Schimke Ethiopian Adoption: London, Day 2

Wow, it feels so long ago now I can barely remember our last day. :-)

We woke up early again and had another amazing breakfast at our hotel. This time they even had little individual containers of nutella, which absolutely excited, G. She has been leaving nutella ads cut out from magazines around the house for a few months, in an effort for me to change my "health nut" ways.

Anyway, we again took the hoppa bus back to the airport and then took the tube to London. It is sooo much easier the second time! We even got off the tube, transferred to another tube line like true experts. Their tube system is unbelievable - we have one line in our city...from SW to NE, and London has such an amazing transit system with tons of different tube lines...they even are multi-layered underground.

Our plan for the day was to go to the Tower of London as we had heard good things about it. Thankfully there was a Starbucks right in front of the entrance (yah!) so I was able to start my day off right. :-) We were able to join a tour that had just started, and were entertained by a beefeater tourguide for about 30 minutes. It was a bit chilly out, and part of it was outside and a bit hard to hear (not to mention trying to concentrate on what he was saying through a thick accent) so it could have been a bit better, but was pretty enjoyable. The Tower of London was founded in 1066, was a medieval fortress palace and there were an amazing number of crazy beheadings there (including Anne Boleyn). I would have been interested in exploring the history a bit more as I don't know a lot about this period of time, but it was a bit difficult to do with the kids. Anyway, we then explored the area on foot and were able to see the crown jewels on display. The two largest diamonds in the crown Jewels are 530 carats and 317 carats - absolutely huge!

Anyway, after our tour we just had to stop for some authentic fish and chips nearby. It wasn't bad...but sure is greasy! Good thing we walked and walked and walked after this. My mom and Arvid decided to go into the art gallery and the girls and I did some touristy souvenir shopping. We just had to find some "mind the gap" merchandise. (For those who don't know, at every single stop on the tube you hear a "Mind the gap" warning about the space between the tube and the station. With nearly 20 stops each way, we heard this warning close to 100 times. As well as mind the gap, we also heard "Mind the door" in the elevator and "Mind the cow" on a game we played at the Tower. It is now a family joke to "Mind the ....".)

After some shopping we thought it would be fun to go to Marks and Spencer...which sounded like a good idea but after walking for about 30 minutes we came to Marks and Spencer only to find out it was the grocery store! So we ended up taking the tube to Oxford Street and walked some more to the real Marks and Spencer. Oh, Oxford Street...if only I had more time. It is such an amazing street...filled with every store imaginable. I wish we would have had a few more days in London just to shop. Anyway, we did a bit of shopping, a ton of walking and were absolutely beat by the end after being on our feet all day. We ate some crepes for supper from a street vendor (ham and cheese and egg crepe, followed by a nutella and banana one...YUM!), took the tube home, packed up and went to bed.

The next day was fairly uneventful...we flew to Toronto, had a small stopover and flew home. It was nice to fly through the day and not worry about not sleeping, and it was fun to use our phones again on Canadian soil! We were very happy to see our home again, stayed up for a few more hours and then all slept through the night!

Here are some pics...