London June 2009

As a semi - five year anniversary / Honeymoon trip, Rob and I are in London for about a week. I really miss the kids, but I know they are in absolutely excellent care with my friend, Diana. I'm still in shock that she agreed to take both kids for such a long time. She's an amazing friend and I feel very blessed and grateful. If you want to keep up with their adventures, you can follow them here. She's so great, she's even taking photos so that I can see what they are doing and not feel so bad about leaving them. I love this age that we live in. Technology can bring such comfort sometimes. Thank you, Diana!

Our trip started with an over-night flight from Austin to London. We left Austin at 11:00 am on Monday and arrived in London at 7:00 am on Tuesday. For me, my Martiville karma proved good again. I was able to snag an empty row across from my original seat. I love that I'm short and bendy. ;) An empty row means that I can stretch out and actually sleep!

Rob wasn't so lucky. In addition to getting crammed into a small airline chair, he had a bit of a tummy ache the entire trip. He was a bit green for the first few hours after we landed in London. Poor guy. He recovered pretty quickly, after we finally got some fresh air.
If I could describe London briefly, I would say, "STAIRS!" Everywhere we go, there are a ton of stairs. The subway ("Underground") is nothing but stairs. Loads of fun as you try and navigate around during rush hour with all of your luggage....
So, we are getting good exercise while we are here! Lots of walking, and lots of stairs. St. Paul's Cathedral was amazing. No camera's allowed inside, but there were... lots of stairs. ;) This is actually some more stairs from the Tower of London.
London Bridge.
Big Ben
Westminster Abbey: This place was amazing. There were way more memorials and tombs than I had expected. But just breath taking with the amount of history, art, and expensive decor. My wide angle lens is coming in super handy over here. Everything is Huge! Texas has nothing on London where everything really is "bigger". and older. ;)
The Queen is in residence while we are here, so this is as close as we can get to the palace and the guards. We did see the Prime Minister and had the opportunity to see her husband, Philip. But, we opted to go for a fun meal instead. There was a big band festival about beating of the drums or blowing the horn or something. We were at the right place at the right time and noticed they were closing things off to traffic. But, if we stayed where we were, we could have participated. We moved on....
This was my favorite of her chariots from the Royal Mews.
So, we basically arrived on Tuesday morning, did St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower of London, London Bridge, looked at Shakesphere's globe, ate a good British meal and crashed at around 9:00pm London time - 3:00 pm Austin time. We crashed for a full 12 hours. Wednesday, we went to Parliment, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Whitehall, Gordon Brown, Buckingham Palace, Royal Mews, Albert's Pub, Garfunkles, Winston Churchill Museum, and crashed around 10:00. Thursday, we woke up at 4:00 am for a three hour train ride to Paris..... I'll post more on that later. Tonight, I think we are heading up for another early turn-in. It's been a long week and we plan on relaxing a bit more tomorrow and celebrating my birthday with High Tea at Harrod's. :)

I'll keep you posted!

Suzy and Andy, we love you very much and we hope you had a great time at preschool with Miss Cami! Love, Mommy and Daddy.