London

We just got back from London a little bit ago, we had a great time, but we are all exhausted now. The kids are true world travelers now -they have done so good with all of this travel. The plane to move here, the trains, buses and taxi's. We took a train to get into London and it was very nice --cushy seats, refreshments and the two hours went by in a flash. The girls were fascinated looking out the window, and it was beautiful English countryside that we were viewing. When we got to London we took a taxi to our hotel, got settled and grabbed a site seeing bus. We saw Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Parliament, the Cabinet War Rooms, Trafalgar square, Buckingham Palace (this is what is behind us in the picture above and if you click on it, it will make the picture bigger), the Tower of London, the Tower Bridge, the Crown Jewels...and that was all in the first day. We did a lot of walking, and only got caught in the rain twice. The last time however, we got soaked, luckily, it was our last stop of the day. Our bus was packed with everyone trying to get out of the rain, so we grabbed a taxi and made it back to our hotel, soaking wet, tired but happy. This morning we woke up with one goal - Kensington Palace. When we got there we expected a historical tour, some Princess Diana memorials, but what we got was an enchanted castle. We thought it would be cool to go in and see what it was all about --it was actually quite odd. It was a mystery game where you had to find clues by looking around in the dark rooms and they had some actors doing interactive scenes. However, we got to see the palace from the inside and the rooms were amazing, including King George's gallery with the original artwork still on the walls. We were trying to imagine what it would be like to live in a place like that? We also walked through Hyde Park and took in some beautiful scenery. I cannot believe how great the kids did --we did a lot of walking, meals were sometimes later than we expected them to be by the time we got to where we were heading, and there was a lot of getting off and on the tour bus. They were both incredibly good. The minor meltdown we did have, came when Bean was in the enchanted castle (Kensington) and she sat in a wish chair and wished she was a princess and then got upset because it didn't happen. Poor Bean....seeing all the castles and palaces, beautiful crowns and dresses...she really wanted to transform into a Princess. We took a lot of pictures, but I have not downloaded any of them yet, so those will hopefully get posted tomorrow. Bean is out of school for the next two weeks and tomorrow is the last day my mom is here, so we are going to try to find some time to play in the park with the kids tomorrow and hopefully we will get some sunny weather.