I Heart London (part 1 - there are way too many pictures for just one entry!)

I've been trying to figure out a way to write an informative yet amusing account of our trip to London. 

Nope, nothing's coming. 

In fact, I wrote a good amount last night, went to bed dissatisfied with it, and deleted it all this morning.  So, today you get a bunch of pictures with a little bit of description (London speaks for itself anyway!) and (hopefully) I'll get closer to catching my blogging life up with my real life.

As a quick introduction, we took a rather impromptu trip to London with our very good friends the Dawsons the week before Christmas.  We stayed in a house just south of the city and took commuter trains in every morning.  I love London.  I was a little worried about the cold, but it was actually warmer than Heidelberg was at the time, and, because it was the week before Christmas, there were no crowds.  I took way too many pictures.  Here are some from the first day...

                               

                 

                            

Above - us (I'm behind the camera) at the tower of London.  It took us a little longer to get there than we had hoped.  Our travel plan ran smoothly until we tried to make the transition to the tube.  Unfortunately there was an accident on the tracks, so the line we needed got closed right as we were about to board.  We walked.  We were just glad not to have been on the train, stuck in a tunnel, underground, with 6 young children.  In any case, we made it to the tower and loved it.  From my previous visit (when I was 14!) I only remembered the ravens, signs saying "Beware Ravens Bite," and the crown jewels.  All of those things were there, and they were still impressive, however, this time I was more impressed with the structure and the history of the place.  The kids enjoyed being outside and having open places to run.  They also enjoyed the white tower museum with the weapons - especially the part where they got to try out some of the weapons.  Ian was particularly surprised at how heavy a sword is. We spent the better part of the day at the tower - there is A LOT to see and do there, and I think we all had a great time.  I did, anyway.  I would love to go back and actually take the tour with a guide so that I can get a little more of the tower's historical background.  Maybe next time!

       

     

Here we are (all of us this time - a definite perk of traveling with friends is that you can actually get a family picture without having to talk to strangers) in front of the London Bridge.  These pictures are taken from the Tower of London - in fact, the upper right hand picture is of both the tower and the bridge.  The kids loved seeing places they've heard about, sung about, and seen in movies.  In fact, much to the amusement (and delight, I hope) of morning commuters, the morning after having seen London Bridge they sang the song (you know - London Bridge is Falling Down) and played the accompanying game with the Dawson kids while we waited for our train.  In any case (delighted Londoners or no) it kept them happy and busy. 

Speaking of train travel, one thing that was very funny to us was how hard the ticket vendor at the West Wickham train station tried to get us on to the later (cheaper) trains.  If you travel after 9:30 a.m. you get a discount.  Well, we didn't want to travel later.  We wanted to get going and we definitely didn't want to spend any more time than necessary waiting on the platform.  I know that this kind man was just trying to help the dumb Americans who were obviously spending WAY too much on train travel, but really, it's worth the extra money to not have to wait around for a train with 6 children 10 and under (4 of whom were 3 and under).  Also, it gets dark SO early in London (here too for that matter) that you really need to get an earlier start if you want to have enough daylight to get to anything.  Eventually we did convince him that we wanted the earlier tickets - they were worth every penny.

                 

          

                                         

And finally, here we are again - this time in front of Big Ben and the Parliament buildings.  As you can tell the light was quickly fading.  I think it was around 4:00 in the afternoon.  (Looking at the time on Big Ben in the pictures - yup, I'm right.)  I can't believe how huge Parliament is.  HUGE!!!  Ian and Naomi especially loved seeing Big Ben - they recognized it from Peter Pan and Mary Poppins.  Anyway, we heard the famous bells ring, we took some pictures and we called it a day. 

And that's day one of London!  Stay tuned for day 2 - hopefully we'll have another few entries this week as I try to get caught up!