June 3. Today we began the day by grocery shopping. It is convenient that the grocery store is only 3 blocks away from our flat. While standing in line to pay we saw our first example of pick pocketing. Shouting came from a man behind us, and then a woman came running past us. The man ran after her shouting "she stole my wallet". She screamed and played dumb. After some miscommunication
with his friend in the back of the store he let her go, but within seconds realized she in fact did have his wallet, but by then she was long gone. Our kids watched in amazement and definitely took our warnings about pickpockets to heart. The store clerks were barely phased by the incident which led us to believe it was fairly common.

Next we visited St.Paul's Cathedral. We were completely in awe when we walked in. The sheer size combined with the intricacy of the cathedral was overwhelming. We climbed 257 stairs to reach the Whispering Gallery. The gallery is a narrow walkway that looks over the main floor of the cathedral and has beautiful views of the dome when looking up. If you sit next to the wall, and have someone else sit across the room, you can whisper and actually hear each other. Belia found the heights too much. She did not want to go any higher but we convinced her to keep climbing the narrow winding stone staircase, (119 steps) until we reached the Stone Gallery. The Stone Gallery is an outdoor terrace that looks out over the city. Absolutely beautiful views! Belia and I stayed there while the rest of the family climbed 152 metal steps, on a winding staircase between the two domes, to the Golden Gallery. This gallery is 300 ft high and rivals the London Eye's views. After making our way down, we continued descending into the crypt. The crypt gave us insight into the many important people of the past who are buried at St.Paul's.

We ate our picnic lunch in St.Paul's park, just outside the cathedral and then made our way to the River Thames. We took a river boat trip seeing Big Ben, Parliament, London Eye, London Tower, Tower Bridge, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and many other points of interest.

The London Tower caught our interest so we decided to look at that next. We were amazed at how well preserved this fortress with it's many towers is. Darius was in his glory looking at all the different weapons on display. He wanted pictures of them to send to his friend Noah. The names of some of the weapons were familiar to him because of the iPod game Clash of Clans. Mariah and I walked along the castle walls imagining what it would have been like to to wave to our subjects below lol. We also had a chance to view the Crown Jewels kept in a vault at the London Tower. They are priceless but roughly valued at 2.5 billion dollars!!

Because we had hop off hop on privileges all day on the river boat, we took one more ride on the Thames getting off at the Parliament and having a close up view of Big Ben. We walked to Trafalgar Square. Belia was so excited to see the stone lions. She recognized them from one of her books called "Katie in London". After taking a few pictures we noticed a large crowd protesting on the far end of the square. They were protesting about politics in Turkey. We didn't hang around - it seemed a little tense.

By the time we got back to our flat and had supper we were ready for bed. I tried to blog but fell asleep as I typed.

June.4

We all slept in until 10:00 today. After breakfast we made our way to Westminster Abby. It was closed, but impressive from the outside. The weather is sunny and warm. A tube ride took us to Regent's Park where we enjoyed the enormous trees, many flowers and a nice lunch. We made our way through the park ending up at the London Zoo. All the kids agreed that this was the best zoo they have ever been too! Highlights were the free roaming monkeys, the ardvarks, feeding the enormous tortoises, close up views of giraffes, kids tunnels into the animal enclosures to have a closer look, the aquarium, the anteater, and the armadillo. We stayed until the zoo closed at 5:30.

After tubing it back we ate out near the Thames at a French restaurant called Le Pain Quotidien. We enjoyed the atmosphere and the food. We sat at a banquet sized table and found it intriguing that we were located under a working train bridge. Every so often we could hear a train rumbling above us.

On our way to the bus stop we stopped for coffee and ice cream, and I made a phone call home to grandma. It was great to hear her voice! We then caught the bus and enjoyed seeing London lit up, since by then it was dark out.

We are looking forward to seeing Wicked in the theatre tomorrow!