Londinium. Kidding it is just London

We really wanted to show Dora the royal mews. That is the British word for 4 horse carriages, one car, pictures of the queen, and a door that leads to the stables. Actually a couple of these carriages date back to the 1700. The royal carriage was being restored and the dude trying to fix it burned it to the ground. So they had to completely rebuild it. 

 

These horse stalls are nicer than my house. Look at the columns. What was nice about the stables? Well aside from looking like a grand hall, you can see the names of the different horses. I wonder how those have changed. I highly doubt there was a horse named Rocket in the 1700. Probably a lot of Chesterfield of Derbyshire or something. 

 

 These next few pictures are the royal carriage. Pretty cool huh?

 

    

Here we are having "Tea with the Queen". We waited outside palace for the queen to start the commonwealth games. If you look closely the lady in pink, or the pink dot, is the queen.  

 

 

 

After waiting for 2 hours to see the queen, we got on an open top bus and took a tour through the city. It was a hop on hop off type bus. Eli loved it. We saw all the highlights and heard about some of the architects that designed London. Really fun tour. 

         

Here is St Paul's Cathedral.   

We went to the Tower of London.  

Here we outside the Crown Jewels. We could not take pictures inside. But trust me, they are there.   

The Tower is one of the older buildings  before it was built most castles and fortifications were wood. When William the Conquerer built it out of stone in 1068, it changes the way people looked at fortifications and started the castle building of the medieval ages

 

   

 

  

London Eve

We made it to London. We had dinner at an Italian place and mom went back to hotel. We went to see Big Ben and Westminster      

Leaving Bath and heading to London

So we actually stayed in this castle. It was built in 1806. It was one of the gaurd houses for the local estate and was converted into a hotel bed and breakfast. Kinda cool. The kids loved it. That is our car, a Citroen Cactus. It was a nice car.  

On way to London we drove past the Farleigh Castleand manor. It wasn't open. It seems tragic to me that a castle goes into disrepair.  

This castle however did not go into disrepair. We went to Windsor Castle. Really cool.      

It was raining. It was a bit of walking. I love this picture. Perfectly captures him. Thinking. Sad. Pensive.  

 

Here we are on the first Underground trip. Tired. Hungry. Wet. Notice the new gloves. 

  

Caerphilly Castle in wales

We left Goodrich castle and we're starving.  So HANGRY!  So we googled T shop and pulled into this condo row in the middle of no where. No food. No people. I heard a guy in the phone in Welsh.  We found our way to Caerphilly Castle. It was the largest castle in Wales at one time. Had moats all round. Really impressive but kinda run down.    

One of the towers is falling down.   

 

     

This was a really cool castle. So big and medieval kids were HANGRY and there was a wedding so they didn't like it as much as Goodriche Castle.