London, Day Two

Let me try this again.

We had a good day today. We got up sometime after 12:30pm, got cleaned up (nice shower!), and headed into London again. I brought the kids journals for them to work on during the ride (it takes at least 45 minutes). They drew cool pictures and wrote about their trip so far. I'm hoping to incorporate those into this blog soon. They also have been working on their pole dancing techniques - OK, not pole dancing. But they do spend a lot of time running in circles around a pole on the subway ("tube"), and jumping in the air. There aren't many people on the tube in the beginning, so I let them. I have found that for the kids, a lot of their fun is had by playing silly games with things we find along the way. I'm interested in seeing the big pictures. They get interested in hiding places & things to climb on.

Some guy at the airport suggested we see Big Ben and the London Eye (a huge ferris wheel type thing), so we headed to Westminster and started wandering from there. The kids were excited to see names of things they had heard of in one of the worlds in Wizards101 - Hyde Park, Big Ben, MaryLebone, Regents Square, Chelsea Court, etc. We didn't really know what to do, so we took a bus tour. That gave our legs a break and it was a lot more interesting than looking at cool buildings with no idea of what they are.

We eventually got off near Piccadilly Circus, where we were last night, and walked around some more. We were all fading, so we went to TGIF Fridays to eat. I know, I know, it's an American chain restaurant. Normally I wouldn't think of going to an American place while in a foreign country, but I needed to feed the WHOLE family, hopefully while sitting down, and all at the same time. With Luke's particular tastes, I thought this place was our best hope. It did give us the break we needed, even though both Luke & Genci didn't like the meal. But they managed to eat something and we left recharged.

We stumbled upon Ripley's Believe It or Not, also a potentially cheesy place to go. But, again, I thought that we might be able to find something that would interest everyone there. I was right about that. There were some interesting things, some weird things, and some gross things, but it did keep our attention. The kids' favorites were the Mirror Maze and a tunnel that you walk through, where the walls have lights that are going in a circle around you. It's amazing how the lights made you feel like you were falling to the right. The photo of Genci looking at the breasts is to remind me to mention Luke's reaction to them. The breasts start out small, hardly noticeable. Then you push a button and they inflate to a very respectable size. Luke's reaction: " Oooooo! Awesome!" I tell you, we're going to have to watch out for him when he's older!

On our way back to the tube (aka. the Underground, or the subway), we stopped to watch some break dancers perform. Genci was not in the mood, but he succumbed to group pressure. Since he wanted to get out of there quickly, he cheered very loudly when the guy was asking if we wanted to see a show (he was trying to hurry this thing along), so the guy dedicated the show to him. :-)

We concluded our night with another subway ride, during which Nathan dozed and Luke worked the pole.

I just found out our flight for tomorrow is cancelled again, so we may be here for a while.

No worries.