Raising A Little Cain: london...

What a vacation we just had! We were so fortunate to get to spend the last week in London as a family! We have been looking forward to this trip all year and it did not disappoint! We were able to fly from DFW to Heathrow first class! (Thank you Adam for all that work that earned those points!). Marley certainly lived her best life for sure! I told Adam that he has ruined Marley for her poor future husband! We flew out of Dallas at 11pm and landed in London about 2pm. We stayed in the beautiful Waldorf Hotel right in the center of London. The evening we got there we decided to explore a little around our hotel and visited Covent Garden. It was full of little shops and restaurants and perhaps the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen! That is one thing I really enjoyed, is that all over London were the most beautiful flowers and gardens. I suppose the cooler temps and rain make a great environment for them to grow.

Jet lag was real the first night. We were all up at midnight wide awake. Marley and I laid in bed and ate snacks, but luckily we were able to fall back asleep for a few hours. The first full day was full of amazing tours! We started with a tour of Westminster Abbey. I have seen pictures, watched weddings and funerals, but they do it no justice. It was absolutely phenomenal! The architecture was just awe inspiring. We had a wonderful tour guide that was able to point out really neat things from the "weepers" below some of the tombs, to the Westminster Girls School and the Westminster Boys Choir school on the grounds. We saw the coronation chair that was just used for King Charles and all the past Kings and Queens. It was definitely grand, but not as much as we thought it would have been, having a plain, even graffitied, wooden back and seat.

We then walked from Westminster to Buckingham Palace. Once again the parks surrounding it and the statues, fountains and gates were just so beautiful! We passed by Clarence House where King Charles currently lives. We were shocked at the lack of security compared to heads of state in the U.S. Clarence House is attached to St. James Palace where Queen Anne lives and it literally had no big fences or security. We then walked by Berry Bros. & Rudd and learned about its historical significance of having had bottles of wine aboard the Titanic, having the worlds most expensive liquor at 90,000 British pounds and having the Royal Seal. We learned that just a little over 100 stores have the "Royal Seal" that says the royals approve and can shop in that location. It then became our mission to look for the Royal Seal everywhere we went. We walked past the Lock & Co. Hatters, the oldest hat store in London that fits hats for royalty and celebrities. We then made our way to Piccadilly Arcade, where we found out our definition of "arcade" and the British definition are very different! An "arcade" in England is like an outdoor shopping mall. Who knew!

From there we made our way to the "tube" and Marley got to ride her first subway to Waterford to visit the Warner Brother's Harry Potter Backlot! We had so much fun seeing all the sets from the Harry Potter movies and experiencing a little green screen magic!

Of course to end the day we made our way back to Covent Garden to enjoy perhaps the most amazing gelato I've ever had!

The next day we got up early to make our way back to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. Unfortunately we weren't able to get all the way up to the gates because of the crowds, but we did get to see the parade of soldiers into the palace grounds. We walked around the area around the palace, found lunch at Pret A Manger (which became our daily lunch spot) and then went to tour the Buckingham Palace State Rooms and gardens. The inside of the palace looks just as grand as we expected. The gardens were just absolutely breathtaking and we even got to enjoy really great ice cream in the gardens! We then walked over to tour the Royal Mews. We got to see two of the royal horses, learn that 150 of the most needed staff of Buckingham palace lived in the Mews and see the magnificent carriages!

We then decided to check out Harrod's department store. From the outside it is very similar to Macy's in New York City, but the inside was a sight to be seen! I have never seen so much luxury in one place! From apartments in Dubai you could purchase to ball gowns and jewels, it was fabulous! Adam surprised me with a beautiful Gucci purse to remember our trip by! He truly spoils Marley and I!

We made our way back towards the hotel and had dinner at a fabulous pizza place, Crust Bros. Even Marley ate almost half of a pizza! All the ingredients were so fresh tasting!

One of our favorite things was the ability to walk every where! The weather was between 68-72* and cloudy everyday. We never broke a sweat and there were no bugs! It was quite a change from our norm in Texas!

The next day we headed to tour the Tower of London and see Big Ben. The Tower of London was really neat and being able to see the crown jewels was definitely a highlight of the trip! We were able to see the robes and crowns of King Charles and Queen Camilla from his recent crowning. We saw the Ravens that "guard" the crown jewels. It was so neat to see them out and up and close! Again, it was so cool to see all the cottages within the walls in which the Beefeaters and other workers live on the grounds.

Next, we had to make a stop at Paddington Station! It was so cute to see the trains with Paddington on the side and check out the really cute gift shops. We rode a train from Paddington Station to Piccadilly Circus. It was definitely a mini Time's Square! The crowds were NUTS! We walked around and checked out different shops from the Lego Store with it's massive Big Ben and Harry Potter creatures to Hamley's the FAO Schwartz of London. We even saw a statue of Mary Poppins! We ran into our 2nd protest of the week when we were trying to leave. According to our taxi driver this is the norm on Saturdays. We had dinner at a little cafe and then enjoyed one last dessert at Covent Garden. We had the best Tiramisu I've ever eaten! We did a little more shopping at Covent Garden and then made our way back to the hotel to pack.

The trip was absolutely a trip of a lifetime and I am so thankful for all the hard work Adam does that allows us to do these things as a family!