Our Adventures in London

Robert got a summer internship in London, so we had the opportunity to live in England for a while.  It was a memorable experience to have.  I just have to start out with things I am so grateful for here in the States that I took for granted while living in England.

1. Having our own car. Yeah... public transportation is kinda gross, but most of all, timing is everything.  If you miss the bus or train, you're toast.  Unless you have all the time in the world.  So you have to make extra time to just get to things on time, which uses up a lot of time.  It's just easier having your own car.  We also did a TON of walking in England, which was good for our health, but it's just time consuming and it wears you out (the most we walked in one day was 9 miles).
2. Having power outlets in the bathroom.  We showed up at our Airbnb apartment and looked around and found that we didn't have any outlets in the bathroom.  What the heck??? How was I supposed to get ready for the day?  So yeah, for 3 1/2 weeks I got ready in the living room while looking into my little compact mirror.  I would have to run back and forth between the living room and bathroom so I could see my whole head in the bathroom mirror.  We later learned it's against the building codes in England to have outlets in the bathrooms, so apparently no bathrooms in England have power outlets.
3. Living in an state that isn't full of smokers.  England doesn't compare to China when it comes to smoking, but man it was bad.  Maybe I was just more aware of it since being pregnant and all.  If my baby comes out with some sort of developmental issues, I blame it on the Europeans and their cigarettes.
4. Having things in bulk.  We seriously had to go shopping 2-3 times a week because first of all, most fridges are those tiny ones, so there's not enough space to put food in there anyway.  Second of all, their portion sizes are small!  The only things we found that came in bigger sizes than here in the states are their slices of bread and their butter.  Everything else was tiny.  The first time I went grocery shopping I went to get some fruits and found single bananas.  Why would you buy a single banana?  I mean, I guess it's smart cuz often I find that the bananas go ripe before I ever finish a bunch, but still... at least make them smaller bunches.

I'm sure there are more things I thought of while there, but I can't think of anything else at the moment (I blame it on the jet lag).

Here's our first weekend of exploration in pictures and little videos:

Poor thing was tired and sick, but she had no problem busting out "I Am a Child of God" on the bus ride to our apartment.

This was at around 2 p.m. and we had both woken up at 12... 

And she was out cold within minutes. 

Just across from Westminster Abbey

Walking through St. James' Park on our way to see Buckingham Palace

And more singing as we were nearing Buckingham Palace

There's our first weekend there.  We got to see Big Ben, the London Eye, Westminster Abbey (just the outside of it), and Buckingham Palace.

On the second weekend we were there, we used our London Passes (a cheaper way of seeing a bunch of touristy things) to tour a bunch of places.  On Saturday we got to go inside Westminster Abbey (no photographs allowed), touring Shakespeare's Globe, and exploring Tower of London.  We also got to see the plaque for where London Bridge used to be, the famous bridge in London that everyone takes pictures in front of (the name escapes me), and part of the huge British Museum (there was 45 minutes left of it being open, and by the time we got there we [Myla and I] were just so exhausted).  On Sunday we toured Stamford Stadium, home of the Chelsea soccer [football] club, and Robert was just LOVING it!  He was like a kid in a toy shop, and I think that's what made touring Stamford Stadium one of the highlights of the trip.  We were going to do a tour at Kensington Palace, but by the time we got there the last tour had just closed.  So we sat out on the grass of Kensington Park, and then we walked along Kensington Gardens where some of the most expensive houses in the world are (billions of dollars worth... and no photographs allowed on the entire street).

And for your viewing pleasure, a terrible selfie.

Finally saw a red coat guard (since they weren't at Buckingham Palace when we went)!  Except we didn't get the chance to see if we could make them crack a smile because we were in this huge line to see the Crowned Jewels.  I was pretty sure Myla could make them smile, but I guess I will never know...

That one famous bridge I was talking about.

I was wishing we had a selfie stick at this point... And Myla was having none of it.

Manager Robert Day at the press table getting interviewed after a game 

Myla really wanted to take a picture too at the cool table 

He has this obsession with grass and wants our future lawn to either look like as nice as a putting green or like the Chelsea soccer pitch.

The third weekend we took a trip to Paris.  I loved seeing the cool architecture and seeing the Eiffel Tower, but yeah... not my favorite place in the world.  Let's just say it was a good one-time experience.  Robert and I both think that the people in Paris aren't the nicest or most considerate, and it was not stroller friendly at all.  Plus, it was hard finding out where to go (unless you used Google maps or something).  It was a huge contrast from London where people are always going out of their way to help you, or giving up their seats on the subway (which was a huge deal when I was either holding Myla, or just being an achy pregnant lady), and the stroller gates actually work in the London tube as opposed to Paris, where you had to push a button for assistance to open the gate and no workers were ever there working.  And in the underground for Paris there were no elevators or very many escalators, so Robert had to carry Myla in the stroller up/down a billion flights of stairs.  He got a good workout, but it is just really inconvenient and tiring.  But on a positive note, the baguettes and pastries were super delicious.

Before we went to Paris, we quickly made some stops along the way to the train station.  We stopped off at Abbey Road and went to the recording studio where the Beatles recorded (I think we went to the gift shop area and not the actual studio), we stopped off at 221B Baker Street (I wish we could have gone into the Sherlock Museum, but we had no time), we went to the 221B Baker Street used in the filming of the PBS version of Sherlock, and of course we had to stop of at Platform 9 3/4.

And that was our trip/living experience in London.  There's just so much to see and do, and even being there for 3 weeks wasn't enough time to see everything (it would probably have been doable if Robert wasn't working during the week and we did things all week long).