Londo, day 9

Today we had an amazing history day!  We started out at the Churchill War Rooms, which is definitely one of my favorite things we've done.  What an amazing place to see the rooms where so many important things happened, left just as they were.  It was fascinating to see meeting rooms, bedrooms, kitchen and everything they needed to carry on the war underground.  My favorite room was the Map Room where you could see the pinholes in the map still, and could imagine them charting the different sides' progress.  They also had a chalkboard they left as it was where they were charting the number of planes down on each side in the Battle of Britain.  It made us all feel humble and grateful to be there.  There's also a Churchill museum as part of the War Rooms.  I could have spent much longer there, but we did have a 4 year old...he was a really interesting person, and I'm reading a book about him right now, but I had forgotten his mother was American, that he painted, wrote about 40 books, and switched political parties a couple of times during his career.  Thank goodness for his leadership and determined spirit.  What brave people to have lived down there and carried out all their responsibilities.

St James's Park is right across the street, and we had a picnic lunch there with food from Pret, which is a great, quick place to eat here.  After lunch, we headed over to the Houses of Parliament. I didn't figure out that we needed to make reservations for a tour months in advance, so really all we could do was look around the outside of the building, which is beautiful!  No matter how many times we see it or look up at Big Ben, we still want to take more pictures and try to capture its beauty.  For our final stop of the day, we went to Westminster Abbey.  I've heard about this place my whole life, so I was really excited to go.  The girls got kids map/questionnaires at the beginning which was so great.  There's no way they would have been looking for all the stuff they were looking for on their questionnaire without those specific questions.  They had to find things like when was Isaac Newton born or who was Queen Elizabeth I buried next to, so they were engaged and we spent a couple of hours there.  They loved knowing where the kings and queens get crowned and seeing the coronation chair.  We loved poets corner where so many famous authors are buried.  It was awesome.  We even got to go to evensong there at Westminster Abbey, which was wonderful, if not a little stressful for me trying to keep Goose quiet and entertained.  She took a nice long nap in her stroller earlier, which was why we could spend so much time in the abbey, but after she woke up was a little grouchy and restless, and we were on the front row - mistake.  It all worked out, though, :) We ate dinner at a little cafe on the way home near our Sloane Square tube stop.  We made tea at home and had dessert we'd picked up - so fun!