We made the short trek up to St. John's Wood to the Abbey Road Studios and joined the other
The kids were good sports for Jason. They're familiar with the Beatles and can even sing more than a few songs for you. I was so proud that Autumn just confidently went for it each time (we did it a lot of times...and then you have to cross back over and do it again). See, look at her just settin' the pace. (This was the first shot.)
We put the smart phone cameras in "burst mode" as my regular big camera's battery was long dead so these were the best we got:
Jason went with that second one for his Facebook cover photo as he liked that their feet we nicely spaced among the stripes. You have to look for these things, you know. ;) I'm just bummed I couldn't get it with a better camera. But, let's talk about that for a sec: you see, my Nikon camera is from the States, right? So the charger plugs into American outlets BUT it's not rated to withstand the higher voltage here in Europe so, when I plug in the charger, I have to use a step-down voltage converter, not just an adapter. And Britain uses different plugs than we even have in Germany so I just charged the thing right before we left and knew I'd run out of juice at some point but I wasn't going to be able to pack my camera, charger, voltage converter AND an adapter in my tiny carry on.
Too bad.
We peeked at the actual Abbey Road Studios where bunches of famous acts have recorded, but it's closed to the public so all we did was look:
Well, look and sign the wall...
After our Beatle-ing, we headed towards our highlight for the morning and another expensive, "Well, if we're gonna be in London, we have to do it" sort of things: The London Eye.
We got there a little early but they have this free 4D movie included with it that you can watch first and I saw Brangelina in line.
Speaking of Brangelina, look at this tube station.
That's like if we shipped Easton and Dalton: Daltson. Ha!
Okay, yeah...so after my picture with the
Here we go!
Ah, the lovely brown river below.
As we got towards the top, Autumn got a little nervous. (She must take after me with that, however I was doing okay.)
My climber is fine with heights.
We're at the top!
Easton found an iPad-like touch screen letting you explore some of London and he was like, "Look, Mom! It's Big Ben!" (on the screen) and I was like, "Dude, I'm looking at the actual thing so..."
Sweet siblings. Cuties.
After our 30 minute long "ride", we made it back to the bottom.
Ummm, I have no idea how or why, but it appears we ended up back at Buckingham Palace after that:
The guards in their cold weather attire:
I honestly do not remember why we headed over there...
Too sunny!!!
Maybe to try to see the queen? ;)
Way to go public breastfeeding statue!
This statue made me laugh, it's like it's posed to take a selfie of itself if it only had a little phone in its hand:
Then we headed over to the world's oldest and largest toy store: Hamleys! It was another of those things to say we've done but man was it overwhelming and crowded. Some super fun displays, though:
It also helped us think ahead to Christmas wish list ideas:
Jason broke off with the boys and I went around the store with Autumn and then, well, it was super hard to find one another again and we usually keep our phones off when we're roaming so...yeah...it took awhile to meet back up.
And then we left:
I personally prefer the toy floor at Harrod's over the madness that was Hamleys. It didn't help that our visit timed with the week where all the London kids were also out of school for "half term". Too many people!
We left Hamleys and headed over to the British Museum for a brief time before they closed.
If we were in town (and the museums are free), then I really wanted to see the Rosetta Stone.
I told the kids to remember it because it is super famous and important in history. (That night in Easton's prayers he said, "And thanks that we're getting to see all this cool stuff that we don't think is cool yet." He knows it will matter one day.)
We had a smidge more time to look at more stuff from Egypt around the Stone:
And then we looked at a few ancient things from Greece, like sculptures and such from the Parthenon in Athens. Whoa. Old Greco-Roman stuff.
Then Easton was getting a little antsy and he started kicking at this column. And dude, I don't know if it's an ancient relic. It's not like it was roped off or anything, but don't go kicking at stuff in a museum. So I made him go stand against the wall. :)
(Oh dude, in posting that pic I just now saw the placard on the floor. I zoomed in: "iconic column from the east porch of the Erechtheion". From about 415 BC. Um oops. *sigh* That kid must have terrible parents. ;)
He had to hold hands with Jason through the rest of our short time there. The museum closes at 5:30 or so each day so it's not like we were there much longer at all. And then we probably went and had some dinner but it was too long ago now to remember what we ate or where. But not like anyone cares.
So we'll just end Day 6 here and you can find Day 7 (our last full day) here.
No comments:
Post a Comment