The Big Trip

Well, we're home. And first of all let me say that if you ever go on a big trip with multiple people and multiple cameras, just make sure that everyone has the date set properly on their camera so that later, when you load pictures together on one computer, the pictures come together properly. I have narrowed our photos down to 857 at this point, but further pruning needs to be done.

I'm going to attempt to work through our Trip of a Lifetime chronologically. Luckily, some people kept journals:

(Actually, Ken, Chloe and Carmen all kept journals.)

Day 1: July 1st

We arrived in London at 6:30 am, braved long lines at security, yada, yada, yada, and made it to our hotel at 10am. We were able to leave our luggage there immediately, but check-in wasn't until 2pm. What to do?

Breakfast, of course! (The hardest thing about coming home has been being in charge of feeding my family again.) We found a few great restaurants right in our Earl's Court neighbourhood. Balans was a delicious place for breakfast, but we were so tired and all we really wanted were our beds. I don't know how we decided the next thing to do was to visit King's Cross Station. I think it just didn't sound too overwhelming in our severely jet-lagged state.

Carmen posed for a picture.

(I suspect Jaclyn actually applied a little bit of pressure.)

Chloe really wanted to make it through!

From King's Cross station we wandered over to Buckingham Palace, I think that was Carmen's idea.

(Group shot.)

At last, it was 2pm. Here is our hotel on a very cute street. The rooms, unfortunately, weren't as nice as the exterior. Honestly, I wanted to turn around and find somewhere else to stay, but as Ken pointed out the sheets were clean and the bathrooms were clean. So we crashed for 3 hours.

(That is, the bathrooms were clean, but not large. Yes, that's the shower drain in the bathroom floor.)

After our nap we were ready to see more of the city, and what better way than on the London Eye?

Big Ben Clock Tower as we walked to the Eye.

I regret not taking more pictures of our family while we were up there. We should have asked someone to take a few shots of all of us together!

I think Steven took this one.

St. Paul's Cathedral via Ken's camera.

Pretty sure Carmen took this one.

Jaclyn and Chloe have the same camera - I don't know who took this shot of the Parliament Buildings.

Little did we know this was the best weather we'd see in London. The Olympics are going to be soggy!

Walking back to the metro Jaclyn made the first souvenir purchase, buying a small painting from a street vendor.