London Calling - Jan 22-26, 2010

Robert needed to take the Presidential Management Fellows Assessment test, and his options were to take it in Washington, D.C. or London.  Since it would cost about the same to send him to DC and back as it would to take us all to London, we chose London.

We had a few glitches getting there, so it didn't end up being as cheap as we planned.  But we decided to make the most of it and see as much as we could: the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, Portabello Market, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abby, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Science Museum, and St. Paul's Cathedral. 

Here at the British Museum.

At Portabello Market.  We didn't get any of the crazy antiques, but we did get some yummy food!

Robert and Christian in front of the Tower of London.

Christian is a little suspicious of this Beefeater, although most of them are pretty funny guides.

In front of the Tower Bridge.

Buckingham Palace

Houses of Parliament

Westminister Abbey

View from the top of St. Paul's Cathedral.  It was quite chilly, and Christian was not pleased.

One of the most fun things we did was take the train out to Cambridge to visit our friends, Rob and Christa.  Rob is getting an LL.M. in International Law in Cambridge. 

They were kind enough to let us go to church with them, have lunch with them, and then they were awesome tour guides of the city.  They took us to see the different College's and showed us where Isaac Newton lived, the King's College Chapel (from the outside- it was closed), Queen's College, plus the inside of their chapel, and the Eagle Pub where Watson and Crick "announced" that they had discovered the structure of DNA (Christina was very excited about this one). They really entertained Christian, too!  It was fabulous. 

A few days later Rob and Christa came down to London and took Christina and Christian to the Imperial War Rooms and Churchill Museum - which was really cool - while Robert took his exam.  By this point Christian had gotten his first stomach bug ever and was not very playful, but it made him much more willing to be carried around to museums.  It was fun to see good friends again so far from home.  We hope Christa had a happy birthday that week!