Just Touched Down in London Town

Daniel was working in London for a couple weeks during busy season this year, so I decided to accompany him with the kids. Tagging along on the business trip and the ridiculously weak British Pound made it very cheap and London turns out to be an amazing city for kids. We had a blast!Jaxon's ideal museum: The London Transport Museum

Jaxon being a snake at the British museum; however, his favorite were the mummies...dead people are pretty intriguing

Sailor town at the Museum of London Docklands, one of our favorites. All of the museums in London had children's activities available, such as worksheets that focus on areas of the museum most likely to engage children. When I asked the museum worker about their "children's trail" he offered to include some coloring pages for when Jaxon lost interest. In deciding which pages to give him, he said "I have some elephant coloring pages; do you like elephants?" Jaxon nodded his head enthusiastically. Next he inquired, "How about pirates, do you like pirates?" Jaxon suddenly looked very serious and slowly shook his head. "Pirates are bad" he informed that man. I had to laugh, but I felt a little bad realizing that Jaxon's most in depth exposure to pirates had been the National Geographic article on the Somalian pirates several months ago. Am I ruining his childhood? Regardless, he spent the rest of the trip to the museum obsessed with pirates. As we explored the WWII bomb shelters, naturally we were hiding from pirates. I suppressed my natural inclination to delve into an oratory on Nazism. They had an especially powerful exhibit on the slavery and the sugar trade. In light of the recent election and Jaxon's familiarity with Barack Obama, it seemed like a good time for a initial exposure to the slave trade. He looked very serious as I explained what I thought was appropriate and talked about how sad it was; finally, at the end of my lecture he looked at me and said thoughtfully, "Pirates did it." I guess I will wait until he's a little older to explain more.

Battersea Park and Children's Zoo

Tower of London

Guarding the crown jewels

Quoth the raven, "Nevermore"--Jaxon didn't want to get too close

Jonas really enjoyed the trip, primarily because it invovled doing a whole lot of his favorite thing: being strapped to one of his parents. He has been such a sucker for being held his whole life that it really surprised us when he started being mobile so early. He started crawling when he was barely six months old and stood up for his first time later on that month.

Cruising on the double-deckers

View from the National Gallery. The kids schedules worked out great for visiting museums. We would visit the kid friendly ones in the morning and then they usually passed out in the afternoon so we could go to some of the less kid-oriented ones and enjoy it. This schedule only failed me on one particular day and Jaxon may have gotten his lifetime dose of modern art at the Tate Modern. However, he did almost get us kicked out when he nearly malled one particular piece of "art": a dilapidated van trailed by dozens of sleds. Luckily I caught him right before he had jumped the barrier. We had a good conversation about how you don't touch art, even if it looks like your dream toy. It seemed to stick. The next day we went to the National Army Museum they had army vehicles on display that were available for kids to climb on. Jaxon told me,"I'm not going to touch that--it's art."

Jonas playing with his London Taxi

Family portrait at the Science Museum

I am not sure who enjoyed the airplane exhibit at the Science Museum more, Jaxon or Daniel, but it was hard to drag them out of there.

Museum of Natural History

London Underground - "The Tube"

Big Ben at night

Jonas enjoying himself at a restaurant.

We had really great weather (for January) until the worst snow in 20 years hit. It was beautiful, but the whole city essentially shut down. I am starting to think that snow follows us. A couple weeks before this the worst snow in Marseille since 1987 hit. Luckily we had the gear that time from our trip to the Alps.

Museum of London

Taking the Chunnel back home to France. It was a great trip. I don't know what London would feel like if I were coming from the U.S., but coming from France it felt whole lot like the States. It is nice to know that if I get homesick I can get my fix without going to far.