London in the Springtime

There's a concentration of official holidays in England in April and May. For the latest one we headed to London again to right a wrong: we had not yet taken our kids to see the Changing of the Guard in front of Buckingham Palace.

Some people call this experience overrated - too much waiting, too many crowds. And it's true you won't be the only one there. 

But where else can you find such a concentration of English pomp and circumstance in such a short amount of time? And for free? There's the uniforms, the horses, the music, the guards calling out, the marching - all with Buckingham Palace with its famous balcony for a backdrop.

I didn't know what my kids would think, because they're not fond of crowds and waiting, but they loved it. Not in any particular order, here's what they've loved in London: Tower of London, open-top bus tour (Camille), checking out the street performers around Covent Garden (Anya), Harrods browsing and ice cream, seeing London musicals, riding the London Eye and Changing of the Guard. If you count the Harry Potter WB Tour as being in London, then that would definitely be on the list too. And getting American fast food, but that's just kind of sad.

Is there anything nicer to do on a warm, springy day than sit in the sun in a park eating ice cream? Green Park is right next to Buckingham Palace.

Next, I decided it was the perfect day to check out Kew Gardens. Kew Gardens is huge. We walked miles just seeing a small part of it. The top thing I wanted to see was the treetop walkway. It's 118 steps up into the treetops.

Besides being up in the trees, there's pretty views toward the greenhouse and other parts of the gardens.

Anya loves thrills and heights. Camille, not so much. She still enjoyed the treetop walk though, even with the feel of the walkway swaying lightly in the wind.

I always pictured Kew Gardens as very structured, English-style walled gardens. It's possible there's parts that are like that, but not the parts we saw. Despite that I'm sure it was all planned, it feels like wandering in a beautiful, natural wilderness.

My girls would have liked to make it to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. That isn't going to happen, so as a consolation prize Mike had Camille take this silly picture at Kew (instead of the traditional holding up the Leaning Tower picture that everyone takes in Pisa).

The traditional "fighting over not letting my sister give me bunny ears" pose. What age do kids outgrow that? We have a version of this picture at about every place we've ever been.

Just more pretty garden scenes.

The famous saying about London is, "Tired of London, tired of life." It's so true! There's endless things to do in London. With all our time there, I'll still open guide books and find we haven't even seen everything on the must-see in London list. We had a great day checking out two more experiences though.