The Valantines: LONDON CALLING!

LONDON

So today is one of my favorite days! We have been to London 4 times now so it's kind of become a home away from home for my family. Natalie did study abroad here when she attended BYU so we were both very excited to take our husbands around London and show them all of our favorite sites. We got into London around 6 pm so we were going to go to Piccadilly Circus and get some dinner and do a walk about at night

but of course we missed our stop on the express train and ended up having to ride it all the way into London and back. So we ended up just ordering Chinese to our hotel and going to bed (which I think we were all secretly grateful for, me especially judging by my exhaustion in this picture lol)

The next morning we got up and went straight to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guards!

This is one of my favorite things to do in London,

thousands of people gather at the gates and they have this huge parade to bring in the new guards, they go through the front gates and do this line up/ gun salute thing and then switch the guards who are on stand. It's a big deal for such a small event really? But it's fun to see the parade.

After the parade was over we walked through St. James park. I LOVE THIS PARK! They have all these cute chairs set up and people are scattered everywhere, reading, sleeping, practicing juggling, making out (lol), having field trips from school, and walking dogs.

When you come out of St. James park you can see your first view of Big Ben!

That clock never disappoints every time I see it

We stopped at Big Ben just outside the Abbey and got breakfast then headed off a crossed the river to the London Eye and the London Tower.

The London Tower is another really cool site to see in London. It was a high security prison back in it's hay day, today if you go through it you can see all the cells and the tools they used to torture prisoners with ha ha ha kind of awful but really interesting.

.One cool fact.

I have a relative that carved his name into one of the walls in the Tower during his stay :)

We went and found it last time we were here!

I guess theres one in every family lol

THE LONDON BRIDGE!!
This was one of my top things I wanted to show Brandon, I couldn't WAIT for him to see it!

This bridge is incredible! The only way you can appreciate the detail is to see it in person.
They had just freshly painted the bridge for the Olympics so it was even more breath taking than usual!

It's amazing how many people come to see this bridge every year and for good reason too.

One thing Evie does right now that I love and hate,

when you take her picture if you don't IMMEDIATELY show her the picture on the back of the camera she tenses her ENTIRE body and growls at you!

Like she's going to explode!

It is hilarious but she only does it for a second so I can never get a picture of it!

Well, today I FINALLY got my picture!

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA this kid kills me!!!

After the bridge we walked down the river to St. Pauls Cathedral.

We walked passed all the statue actors and street musicians and I just took some photography along the way.

At St. Pauls we all sat on the steps and took a well needed break before we went into the Cathedral...

...Evie, of course, traumatized pidgins and did the stairs 10,000 times....

While we were at the Cathedral it started pouring rain so we ducked into the Tube and rode over to Notting Hill Gate where Natalies old flat was when she studied here.

We visited the BYU center and then Natalie requested that we take a walk through Hyde Park.

She used to run here every morning while she was living in London.