Loving London

Hello all from across the pond! We have arrived in our village, Woodhall Spa, and are loving the exploring! On Friday night we left the states and arrived at Heathrow about 10am Saturday morning, London time. After clearing immigration and customs, then dealing with Nick's missing bag and Emily's bag that had exploded during the transit, we went to the hotel. We decided to stay near the airport since we had so much luggage, instead of staying in London. The rest of Saturday was spent napping, the entire family took a wonderful 3 hour nap, and finding dinner. Sunday we all woke feeling recharged and ready to tackle London!
We had decided that we would just go to London for the day and see what we could see, without doing any of the official tours etc. We took the bus to the underground station and 45 minutes later we were getting off at the Westminster Abbey stop!  Immediately out of the underground we looked up to see Big Ben welcoming us to London! What a sight! We had beautiful sunshiny weather for walking around too, what a treat!

 Big Ben and a double decker red bus

 As we were walking around we found an entrance into Westminster Abbey that wasn't crowded and was free to walk around so we decided to take a look!

 The windows had beautiful iron work that looked out into a lush green courtyard.

 Inside the first hall where burial sites and different types of art work/cravings to commemorate those who had been buried there or significant times in history. The piece above was all iron bent and shaped to make letters. 

 This was a burial site for a man buried in 1117. It was so unreal to be walking through a building with that much age and history!

 Above is believed to be the oldest door in Britain, built sometime around 1050!

 The ceiling of the cathedral building, beautiful stain glass windows surrounding the entire area.

 Emily enjoyed exploring and learning about her new country's history.

 After leaving, we found the entrance to the Westminster School and the Dean's office. We figured we would go ahead and enroll Emily, only the best!

Then we stopped for lunch at a delicious little Italian restaurant and had to try a local beer! The Meantime London Porter was delicious!  While we were eating lunch, London decided to show its true colors and started pouring rain for hours. We stayed inside little shopping centers and local art galleries. While heading to the underground station we came across an open market and couldn't pass up the opportunity to look around. While we were looking, Emily fell asleep so we decided to stop for one last beer before waking her up to get on the underground. We stopped at The Nags Head, which we found out that there had been a restaurant named The Nags Head in that same location since 1607!

We finished our beers and left for the hotel. Only after we arrived back at the hotel did we realize that Emily's stuffed doggie loved London so much he decided to stay. Hopefully the big city is treating him well! Today we are exploring our local village, new blog to come!