Vacation Pictures Continued! Part 2: London and Paris

 Alrighty here you go! The last 4 days of our trip. In my last post HERE I showed you the pictures from our time in Dublin and Edinburgh. Now we pick up after flying into Heathrow airport in London!

In the last 2 cities we used buses to get around in the city. Here in London it was much easier to use the subway--or as they call it, the Tube! We got our tickets at the airport and hopped on the Tube with a map in hand to make our way to our hotel. The subway lines were super easy to figure out and we had it down pat by the end of the day. We felt like locals!

Our hotel was very nice and modern. This is the view from our room...

After we got settled we spent the evening going around the town and checking out our surroundings.

 Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

 

Houses of Parliament

 

One of the things the boys HAD to see was famous Abbey Road crosswalk from the Beatles album cover. Here they are trying to make a dash across the street while traffic impatiently stopped for them (and the millions of other tourists trying to do the same exact thing).

 

The next day we headed out early in the morning to catch our London tour. Here we got to spend the first half of the day on a famous red double-decker bus with a tour guide narrating our sights and stops around the city!

 

Tower Bridge over the Thames River

 

We beat the crazy traffic and caught up with crowds in just enough time to catch the changing of the guards in front of Buckingham Palace!

After this we did a short river cruise on the Thames and got to see some neat point of views from the water. We got a break for lunch then met back up with the group for the second half of our excursion--Stonehenge! It is a 2 hour drive from London to get to the site (out in the middle of nowhere) so we dozed a bit on the bus then enjoyed the views and history when we arrived.

 

The next afternoon we headed into the St. Pancras train station in London to board our Eurostar train to Paris! This is the almost-200mph train that goes under the English Channel. The ride took just under 2 hours and we arrived with no trouble! In Paris we also used the subway for our transportation (they call it the Metropolitan--or Metro--there) and figured it out just as quickly as we did in London--even with the names in French!

Our hotel was on a beautiful scenic Parisian street that had flower boxes on each window ledge and you could hear music coming from down the street! Here is the view from our window....

 

We did not do any tours outside of Paris so that evening we rested up after getting dinner. The next day we went up and down the city on foot and in subway to see the sites on our own. Our first stop was the Arc de Triomphe.

From there we walked to the Eiffel Tower. It rained the entire day we were out but thankfully I had brought my umbrella!

After seeing the Eiffel Tower, we took the Metro to see the Parisian Catacombs underneath the city. We stood in line (in the rain) for 2 hours but it was worth it to get to see the historic tunnels underneath stacked with the bones of millions of people.

 

After the Catacombs we caught some lunch at a cafe, then took the Metro up to see Notre Dame Cathedral.

 

After that we walked around a bit more to see some more sites, then headed back to our hotel tired and a little damp!

 

The next morning we headed out to the airport only find out our flight to Chicago had been delayed FIVE hours.....thankfully they gave us some meal vouchers so we milled around the airport and tried to entertain ourselves until our planed finally left around 5:30pm. It was a 9 1/2 hour flight to Chicago but since we were traveling west it stayed daylight and we technically arrived at 7:30pm (but it felt like 2am to us). We got thru customs then our flight to OKC left around 10pm and we landed just after midnight. We were dead tired at this point and almost couldn't find our car in the airport parking! We made it home and crawled into bed around 1:30am (felt like 8:30am to us) after being up and on the go for 24hours. We slept like rocks and it was so nice to be back in our own beds! We drove out to my inlaws' house to pick up Bradley the next afternoon and he was very happy to see us.

Nick and I agreed that our favorite city of the 4 was Edinburgh, Scotland. We really loved the hilly cobblestone streets and medieval buildings. We liked the big sites in London and Paris but they were both so busy and full of people. Paris surprised us with how much graffiti and litter there was around.

 We had a fabulous time and are blessed that we are able to fit traveling into our budget! It is nice to be home and we enjoyed telling our family and friends about the stories and sharing our pictures. Everyone loved their souvenirs that we got. Now it is back to reality and we definitely have a busy summer ahead! Birthdays, swimming lessons, IVF, work, weddings.....the fun never ends!