England

The flight across country and ocean went much better than I had feared. William slept for 2 of the 4 hours to Chicago and then suffered only a short-lived melt-down before collapsing on my lap on the flight to London. We left the US on Monday afternoon and arrived in London about 11:00 on Tuesday. Kip's annalysis of London is this: transportation heaven. From the airport we took a train to downtown London - Paddington Station. William loved the train. For all our sightseeing we took the "tube" or metro system. Again, a lot of fun for William. On Friday, our last day there, we spent the day riding a double-decker tour bus and a tour boat up the Thames. William loved it all. While riding the boat, Kip made William laugh and laugh and I realized, looking into his open mouth that he has his two-year molars. The top ones are pretty far in and the bottom ones are recently broken through. Who knows when that happened?! I'm guessing this means he's not ever going to get his bottom incisors, but that doesn't seem to slow him down any.

While in London, we stayed in a silly little hotel right by Paddington station. They upgraded our room assignment when we arrived, sending us from the main hotel off to a separate building down a narrow alley that only a European would dare drive through. We had our own flat! It had a full kitchen and a cozy sitting area with a double bed at the far end. Then, upstairs it had a second double bed and a set of bunkbeds and a bathroom. It was really very comfortable for the three of us. The one drawback was that the underground lines passed directly behind the house. Paddington station is fairly centrally located in London. There are a LOT of trains that go through on all the different lines. And they all seem to pass through or stop at Paddington. I would guess that a train went by that place every 30 seconds. Some slowed and stopped at the stations, others seemed to tear on by and nearly pulled our flat down with them. William actually liked it, often stopping whatever he was doing to say "choo choo" when one went past and then to ask for more. I was able to assure him there would be plenty more in just a minutes time.

While in London we visited the Science Museum (where William enjoyed the water-play station for much longer than I would have wanted him to), the aquarium (which was interesting for a little while), and made frequent visits to the play structure at Hyde park, as well as the bus tour the last day.