London- Day 1 and 2

Here are a few pictures of our first two days in London. After two nice long flights on Christmas Day, we arrived in London on Wednesday morning. The highlight of the day was dragging our huge bags through the trains and onto the tubes (subways) and then attempting to find the house where we were staying. :-) I'm sure Kev had more fun than me since he lugged my huge suitcase and his up and down stairs at the stations. He is such a great husband!
Once we met up with my family, we headed off to Hard Rock Cafe London for some lunch and then we did a walking tour of some of the sights. We were exhausted from jet lag, but tried to stay awake as long as we could! In the above picture we're in front of Buckingham Palace. I loved walking through the gorgeous park that surrounds it. From there we walked to the houses of Parliament and Big Ben.

This is the British Airway's London Eye. It is like a huge indoor ferris wheel.


Scott, Jess, Dan, Elise, Kevin, and I went on a ride on the Eye right after the sunset (around 4pm!). After walking for about 4 hours we finally headed back to our house and went to sleep around 8pm. Kevin and I were given the best room since I'm about 32 weeks pregnant now and have a much harder time getting comfortable at night. We slept for about 11-12 hours and woke up feeling great! Baby Buskirk is very cooperative and lets me sleep all night long at this point. Hopefully that continues once he's born, but I doubt it will. :-) I spent the first morning doing what I'd dreamed about for several months- going running with my mom and sister through the streets of London. I was so happy that I could still keep up with them (mostly because it was wet and they were nice and jogged a little slower for me!).


After our jog we got ready and headed to the Tower of London. Here's a photo of all the girls. I think the Tower of London tour was among my favorite things we did. The Beefeater guide we had was hysterical! I loved relearning some British history and hearing some new stories. It all plays out like a soap opera and is very entertaining.


Next we headed to Westminster Abbey. By this point my favorite part of the day was the chairs that they had for you to sit on in the abbey. I felt like a zombie and was so exhausted!


Despite the jet lag, we kept walking and exploring all day- Trafalgar Square, Covent Gardens, Picadilly Circus, etc. When we arrived in the Covent Garden tube station we had the option of taking an elevator or walking up some stairs, so we chose the stairs.... after over 190 steps I was wishing we'd picked the elevator. I forget sometimes that I weigh about 20 lbs more than I used to!! Fortunately with all the walking we did we were able to work off all the Cadbury chocolate we ate :-)


The last thing we did on Thursday was head to the Apollo Victoria theater to watch the musical "Wicked." Dan and Scott had never seen it, so we thought it would be fun to go again. The music was incredible as always... but the jet lag/tiredness and pregnancy exhaustion made it incredibly hard for me to stay awake! I was glad that I was able to keep myself up through most of the musical. My favorite part was the intermission when I got to stand up! Baby Buskirk definitely loved the music and proceeded to kick me throughout the show... making the already uncomfortable theater seats even more uncomfortable. Overall, we had a fabulous first two days in London! We feel so grateful to my parents for organizing this fun trip. The weather was beautiful and I felt so blessed to feel so great and be able to have the energy to enjoy every minute of the trip! I'll post some more entries about the rest of the week later. It's time for me to head back to enjoying my last few days of vacation and vegging on the couch. Happy New Year!