Big Ben, even though they never seem to know the name of the actual tower, either. Joci really, really wanted to get close to Big Ben and so I got her as close to it as I could.





This picture is from later, across the Thaymes (pronounced Tims).


Westminster Abbey. I believe the window is from King Henry VIII.

St. James park was beautiful. They had a Princess Diana walk with these markers all over, but, we never saw anything else about her there in the park. On another visit I plan to go to the Kensington area and also see the Princess Diana memorial.

Ooops, sorry about the order of these pictures...this is the front of Westminster Abbey.
There was actually pelicans in St. James park!

The changing of the guards at the Guard's Museum. Did you know their hats are made of bear skin?

First Day of School

Monday was the kids' first day of school. They were so excited, and frankly, so was I! All we could talk about the week before was school and how it would be and who they would meet, etc. Aren't their school uniforms adorable? Joci also has a little yellow summer dress that she wants to wear all the time, I'll try and get a picture of that one, too.

Here you can see our apartment complex and a quick couple of pictures before we took Jon to his work and then the kids to school.


After getting Joci settled, she was a bit quiet and nervous, I took Joe down to his class. His teacher told us that they were in for a lot of questions about the United States, the kids were excited that they would have someone new from the States there.
After I left Joe, I went back to check on Joci and found her here, much more excited and animated about getting to check out the little chicks. Doesn't she almost look like she'd like to try one for a snack?

Buckingham Palace and the Queen Victoria Memorial

So coming out of Green Park is Buckingham Palace, and I have to admit that at first I did not know that's what it was. To be honest, up close, it kind of looks like all the other architecture around London. When we got up closer to the gates I knew something was going on just from the number of people there and all were sitting next to the gates, waiting for something. We got up towards the front and suddenly we saw the carriages and the riding band come out. Later we saw them come back. The kids and I decided to stay for the changing of the guard. Joci thought that was really neat. She also thought she saw the Queen in one of the carriages, and I've just let her believe it.

We found out later that it was all in preparation for the 'Trouping of the Colours', which is a celebration of the Queen's official birthday, which we ended up watching on the telly yesterday.

Right in front of Buckingham Palace is the Queen Victoria memorial. A big beautiful fountain made for the current longest reigning monarchy.

We Arrived in London!

We had an amazing time in London. We stayed in a tiny hotel room at a very swanky hotel, The Cavendish, but truthfully, didn't see much of it as we walked almost all and most of the evening too.

The train ride in to London was lovely, we got to see a lot on our way into London even. Unfortunately, we missed our first train, Jon got home late, and I misunderstood when the train was leaving. We are within walking distance from the train station, so it's great that we don't have to get a taxi or pay to park our car for awhile. We had our new favorite snack here, the Ploughman's sandwich, on the train along with some water. It's just wheat bread, sweet pickle, cheese, tomato, and lettuce, sometimes with a little bit of mayo. We had one transfer onto the London Underground (Mind the Gap), and then we came up onto downtown London at the Green Park station into the middle of organized chaos. To say we were a little overwhelmed with just how many people were there and we were a bit turned around, then we found our hotel.

That night we went right across the street to Walker's Pub and had a pint and ate proper fish and chips that were SO good! Later we met up with one of Jon's coworkers and had a nice chat before I took the kids back to the hotel room to get some rest before our big day the next day.

The kids and I started off our morning at 9am starting with the Picadilly Circus which was right down the street from our hotel. This is the Circus in the daytime, which is not quite as amazing as it is at night, but you get the idea.


This is when I realized that the reason Jocelyn wasn't listening to me and coming down off the fountain was because she couldn't, she was stuck...nice.


We walked down Picadilly street seeing the sights and the amazingly beautiful buildings and architecture.


This is a special picture for my family. Oh how I longed to go into this store and sample what they had, but, I didn't want to spend a fortune on caviar, no matter how great it would have been.

This is the entrance to Green Park, directly across from the Green Park Underground Station access. I wouldn't mind living in this beautiful house that backs up directly to Green Park.
They had all these chairs sitting out in the sun just waiting for people to come and sit and enjoy the sun (totally foreign to an Arizona girl like me). Some of the chairs were made with canvases with art on them.


So, my kids went crazy for...the squirrel. It took me a long time to pry them away from looking at the squirrel of all things, like they had never seen one before, let alone the amazing park we were in that is adjacent to Buckingham Palace. Oh well.

Standing just inside Green Park in front of the gates that lead to Buckingham Palace. Joci was SO excited to see the palace, I couldn't coax her back into the picture, that was as far as she was willing to go.