England

We were up bright and early after a not so restful night. But we were all so excited to head to England! We had a short drive to the port where we parked and went through customs. We boarded our ferry which was much bigger than expected (felt like a miniature cruise ship). It was a nice 90 min. journey across the English channel. By the end I was getting a bit seasick.  It was rough water to the point where you could NOT walk in a straight line! 

The view coming in was spectacular!!! We docked in Dover and were able to see the beautiful Cliffs of Dover with the Dover castle up on the hill. They are just sheer, white, cliffs.

6 pound story: After docking we had planned to walk over a mile to meet up with our bus that would take us into London. Long story short, we got off the ferry about 1 hour after docking which made for some mad dashing so that we wouldn't miss our bus. We thought it was a miracle that a taxi appeared and took us to the bus stop which we paid 6 pounds for. After getting on the bus and relaxing we realized he was taking us back to the ferry dock where there was a BUS STOP.... the taxi driver must have laughed knowing he just got paid when we could have just stayed in the exact spot we were in to begin with. We all had a good chuckle and deemed it our 6 pound story.

The bus ride into London was over 3 hours. So we were able to relax, enjoy the green country side and take a few cat naps. When we arrived we caught our iconic, red, double-decker, hop on/off tour bus. It took us all over London and we saw most of the city that way!

Can't go to London without getting this picture right?!

Duke of Wellingtons home

The lampposts have small crowns on top, which means all rent goes directly to the Queen....

Guards on horseback

Tower Bridge- What a beautiful site!

Tower of London. We got tickets to go inside and tour and it was well worth it! A few highlights were the crown jewels which date way back.  

The iconic guard and the massive black ravens. The cool story is that some king/queen a long time ago thought that if the ravens were to ever leave the fortress that the kingdom would be destroyed. Still to this day they have bird trainers who treat these birds like royalty. They are impressive. 

After Tower of London we jumped on a canal boat down the Thames to head back instead of taking the bus. It was fantastic! We went upstairs and had some great views of the city.

London Bridge--- the original is in Arizona at Lake Havasu

Shakespeare's Globe

The Eye of London

The famous Clock Tower. We hung around so we could listen to Big Ben chime 6:00. It was impressive and the most majestic bells ever! Probably our favorite part of London.

Westminster Abbey

So beautiful!

We spent the night in London and the next day spent the morning at church. It was fun to visit and talk with the missionaries who are serving at the visitor center.

A stroll through Hyde Park on our way to Buckingham Palace

We found out that the London marathon was taking place while we were here which included 38,000 participants plus their supporters..... Whoops! Luckily for us, London rocks and we barely knew it was occurring besides having the finish line at Buckingham Palace. 

St. Paul's Cathedral

Dale had us singing Mary Poppins the entire trip! It was such an amazing cathedral inside and out!

We made time to run down to see the Catholic cathedral before catching our bus..... I'll call it a mistake since I seriously thought I was going to die from having to run with a heavy backpack in the cold air in order to not miss our bus back to Dover. We made it but it was not fun!!!!

Dale finally got his fish and chips on the ferry back to France

London was incredible! We could have stayed and toured a lot longer! But after our 2nd day we headed back to Dover to catch our ferry back to Calais. It was a late night and we were exhausted after our busy, busy days in London.