I Heart London Part II, or, How to Get Kids to Have Fun at Museums

Hello again all!  I realize that my goal of writing multiple posts in a short amount of time in an attempt to bring us up to the present has been, sadly, unfulfilled.  All I can say is that we are experiencing what so many families with young children experience after a move - weeks and weeks of being sick.  I think we're slowly making our way through every German bug out there.  The worst part of it all is that we haven't been sick at the same time.  Nope, I have had a sick child, a sick husband, or been sick myself for at least six weeks.  Today it's my turn.  I woke up with a nasty fever, cough, body ache combo that had me flat on my back until the Motrin and Robitussen kicked in.  So, Ben is at Stake Conference with Ian, Naomi is lying on the couch watching the Tinkerbell movie for the second time today and I'm taking the opportunity of my drug induced state of well being to do some blogging.  I have a whole bunch of pictures from London to post, so I'm going to try and get through them all today.  Here goes!

Our second day in London we split up with our friends for the day (in order for them to do things we didn't want to and vice-versa).  We started out the day at Westminster Abbey.  I love Westminster Abbey.  I think it is a fascinating church and I think it's amazing how many statues and tombs they have crammed in, and continue to cram in.  Our original plan was to just walk through the church and see what we could until the kids had had it, however after Naomi took this picture:

                                                

the greeter/guard (who joked with her that he hadn't been ready and didn't have a good smile) told us about the children's path that we could follow.  Inside at the information desk we found clipboards with a "treasure hunt" for the kids to do.  It was great.  There were questions like "Westminster Abbey has the highest ceiling in Europe.  How high do you think it is?" and "Find the statue of Shakespeare.  What is he leaning on?"  and "Find the tomb of Queen Elizabeth I.  What year was she born?".  The kids(especially Ian) loved it.  And, at the end, we got to turn in our answers for a giant chocolate coin.  I wish that every museum/church had something similar for kids to do.  We got to see more, the kids had fun searching for answers and there was candy at the end.  What more could you want?!  Here are some more pictures of Westminster from the outside. 

                                  

                                         

                                                            

Note how beautifully blue the skies are.  We really lucked out with weather.  London in December was definitely a risk, and this time it paid off.  In fact, it was warmer in London that week than it was in Heidelberg!

After a wandering Westminster and a really bad lunch at Quiznos (Not so good in London, much to our dismay.  STAY AWAY!  And they didn't even have bathrooms!) we walked up to Trafalgar Square.  Our next stop was St. Martin in the Fields (a church).

                                           

The church itself is nothing spectacular (although there is a cool cafe in the crypt downstairs - if only we had waited to eat there!) but for those of you who aren't classical music nerds (like myself) this church is home to the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (one of the finer orchestras out there) conducted by Sir Neville Mariner.  Unfortunately they weren't playing that day, but I did get to see the church and hope that I'll be able to return for a concert someday.  And, the church is also the location of the London Brass rubbing center.  Our kid friendly activity of the day!  Coloring!  Here we are working on our masterpieces:

                                         

After we were done we let the kids run around Trafalgar Square for awhile. 

             

             

                                                             

Our final stop was the British National Gallery. 

                                              

I must say that our kids were troopers.  It did help that I made a bingo game for the museum - they spent their time searching paintings for things they could cross off on their bingo cards.  We had a wonderful day.  I really, really love London.