London: Part 2

Saturday: We slept in this morning and got rested up for the busy day ahead of us!

This is our view from the hotel. It was an awesome hotel. Very contemporary and Ikea-ish. And we had the cutest little bus boy that brought Lizzy bottles of water for her feeding tube every night.

First thing was the Parliament tour. This was one of the things that I really was looking forward to doing. We learned so much and it was so fascanating to learn about their government. The English are very traditional and formal, it makes us Americans look like hicks from the sticks. 

Here we are in the Great Hall. During a big flood back in the day, they used it as a rowing pond, and it was also used as a tennis court, its where they have a big feast for the coronation of the royalty, and someone important was beheaded there, but I can't remember who:) Also they had the funeral public viewing of Queen Elizabeth the 1st there. Its the only place you can take pictures in the building. We had the best tour guide ever.

I just had to capture Mom's expression. She stayed up late on familysearch.org the night before finding our English ancestors and she was just so excited about it is was just darn cute.

We ate a yummy lunch and headed to our bike tour. These pictures are of a tunnel that is the only legal area in London to do graffiti. They encourage it and hold competitions there. It was so cool.

We saw this girl working on her stencil art when we were leaving and saw it completed when we returned.

Liz in her element.

We got to ride these fancy cruiser bikes all around. Our tour was called the "Secrets of London" tour and we saw some pretty random and fascinating things.

Mom was such a good sport and was so cute riding her bike.

First stop- Diagon Alley. Yes. They filmed Harry Potter here. 

It got a little chilly...

They filmed a John Wayne movie at that tavern.

We had a little snack break, so Lizzy hit up this record store and spent most of her inheritance there....and mom sat next to a lady who was smoking pot.

We went to the docks on the Thames River.

The Tower Bridge. Thats the one the dementors destroy in Harry Potter.

Amy being classy as always. And a sweet Maserati. 

Biking through London was a little scary, and yes I was taking pictures while we rode:). The brakes are on the opposite hands too, so that kinda threw me off a little. 

I couldn't get enough of Mom. She looked so cute. Dad would have been so proud of her.

The replica of Shakespeare theatre.

And back to return the bikes.

Yep my bike was named J.K. Rowling. I couldn't have been more excited about that!

Remember the stencil work we saw before? This is the finished product. It was amazing!

Favorite pictures of the trip!

We walked down to the river and had an amazing dinner. Then we walked back across the river and had these amazing views of the city.

Big Ben and Parliament.

The London Eye

 It was such a fun day and we were super tired!

SUNDAY:
We woke up early and took a taxi to the Hyde Park ward for church. Look how cool their building is! It was right across from the Victoria and Albert Museum and close to Kensington Palace. It was a huge ward and alot of great people. From there we took a taxi to meet our bus for the Stonehenge/Bath day trip.

We took a nice travel bus out to the country to visit bath. It was an absolutely beautiful place. So green and hilly. Johnny Depp totally has a house there:) 

Cool steam punk girl statue. She totally moved to look at the camera!

First stop was the Catholic Abbey that was shut down during King Henry the 8th's reign when he started the Church of England. This was the only church we went into that we could take pictures.

Then we went to the Roman Baths. It was an old spa built on a hot spring hundreds of years ago when Rome took over England. The hot spring is still live and they have spas in Bath you can go to.

The water is still hot and bubbling...

I had to take this picture for Taylors dad, Vince. He loves Burger King and it was the only one we saw and in a super random place! There were a ton of McDonalds and Pizza Huts though.

This is our tour guide. We called him George because he literally looks exactly like my sister-in-law Darby's Dad, George. So we found the british version of him. We had some free time in Bath and so he took us to Jane Austen's house. She lived in Bath with her family for sometime and wrote Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and a bunch of other novels in Bath. It was amazing to think she walked these streets and socialized and got alot of her inspiration here.

Did you know they don't have any pictures of her? They think this sketch is of her, but its the only thing they have.

We just had to try on the costumes:)

I totally got the giggles when we were trying to be serious.

Yep she lived on Gay Street.

This is the oldest bakery in Bath. We bought Sally Lunn's famous sweet rolls (we had never heard of them before but we were hungry:)

Then we got back on the bus and headed to Lacock. It is an old village that they film alot of movies at because they have kept it old looking. These pictures I took from the bus on the way...

Lots of green farm land.

And sheep. Lots and lots of sheep.

They filmed alot of Harry Potter in this building.

This is the village of Lacock.

This is the old tithe barn that the village had to bring their tithe to.

This is the house they filmed HP #7, it was Harry's parents house in the movie.

We had lunch at this old pub that was built in the 1300's. It was a cool little place. We hopped back on the bus and headed to Stonehenge. It was so cold...I thought I was back in Rexburg.

They told us not to touch or lick the stone...

Our tour was told us before we got to Stonehenge not to get too excited. He said, its just a bunch of rocks out in the middle of field. Ha ha he was right, but it was cool to see. Its amazing to think these stones were placed there about 2200 BC, and they don't really know why there are there. They have 24 hour guards there.

We got back on the bus and headed back into London.

MONDAY:

We check out of the hotel monday morning and ventured on the tube to find Abbey Road. Mom was so cute singing all of the Beatles songes and walking across the street like they did. I volunteered to take the pics...

We then went to the Victoria and Albert museum. It is a huge museum with a ton to see. Then we headed to the airport! We got to Newark around 7:30 pm and Steve picked us up and we stayed the night at their house. It was fun to see their kids, I am kicking myself that we didn't get any pics together. We rested Tuesday morning and Amy took Mom, Liz and I to the airport. I had a different flight than they did and Darby picked me up in SLC at 10:00 pm and I drove all the way home! I couldn't wait to see my sweet boys. It took a few days to get back into the swing of things, but it wasn't too bad. I brought these cute pj's back for Al.

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.