A lot of other people had the same idea, however, so we made sure to get to the popular (and free) museum first thing when it opened.
But first: breakfast. We went back to that Le Pain Quotidien place we had been to with our landlady. Well, a different location near the museums. Now that I think about it, it was our second time to this location. Third time total. Yum.
We parted ways with Jason after breakfast and the kids and I headed to the Natural History Museum while Jason went to visit the Imperial War Museum. He is very interested in such things and I wanted him to be able to do something he wanted to do before time ran out.
The kids and I would rather see dinosaurs!
There was a small queue for the museum with all the LON kids on half-term but it moved quickly and then we headed straight for the dinosaurs. There is a huge queue area but, thankfully, we were there early enough we could walk right in. I told the kids to notice, though, that later it would be full of people waiting for the dinosaurs and indeed, it was.
We got to see bones. At one time, before the boys came up with "E.D. Industries", Easton wanted to be a paleontologist.
I could not get over the beauty of the room that the above dino was in. The kids were like, "Mom you seem like you're more impressed with the building than the dinosaur." And I totally was. My picture sucks, of course but this one from the internet helps show you what I'm talking about:
So lovely.
Then it was into the proper dino area with the animatronic stuff, among other things:
After that we headed to the bathrooms and Easton was like, "Aw, we never saw a pteryodactyl" and then leaving the bathroom there was one on the wall:
That might be a pteranodon, I don't really know (or care) enough to know the difference. Heck, it could be none of those things. We just thought it was crazy how were talking about it and then came right upon one.
We then headed into the fiery ball behind the kids here:
That escalator takes you right inside. That part felt like EPCOT or something. And up there we learned about earthquakes and volcanoes. "Ahhhhhh! Lava!"
They had an earthquake simulator which was fun as well as we have never lived near any fault lines. I would wager a guess that an actual earthquake would be less fun. Dalton was bothered that nothing fell off the shelves. "That's not very accurate."
We had a smidge more time before we needed to meet back up with Jason so we headed to the Human Biology section as I've passed the love of such things on to the kids. They had a giant model of a 7 month fetus which was cool:
Autumn is in the new-reader stage where she sounds out everything and announced loudly, "This says testes!"
We explored a few more things in that area but could have spent a ton more time in there. We love those kinds of exhibits with stuff to do. Keeps us from kicking 5th century B.C. pillars. ;)
Jason came to meet us in front of the museum and we headed back to the flat for some lunch. It was time to try some "foreign" candy: Malteasers. (No, we don't have these in America.) They were 'meh'. I don't love malted stuff, though. I would never eat any Whoppers I got when Trick-or-Treating.
After lunch, the kids were really not motivated to go anywhere or do anything. We had been running them pretty ragged trying to squeeze so much content into our trip. Jason 'volunteered' to stay in the flat with them and let them chill and watch TV and stuff while I went out on my own for a bit.
First I bought myself one of these from the Paddington Station Starbucks for a souvenir. (I have a Berlin one too. I wish (now) that I had Barcelona as well.)
After that, I decided I would check out some Harry Potter sites so I made my way over to the real King's Cross station:
The inside:
They had a little platform 9 3/4 model (with a Hedwig!)
And a huge line to do pictures:
But, it was no where near the actual platforms 9 or 10. Lame. Since I already had a picture of me going through the wall from the WB studios, I opted for a quick "Kristin was here" selfie (see it up over my right shoulder?) and moved on:
I then headed over to Leadenhall Market which is what they used for some of the exterior shots from Diagon Alley outside the Leaky Cauldron.
It wasn't all that exciting over there. And way less colorful than I thought it would be.
I tried to visit the Millennium Bridge to maybe walk across it or something but I started to run out of time. I was meeting Jason and the kids back up at Westminster Abbey for their 5 p.m. Evensong service.
We warned the kids how different it would be from what we are used to. It was neat to be able to see the inside. The altar where Will and Kate just stood a few years ago. It was right there! You can't take pictures, of course, but it was lovely and we walked right past Sir Isaac Newton's 'grave'. It looked like this:
The church looked lovely at night. I tried to capture it:
Nope.
Need a picture from the internet again:
We walked by lit up Parliament and "Big Ben"/Elizabeth Tower and I tried to capture that too:
Dalton said, "Hey, it's almost 6:00, we should listen to Big Ben chime." So we did:
Ugh, why are my pictures so bad?
Internet to the rescue!
And then we hopped on the train and began our extremely tiring journey of trying to find a "traditional pub" to eat in. We walked into one, sat down. They told us that table was reserved. There were no others. We left. We went to another. We sat down. Their food was not going to work for us. We left. And then we went to a third one. I wasn't going to go to a fourth. So we sat and ordered. And it was just fine.
Easton with some fish and chips (he ate this, like, three times in a row):
My dinner. It was some sort of veggie pie.
And then dessert of sticky toffee pudding.
Yummmmmm!
At the end our bill came and we had to make the kids dig out any remaining change they had in their pockets and used every last pound we had to pay for the meal. (We didn't have to change any money back this way!) Too funny!
And finally we were able to head back to the flat for our last night. During prayers, Easton hilariously sang the "Amen" like they did at the choral Evensong. Hysterical.
Our final day with our trip home is here.
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