Europe Part 1: London (June 21-June 24)

Our First Day in London

    

We arrived at the airport at 6:30am (10:30pm Utah time) and went straight to our hotel. We dropped our stuff off  at the hotel and headed for the city.  By the end of the day we figured we had been awake for about 32 hours…we were exhausted but it was worth it to be on the right schedule. This is our lovely hotel and escalators to the tube.

                       

I love Hamley’s toy store. We went through every level and the lego level was my favorite. There are some talented lego people out there. We thought of our niece Kallie when we saw all the Hello Kitty stuff!

         

The M&M store was also fun. I especially loved the free samples at the door.

                      

Trafalgar Square. There was a countdown to the Olympics which was pretty cool.

Hyde Park: We sat on this bench for awhile and Bryce fell asleep for a bit. We also had fallen asleep in the National Gallery. Hyde Park was beautiful but we didn’t stay long as it started to rain and we were without an umbrella. Afterwards we found Kyle and Lesley Colvin’s flat where we got keys as they offered for us to stay there for our following two nights in London. We were so grateful as it was a very central location and  a nice flat!

Second Day in London

    

St. Paul’s Cathredral: This was our very favorite place in London. We didn’t end up getting a great picture of it, and really no picture could do it justice. We walked around the corner and there it was, standing high in the sky. There is a whisper room, where you whisper  against the wall and the person on the other side of the room can hear you. It is this big circular room and it is awesome! I whispered “Bryce, raise your hand if you can hear me” and he raised his hand! From clear across this huge room he could hear me.

View from the top of St. Paul’s

 

From St. Paul’s we walked across Millenium Bridge and went to the Tate Modern Museum. Neither of us are really that into Modern art so it was a quick stop. Then we walked along the river towards Tower Bridge. I love this bridge.

          

Looking back at St. Paul’s from Millenium Bridge, and the best picture we’ve got of Tate Modern :)

The beautiful Tower Bridge.

As we walked across the bridge we saw the huge olympic rings. It was fun to see how they are getting ready for the olympics. We were going to go to Tower of London but when we arrived it was closed, so instead we found a Wagamamas and had some delicious food there.  It was a great day in London.

Third Day in London

      

The day before we wanted to ride the bus but the bus drivers were on strike so we used the tube all day. They were not on strike this day so we took advantage of that and rode the buses everywhere. This was a great way to see the city. They had flags of every country you could think of hanging above the streets and it was so picturesque.

Tower of London: There were a couple of men jousting outside of the tower.  And this gentleman reluctantly took a picture with us. The tower was interesting to see, certainly the most medieval place we visited.

           

             

Big Ben, House of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. At Westminster we got an audio guide and we were so glad we did because we didn’t realize that Darwin, Handel, Dickens and other famous people are buried there.

In front of Westminster. Pretty good self-pic eh?

Buckingham palace was very busy, but still so neat to see it. This girl sitting next to Bryce was also posing for a picture so I tried to hurry and snap mine so we could get out of the way and I cut off the top part of the statute.

W e ate at a pub and it was delish. Bryce got the traditional Bangers and Mash and I got Fish and Chips. We went to the Natural History Museum and spun around in these sweet chairs at VA museum. From there we walked and walked to Portobello road where they were pretty much cleaning up from the market. We had a hard time finding the right bus that went back to our place that night, and during our trek we dropped the camera and it broke. Sad, sad day.  The next day we headed for Paris. It was a fantastic stay in London and we are so glad we decided to fly through there so we could see this great and fun city.

Hanging out on the top of St. Paul’s