Today was a beautiful, sunny day so we set out to explore the area called Piccadilly Circus and ended up walking around the city for 6 hours! Piccadilly Circus is London's equivalent of Times Square with lots of flashy billboards, tourist souvenir shops, cafes, theatre shows and shopping. We ended up on Regent Street where some of the best and most exclusive shopping is. We had fun just window shopping for the most part but decided we couldn't resist going into London's Hamley's toy store. After bumper to bumper strollers and people, and a few tears from Averie over a barking dog she was in love with, we made a quick exit and decided the day would be better spent in a park and headed towards St. James's Park. What a beautiful park with flowering trees and daffodils everywhere! We saw our first black swan in the pond and a pelican! We made our way to Buckingham Palace to check out where the Queen lives. Carter and Averie enjoyed watching the guards march around and had to practise their march in front of the gates. I kept hoping there would be some kind of action like the Queen driving up in her car or something but we decided to give up after 20 mins of standing and waiting. Eventually we walked towards Hyde Park and walked along the Serpentine where we saw a mother duck hustling her 3 babies along the waters edge. The kids were captivated and we had to follow the mom and her babies for almost a half hour! By this point we were pretty tired and ready for home. All in all it was a really fun, spontaneous adventure! Unfortunately we forgot the camera today!
Saturday, March 12, 2011
St. Paul's Cathedral
March 5, 2011
We visited St. Paul's Catherdral, built in 1675 after it's predecesor was burnt down in the great fire. After touring the interior, we climbed the internal staircase leading to the top of the dome for a view of the city!
This is outside on the stone gallery level, 376 steps up from the cathedral floor!
These are the spiral stairs we had to climb inside the dome! Carter climbed the whole way up himself! What a trooper!
After climbing 528 steps, we finally reached the top, the Golden Gallery. What a view!
Two very brave little people!
The Natural History Museum
March 2, 2011
The Natural History Museum is just a 10 minute walk from our flat so it's become a favorite week day excursion for the kids and I. It also helps that it has a huge dinosaur exhibit, with a 'live' T-Rex! The museum is huge and after 3 visits we have only explored 1/3rd of all exhibits! It's filled with tons of existing and extinct animals that you may never have the opportunity to see otherwise, like the Dodo bird and Meglasaurus! Just slightly creepy though because the animals are dead and stuffed!
market shopping
February 27, 2011
Averie and Carter have been dying to take a ride on the double decker buses that we see everywhere, so we decided to map out a route that would take us to the Portobella Market. It's located in none other than Notting Hill and is the largest market in London with one very long street of Artisans, antiques and cafes (we also managed to find some gelato!). What a fun day!
Tower of London
February 26, 2011
Today we visited the Tower of London, which is not just a tower after all, but the original walled city first built in 1080 AD. This was the site of the first roman city in this area, known as Londinium (43 AD).
We got to meet some 'real' knights, visit the crown jewels and tour the dungeons!
Hyde Park
February 24, 2011
We decided to check out Hyde Park today and found an incredible discovery!! The Princess Diana Memorial playground is tucked away in the North West corner of the park and built as a memorial for Diana and her love of children. What a great playground, with different areas modelled after stories from Peter Pan! Carter was in heaven with the pirate ship and Averie loved the sand! We had a great day at the park!
After a good 3 hours at the playground we left to find Round Pond in the park.
Someone couldn't stop talking about the swans for the rest of the week!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)