Thursday, April 19
Our flight was from
Phoenix straight to London Heathrow. It
was supposed to leave at 7:45pm, but we left pretty late. The flight was 10 hours and it was miserable, actually. We were so cramped!
Friday, April 20
We arrived on Friday
around 3pm. It took us almost two hours
to get across London on the tube and train.
The Heathrow Express was so expensive and it wouldn’t have saved us much
time. We took the Picadilly line from
London Heathrow, changed to the Jubilee line at Green Park, and then to the DLR
at Canning Town. We had a really nice dinner at the hotel and then went to
bed early.
Saturday, April 21
We slept in on Saturday
and went downstairs for breakfast. We
went to the Excel convention center at 1pm to set up.
Excel was right along the Thames.
It didn’t take very long, so once we got back
to the hotel we decided we would go to see Phantom of the Opera that
night. We took the DLR and the tube
again and got off at Picadilly Circus and walked to Her Majesty’s Royal
Theatre. It took us about an hour to get
there and we arrived at 7pm and easily got good tickets for the show. It was a wonderful play! The singing was amazing!!
I didn't realize until a month or so ago that Nathaniel's prom would be on the same weekend we were on our trip. He had a nice time with Lacey. Don't they look great?
Sunday, April 22
The trade show started
at 9am, so we got to the stand (booth) at 8am.
The men were there to set up the big banner at the back. It was way too big. They made it 4 meters long, even though that
was the entire length of the wall, including the closet. It was fine, though, because we just put it
in front of the closet and we had a nice little path behind the banner to hide
all of the stuff. It was a really long day and we had a lot of
traffic.
The show ended at 6pm. It’s funny how the announcer lady demanded
that everyone leave. At one point she
even said, “All attendees, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, must leave immediately.” Yikes!
After the show, we went back to the hotel and then Adrian, Jeremy, and
Nicole came to our hotel for dinner. I had the chicken schnitzel (which was
wonderful and so were the fries) and sticky toffee sundae, and Michael had the
meat plate again.
Monday, April 23
The day was a little
shorter on Monday. It was from
9:30am-5pm. We got there around 9:15am,
and Nicole was already there setting up.
Somehow, even though I was so tired, that day went by quite a bit
faster. We had so much traffic and
everyone loved the Water Drops.
At the
end of the day, we got cleaned up and went back to the hotel for a few minutes
before dinner. Jeremy picked us up and
took us to the Chinese restaurant that was just east of our hotel. I can’t remember the name, but it was really
good. I had the honey roast pork and
Michael had the sweet pepper beef. After
that, we said our goodbyes to Adrian, Nicole, and Jeremy and walked back to our
hotel.
Another event we missed was Emily's awards night. Here she is with her award for being in the top 5% of the Freshman class!
Tuesday, April 24
This was our
sightseeing day. I had a really hard
time getting going in the morning. I had
set the alarm for 8am and I still slept past that a bit. I think we left around 11am or so.
We took the DLR and tube to High Street
Kensington. We stopped at the Whole Foods
and had a look around at our competition.
We also bought some amazing brown sugar chocolate chip cookies. After
that, we walked to Kensington Palace and took a tour.
We caught some of the
lecture about life during the time of King James and Queen Caroline.
The
Princess Diana exhibit was closed, which was a bummer. Everyone was excited about the new little prince being born. It was on the front page of all the papers. Kensington Palace is where Prince William and Katherine live, but the museum is on the opposite end of the palace from where they live.
I really loved seeing the Sunken Garden! It was just outside the palace.
We walked through the rest of
the garden and caught the tube at Queensway and went to the British
Museum. Michael really wanted to see
it, and he loved it!
After
the museum, we caught the tube at Holborn and headed back to Royal Victoria
station. There, we went to the Emirates
Air Line, the cable cars across the Thames.
I was really excited to
ride the cable cars, but the wind was loud and rocked the car and it really
scared me. I couldn’t really enjoy it
and I was so relieved when it was over.
Here are our views from the cable car
After that, we went to dinner on the Sunborn Yacht. It was beautiful! The food was amazing, but Michael’s portion
was pretty small. I had the teriyaki
salmon with saffron mash and Michael had the potato gnocchi.
Wednesday, April 25
Today we slept in until
about 8am. We got ready quickly, though,
and we had breakfast and got all packed up by 10:30am. We decided to take a taxi to avoid dragging
our suitcases across London. It took an
hour and a half! Everything went
smoothly at the airport. We stocked up
on souvenirs for everyone. The flight
was better that the first one. This time
we got lucky and the seat next to me was empty.
We got through baggage claim and
customs quickly and made it home before the kids left for their church activities.
I feel so blessed that we were able to go to London again! It was a long trip and we worked a lot, but we still really enjoyed it. It's hard to leave the kids for that long, though, and we're glad to be home.
