Summer has come and gone. At least on the calendar. It seemed like it never really arrived according to the weather this year in London. Olivia had an eight week break from school, so minus the two weeks we spent in America, we had six weeks to be filled with activity. Here is how we kept busy:
West End Theater - One of the (many) things I love about London is the amazing amount of theater available and not just for adults. There are always children's shows to be found and especially in the summer when schools are out. I took the girls to see a performance based on a collection of English author Julie Donaldson's books and they loved it. Especially since they were familiar with most of the stories from all of our book reading.
In Chinatown after the show
In August of every year, the West End theaters have kid's week where you can get a free child's ticket with the purchase of an adult ticket. A friend of mine had tickets to Mama Mia that she wasn't able to use for she and her son, so Olivia and I went instead. While the story is a bit mature and one that I'm glad Olivia is young enough to not understand, she loved all the music, dancing, lights and costumes. It also helped that it involved a girl getting married. She kept asking me the entire time when the girl was going to wear her wedding dress.
Photo op by Big Ben on the way home
Local playgrounds - always a good fallback if there was nothing else planned for the day
My little swing lover in full meltdown mode because I made her get off to give someone else a turn
Kew Gardens - We made a couple visits down to Kew Gardens, a large garden/park about a 25 minute train ride from us. It has a big open green space along with a playground and other indoor climbings areas for kids.
Beach in Tel Aviv - Well, not really. The local Jewish center had a small temporary beach set up for the summer with sand and a little wading pool. On the one hot day we had in July, the swimsuits came out and we went to the beach.
London Zoo - We made lots of trips to the zoo. With a membership in hand this summer, we went numerous times. The favorite stops were the giraffes followed by the playground.
Daddy's work - While the girls have been to Geoff's office before, Olivia's last visit was when she was 2 1/2 yrs old and Ashton's was when she was 9 months old. They were overdue for a stop in. We took the train out, saw his office, said hi to some of his coworkers and then went to lunch together.
Future Anadarko Petroleum interns?
London Transport Museum/Covent Garden - The London Transport Museum is one of my favorite museums. It's such a great one for kids and they just opened a new section specifically for young children. The girls had plenty of fun pretending to drive buses and trains around the city.
We followed the museum with lunch next door at Shake Shack in Covent Garden. There were plenty of sights to see afterwards as we wandered around.
"Mommy, why is this man wearing a skirt??" - Olivia
Mesmerized by the opera singer below
Battery Sea Park - This might be my new favorite park in London. While it was a bit of an effort to get to especially without Geoff's help (two trains and one bus ride followed by a decent walk), it was worth the effort. They have a little zoo there that was a big hit. Not so much for the animals which really weren't that exciting, but for the play area. It had big but contained playgrounds and climbing equipment, lots of swings, a huge sand pit, tractors and other little cars to drive around and boats to sail. The girls were in heaven...and completely exhausted (so was Mommy!) by the time we finally left.
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