London Part 1

I'd better post this before I forget all of the lovely details of our wonderful sisters and mom trip to London. It was a dream come true. I'm so lucky to have an awesome supportive husband and his awesome family to take care of Alexander while I was gone. It was the first time I have ever been away from him and honestly I had major anxiety about it before I left, and the first few days we were gone. Right before I was supposed to board the plane from SLC to Newark, I called Taylor and I was sobbing. But he calmed me down and got me through it. Ha ha I blame it on the pregnancy hormones. We were lucky enough for our schedules to work out, even with the 7 hour time difference to be able to Skype everyday. That was such a blessing! 

I can't remember the last time we hung out just the 4 of us, so it was so much fun to spend time with them and we had such an adventure. Between Amy and I we took so many pictures, so this post is the 1 of 2, full of many pictures!

Here we are on the plane (Mom has her angry face...totally different story for another day, but I'll just say it had to do with Lizzy's feeding tube and airline security, and it wasn't pretty...) Also us getting to London and walking around by our hotel. We got lost a lot that first day:) Then we decided just to take a cab. We first went to Westminster Abbey, but it was closed for the night. 

Big Ben and Houses of Parliament. (We did tours later)

I loved all of the details of Westminster Abbey. So amazing.

From there we walked to Trafalgar Square and went to the National Gallery. We saw some amazing art pieces. We then walked to Picadilly Circus (pretty much like Time Square) and began the search for the  theater Matilda was playing in. For being such a popular show you'd think that people would know where it was playing, but no one could give us directions. Lets just say being tired, hungry and lost is not a good combo in Alexander women. We finally found it with minutes to spare, grabbed dinner at a yummy Italian joint, where I downed a full pizza, and headed back to the theater. The show was fantastic. We even sat on the back row, but we seriously loved it. Well, Mom and Liz took a nice nap, but Amy and I really enjoyed it! Trenchable was played by a man and it was hilarious. Totally would recommend it to anyone and it is totally appropriate for kids. We took a taxi back to the hotel and crashed. 

Friday

For some reason these pictures uploaded out of order and its hard to move them, so I'll just say what is going on in the pictures. Here is Buckingham Palace. It's closed for tours, and there was no changing of the guard today, but we saw a few of them doing their thing. 

We took a hop-on-hop-off bus tour for the day, and it took us to all of our destinations. Here we are going across the Thames River to St. Pauls Cathedral. You can see the London Eye and Big Ben in the background

We took a tour of the Royal Mews (where they take care of the Queens horses and train them). It was a quick tour but really interesting.

Here is a copy of the carriage that they only use for the coronation of the Queen/King.

We had dinner in Chinatown and went to Singing in the Rain Friday night. It was also amazing and has always been one my favorite musicals. They actually had it rain on the stage and I'm not just talking sprinkles. It full on poured and he was kicking it into the audience and the people down below got soaked. Good thing we had sweet tickets in the back again!

Here we are at St. Pauls Cathedral. This was one of my top favorite things we saw. The history there is amazing. Princess Di got married here! I stood in the very spot she did when her and Charles got married. There is so much detail and so much history it is so overwhelming. You can't take pictures inside. This side of London was completely destroyed in the Blitz during WWII and St. Pauls was almost completely destroyed. It was the landmark for the Nazi's to fly in and make a U-turn and fly back out as they bombed London. They have an amazing monument dedicated to Americans who served in WWII inside. This is also where they filmed the scene from Mary Poppins when they are feeding the birds. 

We took the bus to the Tower of London. This was a crazy place. They tortured and killed people there. They currently hold the crown jewels there. That was so awesome! They are amazing. And this cute little guard was doing a great job, Mom wouldn't take pictures with him because she got the giggles and was embarrassed. 

This is King Henry the 8th's armor. Need I say more?

The Tower Bridge on the bottom right. And so many beautiful flowers and tulips in bloom.

The Tower of London. The green grass part used to be a moat.

First thing in the morning we went to Westminster Abbey. No pictures inside either, but it was so amazing. There are thousands of people buried there. And Will and Kate got married here! There is so much to see, it was insane. 

Lizzy did some sweet sketches.

We could take pictures inside the corridors.

Such a good day jammed packed with so much, we also did a river tour down the Thames before we headed to our show.