"Hey Mom & Dad... They speak english here!"

Ms. A & Mr. L have mid-term break this week so we decided that we would take the opportunity and see a few sites.  We decided that we would visit our cousins who are in London doing a tour much like K.  We headed out Sunday morning and had a nice drive up with the kids.  We drove through Belgium and into France and took a ferry from Calais France to Dover England.  The ferry ride from Calais to Dover was quite the adventure for the kids and it was fun to see them so excited to be riding on a big boat for the first time.  They were especially excited to drive the car inside the boat.

Once we were on the boat we went ahead and ate some dinner and the proceeded to wander around the boat looking for anything to keep the kiddos entertained.  We went outside for a little bit, and Ms. H & Mr. L were enthusiastic for about  2 minutes mainly because the wind was CRAZY!!!  Ms. A, loved it though.

She's definitely going for the wind blown look...

 The boat passes right by the cliffs of Dover and if you're not familiar with them, they are very white.  Ms. A thought it was very cool...

Once we got off the boat, we headed to K's cousin's house and needless to say K was very nervous given that everything in the UK that relates to driving is backwards.  We had to turn off the radio and keep the kiddos quiet for a few minutes while K's brain switched from right to left...

The next morning we woke up and headed off to see the sites, it was a very pretty city and Ms. A was always stopping and saying , "Whoa, Mom, look at that...".  It was funny, while we were in London Ms. A discovered scarfs, and has become a dedicated scarf enthusiast, what do you think of her new looks!

As I'm sure you can tell by the fact that we had to wear scarfs and winter coats, it was pretty cold the entire time that we were in London.  But that didn't stop of from carting all the kids around the city to make sure that we were able to see all the "Big" things to see in London.

We really wanted to see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, but it is funny, for a military group, they sure are not very regular and scheduled.  Based on the information posted by the palace, every odd day at 11:30 the guards change, BUT, according to all our friends who live in London, every time that they've tried to watch the changing, the can't see it because it has been cancelled.  Of course, as luck would have it, it was cancelled for us as well, but we were still able to watch the 2 guards posted outside the palace march around and make loud banging noises with their guns.  Ms. A & Mr. L, thought it was very cool that they actually were guarding a queen. 

We also passed by Mr. Big Ben, it is probably one of the prettiest things in London (in our opinion), and it was really easy to pass the time, no pun intended ;), watching the clock and looking at all the architecture around it.  A few random facts about Big Ben 1) It is one of the most accurate large scale tower clocks in the world, 2) Only UK citizens are allowed to go inside the clock and see how it works.

The Tower Bridge, which both E & K agreed was the prettiest bridge we'd ever seen. Pictures really can't do it any justice.

Our gaggle of kids posing/playing with the famous red telephone booths.

We rode around on the Tube quite a bit throughout the day, and this was one of the highlights of the trip for Mr. L.  He loved getting on and off the trains and also watching the trains come down the track.  We had to constantly remind him though to "Mind the Gap"!

We took the kids to St. James's Park which is just right across from Buckingham Palace for lunch and there was a great playground right next to where we ate.  The kids to advantaged of the playground, and the pigeons definitely took advantaged of the hurried manner in which the kids ate their sandwiches.  Anything that dropped on the ground was gone in 5 secs flat...  No time for the 10 second rule here!

After seeing so many things, we finally decided to just hop on a double decker bus and let it take us around the city for awhile.  We didn't hear any complaints from the kids.  They loved being so high up.

We had a very packed full first day so we went home and enjoyed the rest of the evening and got to bed early because we had another busy day coming up.


The next day we went and visited one of K's friends from BYU who is working here in London, and after lunch, we took the kids on the London Eye.  The London Eye is a huge ferris wheel that is located on the River Thames.  It's 443 feet high and you can see everything once you get to the top.  It is a 30 minute ride all the way around and we really enjoyed the view.

Where is Ms. H in the picture above?  Well, she was pretty tired so she decided to just sleep off the entire ride.

Did we mention that the ride is a full 30 mins?  Isn't amazing that even when you ask a child 5 times if they need to go potty and they tell you 5 times (almost ready to scream at you on the 5th time) that they don't need to go, that as fate always has it, they have to go with 15 minutes still left on the ride! Mr.  L had such an experience and we are sure that he is one of the few lucky people to have answered the call of nature at the top of the London Eye :)  E was thrilled...

We went home after visting the London Eye (the line to buy tickets and then to actually get on the ride is a few hours, so it basically took us the whole day to do it), and had a nice dinner with the kids and went to bed.  We were sad because we only had 2 days in such a wonderful city, but here's to hoping we can come back for some more!

The next morning was actually Halloween, so thanks to our wonderful hosts we had a very festive and fun Halloween breakfast. 

After breakfast we headed out to catch the Euro Tunnel train back to France so that we could get down to Normandy where we spent the next three days of our vacation.  The kids really liked driving onto the train and seeing the train move.  The train actually goes underneath the English Channel and the ride is incredibly quick.  It took us approximately 30 mins to cross the channel on the train versus 1.5 hours on the boat.  E wasn't so sure about the whole experience and it was quite a claustrophobic feeling at times.

We safely arrived in France and were off to Normandy.  Our time in London was really nice, and we're very happy to have spent just a few days there just so that we could wet our whistle.  In the end we had a lot of great memories, and it was really a nice change of pace to not have to worry about trying to speak French with everyone on the street.  It made us definitely appreciate our favorite language English.  Cheers!

--K & E