Random London

This is the third (and probably the last!) of the London posts -- be sure to scroll down to the other two if you want to get the full picture of what we did in London.
Although speaking of that there is one notable activity of which there are NO pictures and that is our trip to see The Lion King. It was a great show in a beautiful theater, but I left my camera at home. :( So you'll just have to imagine Hannah and Liz agog at the spectacle of it!

But here's some of the other stuff we did! Oh, but before we get to that, I realize that I never posted the picture of Hannah with the "ghostly" film in front of her -- here it is:

This is the changing of the Guard. It was so crowded it was nearly impossible to see anything, so Lizzie stood on my walker to get it. I do have a video that I'll post if I ever get it edited down to something watchable. There were LOTS of people there!

In fact there were so many people there we didn't stay for the whole thing, since we were pretty much crushed against everyone else and the girls couldn't really see anything. However, here are the very very VERY patient British police officers who were in charge of crowd control. Shelby commented that in America we probably would have been pepper sprayed after about 10 minutes:

And here's a picture I snapped on Sunday morning as we were walking over to St. James Park to feed the swans. That's Buckingham Palace in the back:

And speaking of the swans, bird-feeding was a fun activity throughout the time we were in London. Those birds are hungry! Here's a baby swan:

And here is Lizzie feeding the baby swan:

As I said, here's another bird picture, this time feeding the pigeons. Shortly after this picture was taken a woman walked by as the girls were surrounded by pigeons and laughing hysterically, looked at me and said "wretched creatures!" I am pretty sure that she was talking about the birds...

We visited the Victoria and Albert Museum where Hannah was quite taken with the shoes. She borrowed my camera and I came home with about 50 pictures that looked like this (although these ARE nice shoes):

Of course we had tea at the Athenaeum and it was delicious. The girls both chose a blueberry infusion since they wanted to drink tea like the adults (I had suggested hot chocolate.) Hannah particularly liked the smoked salmon tea sandwiches and Lizzie ate two crumpets. Neither one was interested in the scones, which just meant more for the rest of us. Here we all are at tea:

We ate out a lot, even though our apartment had a kitchen and the room service was wonderful. Here's Lizzie using chopsticks for the first time (they are kid chopsticks -- sort of like large tweezers) at Wagamama's near the Tower of London (where I had a delicious curry, by the way):

We ate at The Diner at Harrod's, too, before we did some shopping. Here we are going up in elevator (the mirrors made my camera crazy!)

At The Diner Shelby and Lizzie worked on a word search until our meals came:

There was time (and necessity!) for relaxing, too. Here are Hannah and Lizzie skyping with their dad (and Cash) on my iPad:

And here is Hannah playing with her teeny tiny Paddington Bear (in a robe provided by the hotel):

And then proving that she is a Wii champ on TWO continents:

The day before we left I had planned a special adventure for Hannah and Liz with a children's party planning company, Sharky and George. They devised a treasure hunt (actually a spy hunt) throughout the local parks and Buckingham Palace where the girls had to find clues and open locked boxes with combinations and keys with the help of Rich, an actor and all around nice guy. It was POURING the whole time we were sleuthing, but it was so much fun, none of us minded.
I had given the girls some clues about it ahead of time (which somehow led them to believe they might be going Trick or Treating with the Queen!) but here's them finding out exactly what the mystery was and what they needed to do. Isn't Hannah's expression priceless:

And here they are already soaked to the skin after they hopped a fence in St. James Park. Just before this we had a REAL treasure hunt when Hannah lost the key we found at Clue 3, which we discovered when we needed it at Clue 4. Luckily we were able to retrace our steps and Lizzie found the key on the walkway. Whew!!

I am happy to report that after two hours of fun (in which they had to ask the doorman and a police officer for help with clues!) the Crown Jewels were all found and the girls restored them to the British Government (except for two which they were allowed to keep). It was TONS of fun, and we have to give a special shout out to Aunt Anonymous for making sure it happened!

Unfortunately, our trip came to an end all too soon. I remembered at the last minute that I never got a photo of a London phone booth, so I snapped this just before we got in the van to come home:

But we did have to get in the van to come home ...we were a lot sadder than this picture indicates:

So that wraps up the photo tour of the girls' 10th birthday trip through London. As Hannah not so subtly  suggested ... Paris is next!!