Arriving in London and days 1 & 2

We got off to a bit of a rough start but made it London exactly as planned (and safely, praise God!). We stood in line at the United check in counter for a whopping 3 1/2 hours. Line, people. With two kids. At lunch time. With 10 pieces of luggage. Y'all getting this? Our flight connected in Washington DC and there was some huge delay there (or from some other destination messing up all DC flights). Every person in line in front of us was connecting to an international flight and needed to be rerouted. That took hours, obviously. We finally made it to the counter about an hour after our flight was supposed to leave. We were sure we'd miss our connection to London :( But they held a plane that was supposed to leave early in the day to DC for us and we instead had to RUN through security (cutting the line and shoving 6 passports at the TSA officer). We RAN to the gate and basically taxied off immediately after we took our seats. Without a stitch of food in our bellies :( We landed at the DC airport with a mere 5 minutes to spare before our London flight was due to take off. People were sitting in our seats and were annoyed that we had showed up (clearly wanting to spread out). Ha! I'm sure it was only the grace of God that allowed our luggage to make it on both planes! The fun didn't end there though! Neither of the kids got much, if any, sleep (only a 6 hour flight with a 5 hour time difference) and Jack vomited when we landed. All over himself, the seat, and his beloved blanket. *sigh* Our plane was being turned right around so we couldn't even clean him up and change his clothes on the plane. Grrr.

We cleaned him up and changed his clothes (thank you again to my traveling friends for great advice!!) before going through customs and then waited for our van to the hotel. It was only 6 am in London when we landed. We were very fortunate to have Aunt Dianne and Uncle Mike staying at the same place since they kindly offered their room to let us sleep until our rooms were ready. Jack crashed and slept for hours, which is just what he needed. Theo crashed as well but threw up in his sleep (luckily after we had left Mike & Dianne's room). He also had other gastro-intestinal issues that were not pleasant :( All's well that ends well though. After more rest, zofran and immodium, we hailed a taxi to take us to the London Eye. I had bought us flexi passes (to be used any time during one day) before we left, knowing that we'd need a reason to get out and not sleep all day (and be up all night). We skipped a MASSIVE queue by having tickets already printed out and hopped right in line! We were up in the air and enjoying the sights of London in no time at all.

The Eye lasted about 30 minutes and the boys loved every second of it. We could see for miles and really got a birds eye view of London. We also realized that we had not packed appropriately and needed warmer coats for the boys (it was an overcast and cool 50 degrees) so we had to do some shopping. We picked up some London rain coats for the boys and they went on the wear them most of our time in Europe!

We found a great pub right near our hotel and ate our first real meal in London. It had a children's menu and awesome Pimms cups (never had those before. Yum!!). Boy did the Pimms hit the spot and numb the events from earlier in the day ;) The news on tv was blasting the discovery of Amy Winehouse's death in London (only a few hours prior). We all happily went to bed that evening and slept like rocks!!

We got an early start to our second day in London (sorry family!) since I had pre-booked us for a double decker bus tour. Pick up was a wee 7:20 am since we were going to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace later that day (at 11 am). The boys LOVED the double decker bus and Jack especially enjoyed seeing all of the landmarks that we had read about prior to leaving on our trip (namely St. Paul's Cathedral and Big Ben). Our tour included a Thames River cruise and that was also fun for the whole family.

Our tour guides took us to a side street to see the guards leaving out to march to Buckingham Palace (crowds were THICK so we wouldn't have seen anything at the palace otherwise). We did go to see the palace and hear the band marching in though. Good enough for me! We loaded back up and were dropped off at Madame Tussaud's wax museum. Jack really, really wanted to see this (expressed when we read about it in the London book before our trip) and no one had been recently. We ate lunch at a place across the street and the food was delicious (not usual British fare, thank goodness).

We again skipped all of the crowds (massive) since our tour had provided our tickets to Madame Tussaud's. The boys enjoyed seeing some of the celebrities they recognized but mostly it was us hustling through unbelievably thick crowds with kids (always fun to keep track of and navigate through throngs of people!). We managed to escape going through the "Jack the Ripper" section and went upstairs for the Superhero 4D show. The boys were super excited to take pictures with all of the superheroes and the crowds were much lighter and more enjoyable (the show was an additional expense, thankfully!). The movie was neat and reminded me of the Muppet show at Disney from when I was a kid (squirted water, blew air, etc). We took the Tube back to our hotel and went back to the pub around the corner for dinner (hey, stick to what works when you have tired, hungry kids). Even though we were exhausted and wanted nothing more than to just climb in bed, Dave and I got to pack up for Paris and shuffle luggage to Gigi and Dada's room :) Another early morning for The Hadskey's! Good thing we didn't go to Europe to sleep in ;) Ha ha!

Overall, London was simply amazing and we loved our hotel (Grange City Hotel near the Tower of London). We were steps away from the Tube and near tons of restaurants at St. Katharine's Wharf. Gigi and Dada's room had a view of an ancient Roman wall and the Tower of London. So cool! Seeing history come to life for our kids was the best part of all :)