Mills & Syddles: Trip to The United Kingdom

Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Trip to The United Kingdom - Part 1 London

Day 0, June 5th: Leaving Arkansas, riding in style. We splurged on the good seats for this overnight journey and it made all the difference. What a luxury!

Day 1, June 6th: We've arrived in London! We didn't get a lot of sleep, so people were fading fast.

Oh hey Big Ben and the London Eye in the background...

Someday she'll have two front teeth ;)

We dropped our bags at the hotel and prepared to go on our first adventure! Note: we arrived in London only two days after the Queen's 70th Anniversary Jubilee ended. She's been Queen for 70 years! Crazy. That will probably never happen again. She has always had corgis, and to commemorate the jubilee, there are corgi statues all over London. We got excited every time we saw one - this one was actually at our hotel!

We took a River Thames boat and lunch cruise to see the sights. The weather was a bit chilly, so thank goodness our boat was enclosed. (That tall building in the background is called The Shard, revisited later!)

What a great choice for our first outing - lunch on a famous river. Cheers kids!

Hard to see, but we are going under the London Bridge (you can see the wording through the window)

The London Eye (revisited later)!

Tower Bridge! We could go up to the top of the boat to take pictures, which was fun (and windy!).

Back inside for some fancy tricks from the waiter!

must have tea when in England

pinkies up! (tourists messing things up, as usual. proper etiquette says pinkies should be down.)

Tower of London - headed there next!

We got to walk across Tower Bridge

Boats used to be able to enter the Tower of London through gates like this one

The history is hard to wrap your mind around. We visited White Tower, which was built in 1097. The girls can't even understand what that means. Very cool.

Henry VIII's armor!

Kevin was tired, so we headed back to the hotel for our first night of good rest.

Meanwhile back home...

Day 2, June 7th: Fab Four together in London, oh boy! This was the second trip to London for the boys, so they were excited to show us around. We all tried to use as many British words as possible, like rubbish instead of trash. Biscuit instead of cookie. Chips instead of fries. We drank tea. We tried not to be obnoxious tourists.

shenanigans already

This first day with them, we decided to walk/tube it to several neighborhoods in London.

First stop was Liberty of London department store. It was super cool in an old bldg (1875!), but the kids weren't impressed. Amanda and I decided to come back later...

Absolutely gorgeous weather

Next up was Hamleys toy store (think FAO Schwartz). Lego queen Elizabeth and her corgi = impressive

Lots to see, even though we didn't understand it's meaning most of the time...

The double decker buses are iconic London, but we didn't actually ride on one this time. We pointed at a lot of them though ;)

Mary Poppins in Leicester Square! This was a thrill for me. It's a jolly holiday with Mary...

Another iconic London prop

Near the Covent Garden Market, we watched a street performer. Lots of open air markets to visit. A cute area.

Momma loves gin, so we had to visit Mr. Fogg's Gin Parlour for lunch! Lots of buildings had these gorgeous flower arrangements around the doors to celebrate the Jubilee!

The platinum picnic punch was goooood

A little massage for the weary

Amanda was our navigator, thank goodness. She did a great job!

I love these children so much. My kids were sooooo happy to have friends with us. It made the trip 1000% better. Our kids have really only had beach vacations, so this kind of walking/sightseeing trip is new (confusing) to them. It helped to have friends along when there were a few boring or exhausting times to push through.

Neal's Yard area sighting: Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets FIRST EDITION!

The real star of the show.

JKK had to buy a backpack to tote around our raincoats every day, which we rarely (thankfully) needed. It became a joke.

Cayden is such a ravenous reader, we had to stop almost daily at bookstores to get a new book.

Late afternoon, we walked across the (wobbly) Millennium Bridge to get to the London Eye. The perfect weather day for this excursion.

On Tuesdays, we wear pink.

We on!

The pods are quite large and can fit around 25 people. It takes about 30 minutes to make one rotation.

As it sometimes happens, Syd had a bit of a mental meltdown while we were in the sky. We weren't sure why, so we gave her some space.

She opted out of our picture :(

Life lesson: always opt for the champagne option

As we exited, we took a tourist pic in front of the green screen. Syd decided to participate in this one. ;)

Big Ben looking so fine

Millie always getting creative with her videos - I love her for this.

Day 3, June 8th: we walked to the palace and saw a bit of the changing of the guards. We couldn't get close to the palace, as it was still blocked off for Jubilee.