London- Day 4

Today was only 9 miles of walking and most of it was spent gazing at some amazing specimens at The Natural History Museum. With over 80 million specimens, Thomas and I both felt a little overwhelmed by all that there was to see. We spent 5 hours there and truly feel like we just glazed over most of it. We likely could spend about a day in each room! Thomas enjoyed pointing out that his rock collection really isn’t that big.

The rocks and minerals room. I lost count of the cases.

A rare collection of all the colors of diamond.

We stopped off at Earl’s Court and Thomas got his picture with a TARDIS.

We came back to the hotel for about 45 minutes because I needed a 20 minute nap to recharge. All of those stairs yesterday were quite a workout.

We then went to The Shard, the tallest building in London, and were able to see the city from above after the sunset. Thank goodness this one had a lift (aka elevator, for all you Americans) to the 68th floor and we only had to climb to the 72nd floor for the view from the top. It was amazing, but I’ll be honest in the fact that there was a lot more satisfaction in reaching the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral yesterday.

After The Shard, we headed for the LEGO store. They had some really cool displays and Thomas bought some treasures for “the boys” (I’m so sure).

We had dinner at Poppy’s for some traditional British fish-n-chips. The haddock was much better than the cod. Thomas drank English tea with his fish.

After dinner we went to Hamley’s— no, not a saddle shop or bar— but a SEVEN story toy store. Our kids would have been in heaven.

We finished our night off with some delicious ice cream— pistachio and wild cherry for me and chocolate coconut sundae for Thomas.

Tomorrow we plan to take a river cruise on the Thames and spend most of our day in Greenwich.