I haven't blogged about our life in a while. No, we are not boring! In fact, we have been so busy that I haven't had the time to do it. So, I am going to try to catch us up by the end of this month, so bear with me if I jump around a bit.

Back to England. (Would love to be back!)

Here we are in London. Great city, great time. We did all (as much as we could) the tourist things. I will say, we did put in some long days. I don't have a picture, but we did ride the hop on/off double decker bus tour, that was really fun.

 Here we are on the famous Yeoman Warder tour at the Tower of London. This Yeoman Warder is as they say, enduring and entertaining! Full of jokes, of course not to be taken personal, as some Frenchies did when they left after a remark about France, they probably just couldn't understand what he was saying, the Frenchies were always getting in trouble over there on the tours.

 We visited the Tower of London and it is amazing and huge, we actually didn't tour the chapel (next trip), but we did get to see the crown jewels, very impressive and pretty cool to see what the royals use in ceremonies that took place so long ago and also today.

 We went through Shakespeare's Globe. One of our friends son's who at the age of 13 is an avid Shakespeare reader and greatly appreciates Shakespeare's humor. So, we brought him home a t-shirt.

 Here is the view from St. Paul's Cathedral, the stone gallery. The Cathedral was amazing. We went to the whispering gallery which was fun, then up to stone gallery. Joe went all the way up to the golden gallery, but I have to admit once I got on the narrow stairway and thought about how high I was, I chickened out. I had a lovely time staying one gallery down. Randomly though, we did meet another couple from NC on the stairwell, small world right?

View going up to the Golden Gallery, taken by Joe

 We stopped by the Queen's grocer Fortnum & Mason to pick up some tea. Fortnum & Mason has been the supplier for the royal family for 150 years, although may no longer be...meat scandal... just brewed....

Hey, look at my handsome traveling companion!

This still cracks me up. 

What else happened in London? We ran through Kensington Gardens, beautiful. We went to the National Portrait Gallery. We ate fish N chips, although the best fish N Chips we had were in Bath. Joe decided that all the hotels we stayed at were girly, what can I say? We were close to a tube stop, so that was nice and convenient.  The breakfast at the hotel we stayed at was so good! We ate dinner at this one place, I can't remember the name, that was also really good, we were regulars there (for two nights). We walked over to Big Ben and also saw Westminster Abbey. We have to go back because there was a lot we didn't get to see, there is so much there. We did hit every Disney Store on the trip looking for Frozen stuff, no luck. And we did go through Harrod's, that place is crazy, you could easily get lost in there, but they have everything, everything! 

We also went to a great bookshop, Hatchard. I didn't realize it at the time, but it is one of the oldest bookshops in London and has three Royal Warrants. We just stumbled upon it and I just walked in and said, "this is what a bookstore should be". It was just as you would imagine a bookshop to be, charming, warm, worn, old, cozy, well-loved, and full of great books, inviting you to pick up a book and read. I could have spent hours and hours in there, magical.

Hatchard



It was fun visiting London.