Tourists in London

Hello All!  Happy Easter :)

We’ve been busy, busy girls.  We took a few days after Stonehenge, Bath, and the Lion King in the first week to just relax.  It was really nice.

We did fully book our 2 weeks traveling before Sam leaves for home and the flights for Matt and my traveling before we head home! So excited to see Europe!

London-Brighton-Dubrovnik-Barcelona-Genoa-Cinque Terre-Florence-Milan-London (Sam leaves for home). Edinburgh-Dublin-Paris-Versailles-Venice-Amsterdam-London (Home).

On Saturday we made a trip up into Camden Market.  Just wandered around a bit, ended up looking into getting tattoos but didn’t happen. 

Sunday we walked past Buckingham Palace and they were waiting for people to drive in so we waited to see…there was an army truck and a convertible, no one too exciting.   We also saw the London Marathon :)

We met up with Andrea in Hyde Park for a bit, just sat out in the sun and caught up. We got to hear all about her trip around Europe.

We then went up to the zebra crossing on Abbey Road to say hi to our moms and Matt on the webcam they have there.

Monday we went into Covent Gardens to pick up our London Passes and get our hair cut. We had a bit of time before our hair appointments so, we decided to get our cupcakes. (Before we left Taylor gave us a gift of experiences…envelopes with a bit of money on them to do different things. Cupcakes, Tea, Postage, Girls’ Night Out, Adventure.) As we were looking up where cupcake places were in the area we met a really nice old lady.  She knew exactly where the cupcake place Sam had just found on Google was.  She even showed us a shortcut to get there.  So we went in and got a couple of cupcakes. 

I had a missed call from the hair place and was about to call them as we sat down outside the cupcake place and happened to look up and notice that the hair salon was across the street.  So I just walked across to see…they had space earlier for one of us so we got Sam started because of how much hair she has.  We were getting conditioned, some highlights, a cut, and it blow-dried out at the end.  Even though I started about 30-40 minutes after her, I still finished first.  And they did a good job on both of our hair.

Tuesday we had lunch in Clapham Junction at Pizza Express before heading up into London. 

We ended up going into Hyde Park and laying in the sun for a couple hours. 

We then walked to the Hilton on Park Ave for our Chocoholics Afternoon Tea.  We got our choice of tea…ended up going with the Royal English Breakfast.

 Man do they put a lot of tea leaves in it.  We also got little “sandwiches”.  By sandwiches they meant tiny squares of bread with some stuff on top and no top piece of bread…so just open-faced.  I went with just the cucumber and ham options, Sam braved it out and tried all 5 of the options…ham, cucumber, salmon, egg salad, and shrimp.  They weren’t bad.

Then came the dessert.  It was a gorgeous display, focused on chocolate obviously. There were fresh scones (chocolate chip, plain, and raison) with fresh strawberry jam, clotted cream, and chocolate sauce.  Then there were 4 mini cupcakes…pistachio, blueberry, lemon and coconut, and of course chocolate.  And finally, the chocolate…the entire top layer was all edible chocolate (unfortunately mostly dark chocolate). 

We were very full afterwards. We walked back through Green Park to the underground…it was a gorgeous spring day.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we used our 3-Day London Passes.  Basically you buy the number of days you want and you do as much from the list of options as you can in that time.  So we planned out how to fit in as much as possible in the 3 days that we could to get our money’s worth.

Wednesday we focused in the London Bridge area.  We started with the Tower of London.  It was cool to walk through. 

The Crown Jewels are crazy!

Also, they keep ravens in the tower because of an old legend…‘If the ravens leave the Tower, the kingdom will fall…’ (http://www.hrp.org.uk/TowerOfLondon/stories/theravens) It was kind of cool and one of them was really close to us. 

Their sound is so neat.  After the Tower of London, we headed to the Tower Bridge Exhibition. 

We got to go up onto/into the bridge’s towers and walkways.  It was a great view. 

We got to go into the engine room part underneath as well. We then headed to the Design Museum.

We thought that it was going to be like architectural design and were really interested…but apparently not.  The first floor was all fashion design and we were not impressed, but the second floor was all new designs of 2013/14.  It was so cool!!  A few favourites were the eco-friendly/recycled car

The wave keyboard (continual soft rubber so have sounds be more connected)

 A big chart paper that writes what you type into the computer on the paper.

 Electronic paint (paint something on the wall; connect it to the circuit board. Touch the paint and it turns on or off whatever you’ve connected it to)

A way to learn Chinese with pictures

And my favourite was a Lego calendar (put Lego pieces where things are in your schedule, take a picture and upload it and it updates all the calendars connected to it.)

It was really cool. 

Next stop was the London Bridge Experience. 

It takes you through a very dark “tour” of London at the time London Bridge was built, gives you a history of London Bridge (all of them), and ends with a haunted house.  It was a lot of fun.  The haunted house part was funny. We went from there across London Bridge to the Monument.

We climbed up 311 stairs (very narrow, winding stairs) for a lovely view at the top, then back down those same stairs.

We grabbed lunch at a pub at the base of the Monument before heading over to our final location of the day…Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. This was one of my favourite places we went to. 

We did one of the tours and our tour guide was awesome.  We got information about the original theatre and the remake of it, how performances worked back then, why it was built where and how it was.  Then we actually got to go into the theatre and watch parts of the rehearsal for Titus Andronicus.

It would be sweet to watch a play in the Globe, so we’re looking into it.  That was how we ended our first day of the London Pass.

Thursday, Day 2, we were in the Westminster/Hyde Park area.  We started with Westminster Abbey, which is gorgeous. 

We did the audio tour of it and it was neat to hear about all the people buried in there and the weddings and coronations that have taken place there.

We then went up to Buckingham Palace area.  We went into the Royal Mews, which is where all the Royal ground transportation is kept (cars, horses, and carriages). 

Unfortunately only 2 of the 36 horses were there right now because the rest are with the Queen at Windsor Castle for the Easter weekend. 

It was really cool though.  We got to see the 2 horses that were there (the 2 oldest horses at the Palace). We also got to see a couple carriages, one is the most recent carriage made in 80+ years (in 1980something), and another made for Queen Victoria.

  We saw a sweet old Rolls Royce made for the Royals and is one of the 5 cars of the fleet.

Apparently they’re owned by the state so they don’t need license plates. Also, the cars have all the parts needed for repairs in the boot in case they break down.  The Queen is apparently a full-fledged mechanic too...super cool.
The last thing we got to see was the Gold Coronation Carriage.  It’s been used for all coronations since it was made.  It was gorgeous.  It was really cool to see all of these things, wish the Grey horses were there though. 

 We went briefly into the Queen’s Gallery but it wasn’t too exciting other than being in Buckingham Palace. Next we walked down the gorgeous road from Buckingham Palace to the Wellington Arch. We went up the arch and it was nice.  Cool view.  The last stop of the day was Kensington Palace…the home of William, Kate, and baby George. It was pretty cool seeing the clothes worn by royalty.  We also got to try on clothes here…men’s jackets and women’s skirt and jacket.  They’re super heavy! Then we got to try on wigs and coats. It was a lot of fun.

Next we walked down the gorgeous road from Buckingham Palace to the Wellington Arch.

We went up the arch and it was nice.  Cool view. 

 We went to the Apsley House briefly too.
 The house on the right in this picture.

The last stop of the day was Kensington Palace…the home of William, Kate, and baby George.

We got to walk through a big portion of the Palace.

It was pretty cool seeing the clothes worn by royalty. 

We also got to try on clothes here…men’s jackets and women’s skirt and jacket. They’re super heavy! Then we got to try on wigs and coats. It was a lot of fun. 

 

Friday, Day 3, we only went to 2 places but it was a busy day!  We started off with Hampton Court Palace. Because it was Good Friday there was a ton of stuff going on at the palace.

This was one of my favourite places…we got to wear cloaks our whole time there and the audio tour was pretty interesting. 

We listened to the whole thing about Henry VIII growing up and his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. It was really interesting. We got to make Easter bonnets too.

We walked through a bunch of the palace then watched a horse ballet and the royal guards getting ready to welcome the King.  It was very cool.  We walked through part of the grounds and then went through the maze before heading out.

Our final destination was the London Zoo.

Gotta love the zoo! We had a great time.

 

Lots of the animals were napping though so that was too bad, but it was a good day.  We finished off our London Pass with 2 games of bowling with Mary.  We pretty much suck, but had a blast, and had some awesome pizza for dinner.

Saturday was decided to be an at home day.  Laundry, relaxing, tv shows.  We watched a really interesting series call Tough Young Teachers about teaching in London.  It was really cool to watch.

Happy Easter everyone! Easter Sunday for us was pretty relaxing.  We hung around home for the morning, I met up with Andrea in the afternoon for a hot chocolate and a catch-up, then she came and joined Sam and I for an awesome Easter dinner of…wait for it…taco salad! Then we watched a movie and had ice cream before she headed home.

It was hard to be missing out on family traditions for us…the Easter Fight for Sam, the Scavenger hunt for me, family dinners for both of us.

Easter Monday…our last day off before going back to work.  We finished laundry, grocery shopped and watched Full House.  It was good. 

We’ve had a wonderful 2 week break being around London.  We’ve seen and done lots and don’t want to go back to work!  So grateful to be living where we are.

 Missing everyone at home.  Thanks for reading!

Back to work tomorrow.

We out.

Sam and Lisa