Our Christmas day was a bit different than years past, but still a hoot and a half! We had a leisurely morning at our hotel. Santa had indeed found our li'l guys and left stockings as well as texts for mom and dad letting them know the boys' "big" gifts were left at the house for them. In their excitement, it was very much like Christmas at home - they were stoked!
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| Santa brought Jelly Belly beans and Power Ranger Dino Chargers! |
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| Shaun the Sheep - thanks Santa! |
Our friends headed out early that day and went to Christmas mass at St Paul's Cathedral -
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| Tower Bridge, Big Ben and the London Eye |
quite a treat for our Catholic companions. We met up when they were done and caught our bus for a big, open topped, double-decker bus tour of the sights of London. Thank goodness they offered free plastic ponchos! (We'd actually packed some but of course had forgotten them this day - sigh). The bus took us all over the historic center of the city and had an audio guide for all that we were seeing. We could get on and off where ever we liked. There was a break in the rain so at Buckingham Palace we got off the bus and went to check out the royal abode and the infamous guards.
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| Buckingham Palace |
The guards weren't doing the changing ceremonies that day, but we did see the horse guard come by which was pretty impressive! The boys stomped around in front of the gate like soldiers, mom took a few pictures and we headed back to the bus. The tour around town drove us by Big Ben and Parliament, Westminster Abbey, The London Eye, The Tower of London and across Tower Bridge.
Even though we were being driven around it was still a lot to take in, so when we got back to St Paul's (where we picked the tour up) it was decided that food needed to be found.
Not much is open on Christmas in London, but we found a great, cozy pub serving food, Ye Olde Cock Tavern (I'm not kidding), and had a delicious, comforting lunch. Josh and I found a couple good beers we liked, the kids had burgers and fizzy lemonade and we all gushed about the cool things we'd seen that day, what Santa had brought the boys that morning and just enjoyed a wonderful, non-traditional Christmas day.
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