Monday, May 15, 2017

Babymoon-London

 Hi friends! All week long (and part of next week) I will be blogging about our trip to Europe. We had been planning this trip originally as a celebration for paying off our grad student loans, but then we found out we were pregnant! So we moved our trip up a few months and started planning a European adventure for double the reasons! I will try to break these posts up as much as I can to avoid picture overload, but when you take 900 photos, it's hard to avoid! We have been struggling with jet lag ever since we got back. We got home late last Tuesday night and went down for a nap around 3 PM which ended up being our bed time! Since Wednesday, we haven't been quite that bad, but I am still beating the sun up each morning by several hours!
We found the cheapest/direct flights out of LA. All of our road trips have included national parks so we made a quick stop at Joshua Tree on our way to the airport.


We took a quick hike in the desert.


It was windy!


And then we headed on our way.


We boarded our plane-it was quite the experience! The planes are all really new and had music blasting as we boarded. 


We were able to enjoy lots of TV shows and movies on the plane. We also tried sleeping as our flight was overnight.


We arrived in London the next afternoon and got on a train to take us to the city. We boarded the wrong train, oops! This was one of the few mishaps, but we ended up really close to Buckingham Palace.


We grabbed our version of "fish and chips" (fish sticks and nachos) at a pub.


We started walking the streets of London, and it was so beautiful!


We found our first UK telephone booth!



We arrived at the gates of Buckingham Palace.


They say when the UK flag is up it means the queen is in, so apparently she was home that day!






A distant view of Big Ben.



We then enjoyed a walk through Green Park, although we were still carrying all of our luggage with us so it while it was pretty, our luggage was very heavy!



We took our first of many trips on the Underground. The escalators were so steep!


We finally made it to our hotel which was above a restaurant. 


Our room was so tiny!! Here is Matt stepping up into our bathroom.


That night we headed out to check out the sights. 


We found the Shard! 


We walked past a beautiful hotel!


And got a closer look at the Shard. I'm so glad we saw it lit up at night because we saw it the next day, and it looked much cooler at night. 


We ate at Texas Joe's BBQ that night. Matt's co-worker, Sloan, mentioned his brother recently opened a BBQ place in London so we went to check it out. We had a blast, and the food was delicious! 


He also makes beef jerky so he sent us home with some!


We made a quick stop at Tower Bridge along the Thames River.



The next morning we enjoyed breakfast at our hotel. They had tons of pastries, and I loved these so much I ate five of them!! 


We took off to see the sights again the next morning.


We made a stop at Emirates Stadium where the The Arsenal plays.


We enjoyed a bike ride through Hyde Park.



It was a beautiful park!



Next we made a stop at Piccadilly Circus, the Times Square of London.


We made our way over to Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster.





We started walking towards the London Eye, and then we realized we missed Westminster Abbey!



So we walked back to where we were before to go see it.







We made a quick stop to pick up a few souvenirs including this cute little bear for our baby-to-be! 


That evening we boarded a train to Brussels that took us through the Chunnel. By this point we were so tired I think I was delirious on the train-I laughed at everything Matt said! Even though we took several trips on the Underground and a couple double decker buses, we walked over 13 miles in London.
Come back tomorrow for Part 2!

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