Our first week in London...

Our first week in London was busy, in fact every week of our holiday was really really busy.  We travel to that part of the world so little that when we are there we try to cram as much in as we can.  In the first week we spent time with Kelly and Evelyn (below) at home and one day we went into Covent Garden for the day.  We went into a few different shops including Kath Kidston and we walked around the city.

We went to the Natural History Museum which is awesome.  We went specifically for the dinosaurs (because they are great here) but that section was closed so we saw the body section and the animals.  We made a plan to go back and see the dinosaurs before leaving the UK though.

Before leaving home I bought us tickets to see The Wizard of Oz.  Here are the kids outside the theatre. It was so good, Emma and Nathan really loved it too.  I would recommend this show to anyone.

We got to the theatre a bit early so we went for a walk along Carnaby Street.  This man was there and the kids were quite fascinated by him when he moved and they weren't expecting it.  We had to have photos with him.  

They have opened an M & M's store in London recently.  This shop is amazing.  There are 4 floors packed to the brim with M & M chocolates and merchandise.  How can they think of so much to do with M & M's?  

This is pretty much a full sized double decker bus inside the store.

There were M & M's of every sort to have your photo taken with. 

On one floor there is a big section with the walls just covered in these glass tubes of different coloured M & M's.  There was every colour you can imagine!

We spent ages in this shop and took heaps and heaps of photos, it was fun.


Another day we caught the train to London Bridge and walked along the Thames, over the Tower Bridge and along to The Tower of London.  Of course I had to photograph some telephone boxes.

And the kids had to throw a penny and make a wish in the wishing well.

Here they are in front of the Tower Bridge

This is the Tower of London from the opposite side of the river.

Another must have photo of a big red double decker bus (I have to say it is so hard to get a photo of a bus with no other traffic).

We spent pretty much the whole day at the Tower of London.  It is the most interesting place to visit.  It is so full of history with so many stories.  It takes hours to take it all in.  The kids really loved it here, they soaked up all that history and information.

They also loved having posed photos like these ones.  

We saw the guards on duty and below you can see the kids had a photo with the Beefeaters.

Some typical English residences at the Tower.

And the famous crows.  They clip the crows wings these days to stop them flying away because it is said that if the crows leave the tower London will fall!

The kids got to try on the big and very heavy helmets that were worn in the wars.

And they got to hold and pretend to shoot the crossbow.  It's almost bigger than Emma!

They had a special exhibition on at the Tower which was my highlight.  It was Royal Beasts.  Did you know that many years ago the Tower was also a zoo?  The kings and queens that lived there had pet animals (bizarre pets) and they would charge the public to come and see them.  I'm talking crazy pets here, given to them by other leaders around the world.  They once had a polar bear at the Tower and they used to put him on a chain and let him swim in the Thames to catch his fish for dinner.  They actually handled him!  They also had an elephant given to them and they built him a cage.  He only lived for 2 years because they fed him bread and wine only.  That is just a couple, the stories are amazing (well I think they are).  They had lions too. I actually bought the book about this while I was there.

I just included these photos because I like them.  They were taken at the Tower.

And this last photo was taken by Anthony, just to show that taking Emma to the loo every 5 minutes in Europe is not cheap at 50p or more each time!