Day 5 - Who says traveling with kids is no fun

A nice early(ish) start to our day as we headed out a bit before 11 am to go to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Playground in Kensington Gardens. It was built in 2000 as a memorial to Princess Diana & her love of children. 

An adventure playground geared very much towards the Peter Pan and Pirate enthusiasts. 

Kian on the Pirate Ship in the main section of the playground

The playground has many different sections so the kids could be entertained forever.

Hannah on a small boat

We had plans to meet my friend Joan-Ann for lunch at Giraffe. We had to promise the kids that we would go back since there really wasn't enough time to explore everything and the weather was just wonderful. 

We walked through Kensington Gardens towards Kensington High Street and grabbed some lunch. Giraffe is a great place to eat with Kids. The atmosphere is very relaxed and the kids liked the food.

Love.Eat.Live

Coloring Super Giraffes

Kian enjoying his meal

Chicken Nacho Burger

Lunch at Giraffe

Thanks Joan-Ann for coming and meeting us for lunch. Was great to see you.

After lunch we took a detour on our way back to the playground and walked by the Kensington Palace and the beautiful flower gardens.

Kensington Palace flower garden

Hannah and Baby Ginger

We went back to the playground and the kids had a blast playing for another 30 minutes.

See-Saw Fun

The crazy swing...Kian's favorite thing on the playground

Hannah's favorite section...a bit of water a bit of sand...perfection!

Baby Yogi - Downward Dog on the Sand

Before heading out of the park the kids enjoyed some soft serve ice-cream with "flakes". 

Yummy ice cream

After ice cream we decided to walk the entire length of the Kensington Gardens to the Marble Arch. Along the way we discovered a few things we didn't even know existed. Such as the Italian Gardens and the Peter Pan Statue.

Hannah at the Italian Gardens

Peter Pan

We headed home after this with two tired kids riding on mommy's and daddy's shoulders. Dinner consisted of ravioli, chicken, salad and fruit. The grownups also got some fried onion on the chicken.

Hannah started eating before I took the picture. She was too hungry to wait.

After dinner we had a friday family movie night and watched Tangled.

Everyone lounging together and watching a movie

If you are looking for more pictures feel free to check out our England Gallery.

Day 4 - A Spontaneous Day

"I told Yah"...."I told Yah"....That's what I woke up to. Hannah repeatedly telling daddy "I told yah" in the other room. It was around 8:15 AM but we still did not leave the house until shortly after lunch. We are definitely still very jet lagged. 

Simple lunch at home

We headed out with all intents and purposes of going to Trafalgar Square but then randomly changed our mind when we heard the lady robot voice on the underground at Green Park say that we could get out to see the Buckingham Palace. We walked through park and towards the Palace Gates.

Buckingham Palace Gates

There was an event going on in the Palace for what we thought was for War Veterans. We got to see lots of fancy dressed ladies with awesome hats :)

After taking a few pictures we headed towards our original destination, Trafalgar Square. Again without any particular planning we ended up walking through St. James's Park and decided to let the kids take a walking break and eat some apples.

Taking a walking break in St James's Park

Hannah had fun picking flowers from the field and giving them to mommy, daddy, and Kian. 

After that we took a nice long walk during which Hannah was picked up and took a short nap to Trafalgar Square in search of the ice cream shop where, in 2006, we first talked about picking 'Hannah' as our daughter's name if one day we were going to have one. We didn't end up finding it. So we picked just picked the nearest cafe called, Pompidou.

Kian had a delicious chocolate pastry with milk and we enjoyed an apple caramel crepe. Hannah woke up at some point during our afternoon dessert feast and got a strawberry ice-cream. 

Kian and Boney the dog enjoying a delicious chocolate pastry

After everyone had regained their energy we walked to Trafalgar Square and had fun with the fountains and the lions.

Fountains at Trafalgar Square

Kian on the back of one of the lions

We also saw a cool street performer do a neat balancing trick with a few crystal balls.

Street performer at Trafalgar Square

We then decided to head to Piccadilly Circus which was not a very long walk away. On the way we encountered another one of our favorite telephone booths and Hannah and Baby Ginger made a quick call.  

Hannah and Baby Ginger making a call

We have no particular interest in shopping during this trip so we just walked through Piccadilly Circus. We didn't even stop to take any pictures since Kian was falling asleep. We had enough time to just walk to the South Bank from Piccadilly and since we don't mind the exercise we skipped the underground. 

We ended up having another random experience and walked through the Horse Guards Parade where Hannah had lots of fun collecting mini rocks and we enjoyed the view.

Playing with rocks at Horse Guards Parade

Horse Guards Parade

For dinner we met up with an old colleague, Simon B, in the South Bank at a South American restaurant called Las Iguanas. 

Las Iguanas Outdoor Menu

The food was good and we were able to sit outside.  The service wasn't so great, no servers for outside so there were repeated, lengthy trips to the bar to order food and drinks, and the bartenders were clueless on how to take meal orders for children.  Simon informed us bad service is pretty typical of London where there isn't much of a tip culture.

Crazy Quesadillas

Meaty Mini Burgers

Taco Sampler

Gambas

After dinner we were caught in the famous London rain but found refuge under some trees, and by the time we headed to the underground the rain had turned into more of a mist.  Thanks Simon for coming out to meet us, sorry, we forgot to take a picture!

Day 3 - A Bit of Sight Seeing in London

We ventured out after the kids played for a while at the apartment and walked about a mile to the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. A great way to get a 4.5 and a 2.5 year old to walk a mile without complaining once is to just give them 2 kid friendly cameras. These kids wanted to take a picture of everything. 

Taking a picture of a patterned wall on our walk

Walking through St Katharine's Docks we came across some awesome art work along the walkway and had fun being tourists and took a few pictures with them. 

Hannah making one of her silly faces

The weather was absolutely wonderful for the walk. Sunny and breezy. We walked across the bridge both ways and enjoyed some beautiful scenery on the Thames River. 

Looking at the river

We skipped going inside the Tower of London but did walk around the outside and read some of historical facts to Kian who seemed to have a thousand questions after each section. Some of which we did not know the answers to :( 

Kian especially found the stories of beheadings to be particularly disturbing.

Kian definitely does not want to be beheaded

We headed back home and on the way bought some fruit and a few other grocery items. It is not hard to eat meals at home on a trip. You just need to do a bit of planning. 

Dinner plates for the little ones :) we had a similar meal. 

After dinner we headed out again and had a blast seeing the famous Big Ben (which the kids know since Peter Pan flies to it with Wendy, John, and Michael and in Cars 2 they call it Big Bently). 

Big Ben

Then we walked over to Westminster Abbey. We had great timing as the sun was just starting to set and Big Ben looked very golden. 

Westminster Abbey

That wrapped it up for us for the day. 

Day 2 - Arriving in London

Another amazing flight with Icelandair. Despite the 2.5 hour flight they still provided free food for the little ones and a smaller entertainment pack. They even provided mini ipads, which had movies and games, for free to any passenger that wanted one.

Going through passport control took a while although we had a great conversation with the officer who called us "brave". Deep down I think he was convinced we are crazy. 

Much to our dismay we had to take a cab to the apartment as we were running a bit late and had to retrieve the key at 10. The kids had a blast in the cab and we made it shortly after 10.  

Our cozy apartment in Wapping

The apartment is lovely and perfect for our family. It is clean has a great kitchen and enough places for all of us to sleep comfortably. 

So much so that we were all asleep until almost 11am! 

We walked to a close by supermarket and bought a few things and headed back home and ate "brunch". 

Eating Weetabix Weetos - Chocolatey Hoops

The kids have already made themselves very much at home.

Batman and Wonder Woman coloring

We will head out to explore our neighborhood in a bit.  

Day 1 - Iceland

The adventure began with a flight from JFK to Keflevik with Icelandair. 

We were able to enjoy some awesome views from the air...

It is worth mentioning that Icelandair is a great airline to fly with especially if you have children. They gave each child a little explorer pack which included a blanket, headphones, a small sticker/coloring book, and color pencils. Additionally each child received a meal (pizza and orange juice with a box of raisins). All free of charge. 

Hannah named all the cutout characters.  From top left to bottom right: Hannah, Kian, Birdie, <no name>, Boney (Kian's stuffed dog), Snowflake (Hannah's stuffed cat), Monster.

Upon landing and after going through passport control, we met up with the shuttle driver (free 24 hour shuttle) from Bed and Breakfast Keflevik Airport. The drive was nice and quick and the room was perfect for our family.  Even though it was past midnight, the sun was just "setting", but even then the sky was bright enough to see and we got some nice views of the city and ocean.

Midnight in Iceland during the summer

Hotel room in the bed and breakfast.  Since it was midnight and everything was closed, dinner consisted of milk, popcorn, an apple, some sandwiches which we shared with the kids, and Doritos

We also ate a good continental style breakfast in the morning. The shuttle brought us back to the airport at 12. 

The weather in Iceland is cold, windy, and rainy. I asked our shuttle driver if it is ever warm in Iceland. He responded, "last year we had about 8 nice days".  

The airport has a small play area for the kids which seems to be very entertaining. 

The kids played in this play area for over an hour, until a little boy started pushing Hannah and she got very upset

Next up...London! 

Counting Down...

3 Days!