London - Thanksgiving 2009 (day 3)

On our last full day in London, we headed over first thing to Kings Cross Station, of Harry Potter fame. This is the station where Harry boards the train to Hogwarts every year. The outside scenes were filmed at a different station, this is what it actually looks like outside. :)

Inside, it does have the high glass ceilings shown in the movies. Cool. And because apparently many HP fans come to visit, they have set up a little photo op for platform 9 3/4. While we were there, we saw 5 other groups of people taking pictures at the op.

Cambria pushes her luggage trolley through the wall!

Meridian gives it a try

Scott's turn!

Cambria outside Kings Cross Station

And Meridian...

On the tube, the girls were giggling and playing and being super cute.

We found our way over to the Tower of London (not at all clear from the tube exit we took), entered and got audio guides for us all. This proved to be a pain since we had to all stop them and start them at the same time. It'd be nice if they made a family one with one player and multiple wireless headphone receivers...

They had ice skating outside of the Tower, I wish I'd taken a picture, but I forgot. :)

The whole Tower complex (it's a bunch of towers together, surrounded by walls and a moat) was right along the Thames river, before they filled the area in between in with land - they used to drive right up to the Traitor's Gate below in their boats, and bring the prisoners in. Actually, many people arrived at the gate, whether accused or not.

Wakefield Tower

Me, pretending to shoot at the enemies on the river!

The Jewel House, where the Crown Jewels are on display. This includes the crowns of a bunch of monarchs, the ball they hold only on coronation day (Sovereign's Orb), some sceptres, swords and a lot of fancy plates and what not. It was neat, but no pictures are allowed inside.

Meridian explains, below

Below is the guard outside, on watch. Inside, you know you're entering the room with the good stuff when you see the two foot thick vault doors you're entering. :)

The Tower Bridge, from atop the riverfront wall in the Tower of London.

The White Tower, built by William the Conqueror (guess what he conquered! England!!)! He was the last to successfully take over England, partly because he fortified it so well so no one could take it away from him. It was the first tower in the Tower of London complex. Meridian said it was creepy, especially the stairs. When we went it had this fabulous display of Henry VIII's armor from throughout his life - "Dressed to Kill". He was an athletic king in his younger years, and they have the broken jousting lances on display to prove it!

The kids with a Yeoman Warder. Cool.

Outside the Tower, there was a bagpipe player with his hat out. Meridian wanted to pay every street performer we came across, and we let her pay a few.

Also on the street was a guy making candied peanuts - yum! They were warm and delicious.

Caught the bus for a quick ride over closer to Trafalgar Square.

Trafalgar Square was something to see... it's one of those places you've seen in movies so many times. The Lions are a lot bigger in person. It's the fourth most popular tourist attraction on Earth. Crazy!

The girls were determined to climb up on the lion.

With some help from Dad, they did.  :)

Then, more climbing, of course, at the bottom of Nelson's Column.

Charles I statue, with Nelson behind

I thought this arch was cool, it's "Admiralty Arch" and you can actually drive through it... if you have any desire to drive in London, that is.  

We walked through it, and down the mall to Buckingham Palace.

Across the street from Buckingham Palace

 

Look!  It's the Queen! 

OK, well maybe we didn't actually see Her Majesty, but the flag is up, so she's home.

So I was trying to get a picture of me in my Charlie Brown Christmas t-shirt that my BFF sent me from home, and Cambria was determined to be in the picture with me.  But, she had a little trouble holding her smile while Scott got the lighting adjustment right.  This picture CRACKS me up!!  

 

After a miserably cold open top bus trip over to the West side of town, we arrived at the famous Harrod's.  It is 7 stories of shopping, and the size of a full city block.  We got lost a couple of times.  It was a bit dense of us to go during the Christmas season, and we were disappointed that there was a continuous hour wait for a seat in the Chocolate Bar.  We'll have to go back and check that out.  It's lit up green because they were going with a Wizard of Oz holiday decorating theme.

Cambria likes that the chocolate shavings were made into an H just like the H for Harrod's (same font).  Note the £5.50 shake price - that's a $9.35 shake, thankyouverymuch.  Harrod's is not inexpensive.  We did get some lovely cheeses for a snack later in their cheese shop. 

So Harrod's is owned by the Fayed family, as in Dodi Fayed... this was weird to come across at the bottom of an escalator...

Exhausted, we returned to our hotel to eat some cheese and chocolates and drink some more wine before hitting the sack.  I realize I'm not mentioning many meals, that's mostly because we didn't eat anywhere very notable.  The kids would start acting onery and we'd find somewhere close to eat.  Not very exciting. There are dozens of places I wanted to go eat, but no luck.  :)

London - Thanksgiving 2009 (day 2, part 2)

So here's one more Eye picture that I missed, but I think it's cool enough to add here...

This is the pod next to ours. What a trip, right?  Creepy and fun at the same time!

After we left the Eye, we walked along the waterfront, there was a Christmas Market set up, selling all sorts of crafts and imports, and food! 

 

Scott bought some chestnuts, yes, roasted on an open fire!  Of course, thanks to the girls' Kindergarten teacher, we've already had these on the Kindergarten field trip back home.  Thanks Heather!  :) 

 We had lunch at a restaurant down the way, it was cold and we were ready to sit down.  But on our way back to where we would meet our bus, we let the girls ride the carousel.  At this point, it's mainly Cambria who wants to ride, but fortunately Meridian is still game enough to go with her.  :)

 

So our next thing was to catch a hop on - hop off bus tour, we chose the Big Bus, though I don't know if it was best.  It was OK, but some of our legs didn't have a tour guide, I guess we needed to ask for headphones, I don't know.  Anyway, the kids loved riding in the open top, even though it was FREEZING cold.  

 

So our goal was Hamley's, the 7 floor toy store on Regent Street.  There were only a few things on our must-see list, and for the girls Hamley's topped the list.  It was pretty impressive, though Christmas time is probably not the best time to go, duh.  :)  There was a couple of guys standing outside the store doing magic tricks and blowing bubbles, and inside the store there were a lot more employees playing with toys.  That was pretty cool to see how the toys actually worked. 

And, they have a whole Harry Potter section!  You can get a time-turner necklace just like Hermione's.  Or a broomstick like Harry's, or a Wizarding Chess Set!  There were lots of fun items in that section, Meridian bought a set of house shield pins, and really, really wanted a Maurauder's Map.  We said No (at £29, that's like $49)!!  I did end up ordering one online for $35 when we got home, and it was her Christmas present this year. 

Dobby!  Life sized!

Cambria with Harry's broom, and Dumbledore's?

The window displays outside Hamley's were pretty extraordinary too!  The bears were rocking, the fire was lit, there was music - it was neat.

So Hamley's is on Regent Street, which has a ton of shops.  It was partly lit up for Christmas, Cambria thought the stars over the street were really cool.

As we were walking down Regent Street (toward a tube station, honestly, ready to head home) we looked down an alley and saw this:

So, ok, we couldn't just walk past!!  Well, the kids could have, they were done for the day despite our many stops and treats and breaks.  But I dragged them down here to find a fun little shopping street with lots of holiday flair.  Unfortunately I had to give in to the whining of two kids a block after we turned down this street, and we had to head back to our hotel (it was only maybe 7pm).  I would really have liked to have stopped for dessert or a cup of tea or a pint.  Another time, maybe. 

London - Thanksgiving 2009 (day 2)

First thing the next morning, we figured out the Tube, and our Oyster cards that Jason and Shelly handed down to us from their visit in September (with credit still on them, thankyouverymuch!!)!  So we didn't realize you just have to hold the card up to the machine, it's not a swipe or anything... after we got that it was easier to figure out.  Also, kids ride free!  So that was a pleasant surprise!

The stop closest to our hotel was Kilburn Park on the Bakerloo line.  We found our way over to the Waterloo tube stop, which fortunately took no transfers since we had to make our Duck Tour by 10am. 

On the duck tour, they asked if we wanted the windows closed, but we're tough!  LOL

 

We got our first (and only I think) glimpse of No.10 Downing Street on this tour, this is where the Prime Minister resides. The tour guide was funny, but I'm afraid we didn't learn much, and the drive through London was very fast - it's so small, and many landmarks are right next to each other.  The result is "look over there - now over there, and we just passed..."  It's very fast, I think a walking tour would have been much more understandable.  At least we got the basic layout of the city on the tour.

Driving directly from the land into the water was a little crazy!  We had to switch drivers first, because the land driving and the boat piloting are two separate jobs!  This is honestly what we paid for... and it was worth it!  Very fun for all of us, we couldn't stop smiling!

It was neat to see Parliament and the rest of London from the water too - we did learn that people used the river to travel around London back before cars, it was quicker and cleaner than using the streets.

The picture above is MI-6!   Like where 007 reports to?  We went into and came out of the water just to the left of it.  I thought that was pretty cool.  :)

Next we headed over to the London Eye, since it's right next to the Duck Tour drop off.  We had purchased tickets in advance so we could avoid the ticket queue, thank goodness.  It was quite long.  Meridian and I were both nervous about being so high up in the air, with so little support, so we decided to just get it over with.  :)

Here comes our "pod" for our "flight"...

A word of advice here... we saw a private group get on before us, it was a "champagne flight" - that is the way to go.  You get the whole pod to your group, and we found it uncomfortable to ask strangers to get out of the way so we could see something too.  Friends and family however, we'd just push aside, ha!  I hope we'll do a private flight if we ever do it again, though since I spent so much of the time trying not to think about it, maybe I won't go again.  :)

Hungerford Bridge, from the Eye

Parliament and Big Ben from the Eye

 

OK, so this was a really long day... I'm going to split the blog here and continue with the second half when I get back to working on the blog.