Day Four-Westminster Abbey, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace

We decided to go back to Westminster Abbey this morning so we could see the inside of it. Our London Passes gave us admission and a shorter wait in line. 

This turned out entirely different than what I expected. It was definitely beautiful, but it is basically a graveyard in a church. There were tombs and more tombs and more tombs throughout the whole Abbey. We had no idea these were inside of it. They were on the floor, up the wall, in little side rooms; just everywhere. We felt weird walking on people's graves.  There were no photographs allowed inside, so I can't share any of what we saw. Needless to say, the boys were pretty bored in here. 

This was the only picture I got inside. And it really isn't inside, but more of a walkway. I still wasn't sure if this was okay, so I snapped very quickly! 

After Westminster Abbey, we went to Piccadilly Circus. We didn't spend a ton of time here, and I would love to explore it more if we get back to London some day. 

It is a lot like Times Square in New York.

We ate lunch at what turned out to be one of Connor's favorite restaurants of the whole trip: Caffe Concerto. They had some pretty fantastic ham & cheese sandwiches and chocolate mousses. I can't say I blame Connor for picking this as a favorite. :)

We decided after lunch to head towards Trafalgar Square when we happened upon the M&M store. The day got a whole lot more interesting for the boys. We spent about an hour in this store. It is four floors of nothing but M&Ms. 

After the M&M store, we continued to wander towards Trafalgar Square. We walked through Leicester Square and China Town on our way there. Everything is located very close and within walking distance or a short Underground Ride. 

And here we are at Trafalgar Square. The National Gallery is located here, but once again we arrived too late in the day to go through it. Museums and touristy sites seem to close up around 5pm.

Not sure what Chris and Connor are looking at here, but Spencer was ready to pose. 

Connor demonstrating his Lion roar. 

After spending some time relaxing and people watching at Trafalgar Square, we started to walk back towards an Underground station that would take us to the hotel. 

This is a picture of the pretty street. There are so many pretty streets here. 

This is the Admiralty Arch.

And this is the Admiralty Arch on the other side. 

And the Admiralty Arch leads to the Mall. 

Which leads to Buckingham Palace. 

I took so many, many more pictures on this day. I had a hard time narrowing it down to just these to share. And as I'm going through them, I think to myself "I wish I had taken a picture of that. Or I wish I had a different angle." I guess that means we have to go back so I can take more pictures! 

I'll leave you with this last picture of this day. This is the park that we walk through from the Underground station to Buckingham Palace. And on this day, we walked from Buckingham Palace to the Underground. 

Beautiful.

Thanks for visiting me! 

Day Three-Hitting the big sites in London

On Monday, we decided to hit the big sites in London: The London Eye, Big Ben, Tower of London and cruise on the River Thames. 

We mapped our route on the Underground and one of the lines we had to take, the Jubilee, goes way, way underground. It just amazes me how they build subways. 

The good thing about the London Eye is that you can see it above buildings so you know which direction to walk in. This is a panorama pic I shot with my iPhone of when we first saw the Eye. Notice on the far right side the boys taking pics as well. 

Once we crossed the street and walked towards the Eye, right across the river we could see Big Ben and Parliament. It is so beautiful. I really couldn't believe we standing there looking at all of these things I have only seen in pictures and on television. 

We decided to go up in the London Eye first. I had read that it gets really busy later in the day, so we wanted to try and beat the crowds. Everyone but Sue went on it. The line was really short and it didn't take us much time at all to get into one of the glass capsules. 

It moves so slow that you can't feel it at all. It takes 30 minutes to go completely around. The following are pictures from our time on the Eye.

The tall building in the picture below is the Shard. It is the tallest building in Western Europe. Connor wanted to go up to it's observation deck, but we ran out of time. Guess that means we will have to go back sometime. :)

And the view from the very top. 

After the London Eye, we decided to take a Thames River Cruise down to the Tower of London. 

We got to see a lot of interesting things on the cruise:
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

Pickfords Wharf

Tower Bridge

We went to see the Tower of London.

We waited in a very long line to see the Crown Jewels. 

Unfortunately after waiting in the long line, there were no pictures allowed inside. So if you want to see what we saw, click here. The exhibition was very interesting and the jewels were beautiful. I wish I could have taken pictures of them, but I had to settle for post cards in the gift shop. 

 There were lots of towers and we went through a few of them. We could not figure out which one was the Tower of London, so we finally asked and found out that collectively they are called the Tower of London. A little confusing to us Americans. 

And of course, we had to get a picture with one of the guards. 

After the Tower of London, we grabbed an early dinner because we had kind of skipped lunch. Then we took the cruise back to Parliament and Big Ben. 

We walked to Westminster Abbey from here, but it had already closed for the day. 

So we decided to call it a day head back towards the hotel. 

I have no idea what this building is, but isn't it cool?

And we stopped off at this pub, where Pete and Chris enjoyed a pint and the rest of us enjoyed some dessert. I forgot to take a picture of the dessert, but I'm pretty sure it involved chocolate.  

This is just a small fraction of the pictures I took this day. I tried to hit the highlights and narrow down the selections to the best of the day. 

Thanks for visiting me!

Our 2nd Day-Kensington Palace

Our second day started off a little late. We all slept in recovering from the Saturday travel day. I thought we still might be a little jet-lagged, so I had us visiting Kensington Palace since it was pretty close to our hotel. Our hotel had a buffet breakfast every morning, so after we fueled up, we were on our way. It was about a 20 minute walk from our hotel to the Palace. 

We came across this pretty field on our way there, so I had the boys jump in for a photo op.

Actually the grass was really only about knee high. I had the boys kneel down so it looked higher to create a pretty picture. 

Here I am in front of the gate to Kensington Palace. They were doing tons of renovations, so there was scaffolding on the building. I think this is to get it ready for William and Kate to move in.

At this point, we realized that we did not have our tickets with us to get into the Palace. We had pre-purchased the London Pass and it gave us admissions to a number of different sites. So Chris and his dad, Pete, said they would go back to the hotel to get them. They decided to take the Underground back thinking that would be faster. It would have been, except that the line that runs between Kensington and our hotel was not running that weekend. They ended up having to get on a different line and it took over an hour for them to get the tickets and get back to us. 

So we waited for them outside the palace exploring the grounds. 

See those dark clouds in the background? It started raining shortly after this picture was snapped. It was cold rain too. Thank goodness the Palace had a gift shop/cafe right inside the front door. We waited for Chris and Pete inside until they got back.

I didn't take a ton of pictures inside the Palace, but here are some that I thought were the most interesting. 

I like how the lanterns have crowns on them. 

Outside the Palace is a beautiful garden. We were amazed that there were Palm Trees in England. We even saw them in Ireland. 

This was Father's Day, and I thought this was a great picture of the four guys together.

One last picture looking back at the Palace and garden.

After the Palace, we walked around exploring. We ended up in the Notting Hill neighborhood. The next few pictures are of different streets that I thought were pretty. And at this time, the weather cleared and it turned into a beautiful afternoon. 

We ended up here at the Windsor Castle Pub so Chris and Pete could enjoy a pint on Father's Day.

We originally thought we might eat dinner here as well, but the menu did not look very appetizing to the boys and me. So after the pints were finished, we went searching for a place for dinner. We came across a pizza place. I know that is not very British, but it was really good. 

We ended day two back at the hotel bar for a nightcap and headed to bed kind of early. I think we were all still running a little slow from the traveling and excitement of day one.

I hope to have day 3 adventures posted in the next day or two. 

Thanks for visiting me!