The beginning of the England posts . . . London

At the outset I will warn you that these England posts are going to be picture-heavy, but you should be grateful that I'm not posting all 266 of our pictures. I guess we got a little camera happy . . .

We made it to London safely despite the threat of the volcano. As soon as we got there we took a little stroll through Hyde Park. I adore Hyde Park! I love the Serpentine, I love the Peter Pan statue, I love seeing people exercise, I loved seeing the bridal party stroll by, I love the Prince Albert monument. It's fantastic!

That afternoon we went over to Leicester Square looking for some half-priced tickets to Wicked. We found the tickets and some AMAZING kebabs. It was a great afternoon. I thought I was going to be too tired, but one Diet Coke later and I was good to go. (Side note - I convinced most of my siblings to see Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom because I'd heard it was all the rage in an NPR story. They did go and my sister-in-law let me know that the plot was slightly worse than Mama Mia. Ouch! So a word to the wise, the new hotness is not worth it.)

Wicked was SO fun! I've been dying to see it since I got back from my mission! I loved it! Since we bought our tickets day of, three of the four were WAY up there. My brother-in-law was really nice to switch with me for the second half, and then I was on the fourth row. It was pretty awesome.

The next day was Sunday, so we made it our church day. I can't say any of us were too awake in any of the sermons we heard that day. We went to the Hyde Park ward in the morning. Then after we took a double decker through the city over to St. Paul's. We went to the evensong there. The sermon was boring, but the architecture was amazing. We went over to hear an organ performance (which in Brad's opinion was horrific) at Westminster. Again, we all fell asleep, but the building was so beautiful. It's always fun to see Big Ben because that is so quintessentially London. That night we went to a fantastic Indian restaurant for dinner.

The next day we visited the BYU London Center where my family lived when I was six. It was so fun to be there with all my siblings again! We loved it! We also went over to Trafalgar Square, which is where we took our 1989 Christmas Card picture. :)

We went to the War Rooms, which was really interesting. I'd never been before (though I'd attempted to go several times). It is the bunker where Winston Churchill directed WWII. I loved learning more about that process and about Churchill himself.

Brad and I broke off from my family for the rest of the day. We went to the British, and the National - both of which were fantastic! We also made to Buckingham Palace, which was great. At the end of the afternoon we walked over to the houses of Parliament for a great view. If I would have planned better, we would have gotten there a little bit earlier so that we could have seen the House of Commons. Bummer.

That night we went to see Les Miserables. No other musical compares to that one for me. It has everything - I love it! Unfortunately the guy who played Marius sounded like a goat, but other than that our leads were great.

Our time in London was nearly perfect. For the most part we had fantastic weather. We were able to see a lot of stuff in the two and a half days we had. And we loved spending time with our family there. It was great!

P.S. Sorry if there are typos - it's late and I'm tired, so forgive me.