We woke up early again, made some quick breakfast & cleaned out the apartment. We ate all the food we had in the fridge & then packed up our suitcases & backpacks until they were so full they were bulging. I got online & found a place near Bank station that you could pay to store your luggage for a day so I reserved the day for our 7 pieces of luggage. We wandered around the Bank area for about 15 minutes trying to find the storage place & it turned out to be a phone shop. I laughed when we finally found it. We took pictures of our luggage & the man opened up a door in the floor & proceeded to take our luggage downstairs for safe keeping. He let us know that the store would be closing at 8:00 sharp so we knew what time we needed to be back.
We walked back to the tube (now that we were super familiar with the area after getting lost) & headed toward the British Museum. I had previously reserved a time slot for 10:20 am so we were rushed to get to the museum on time. We arrived at 10:30 only to find a line that wrapped all the way around the block from the entrance of the museum. We quickly learned that it really didn’t matter what time you reserved your entrance for, everybody gets in regardless of time slot so we waited in the line & made it inside the museum by 11.
The British Museum is amazing. Most people don’t realize that it’s completely free & you could spend hours exploring the many exhibits inside. The girls spent a lot of time in the ancient Greek & Roman areas. I was itching to make my way to the Ancient Egyptian exhibit. They have a lot of mummies & I couldn’t wait to see them all. It was amazing. They had more mummies in one area than any other museum I’ve visited. I loved all the canopic jars, artwork, & sarcophagus carvings. Everything was beautiful. After visiting Ancient Egypt, we took a quick trip to the top floor to see the Japan exhibit. I really liked the Samurai clothing & some of the beautiful artwork from Japan. Our time was short, so by 12:00, we made our way to the center of the museum to take a peek at the Rosetta Stone (which was a replica. . . the original is no longer on display) & the huge library in the museum. The girls also enjoyed seeing a real Easter Island statue which reminded us of one of our favorite movies: Night at the Museum.
After finishing up at the museum, we took the tube north so we could visit the famous Camden Market for lunch. This whole area was full of shopping & street shops. It had a California like vibe & felt like walking the streets of San Francisco. I was surprised. The market was located next to the river & had all sorts of fun food kiosks to choose from. Lorien got some fresh fettuccine alfredo made inside a wheel of cheese, & I got myself a beautiful acai smoothie bowl with lots of granola & fruit. We had been eating so much junk on this trip that it was refreshing to eat a bowl of fresh fruit. It was delicious. Jennica & Julia enjoyed Mediterranean gyros & Claire & Emily found some really interesting Asian food they had never tried before. Everything was delicious.
Once we were done at the market, we made our way to the Tower of London (on the opposite side of London). We bought tickets & had to be there before 3:00pm because it closed at 4:30. We got there right at 3 & were thrilled we made it in time. The Tower of London is a self guided tour, but it allows you to explore whatever areas interest you the most. The first thing we did was go see the Crown Jewels. It is really really fun to see the many crowns of the British Royal Family. They have them all lined up in a row behind glass & you get up close & see how amazing each & every jewel is in the crowns. We were a little sad because one of the queen’s crowns, & the BIG coronation crown for the current king/queen wasn’t there because they are both being cleaned for Camilla & King Charles for the upcoming coronation in May. That main coronation crown is gorgeous. I remember seeing it the last time I had visited the Tower of London, but I know it’s important to prepare for the new King’s coronation. After visiting the crown jewels we made our way through the many towers. There were some cute guards following us around & the girls were flirting with them & asking them questions along the way. They were flirting back. It was funny. We watched some of the guards on duty, & our new guard friends kept making their colleagues on duty laugh which is a big “no no” for them. The girls thought it was hilarious. Our last stop was the white tower where we got to see all the armor for previous kings dating back to the 1300’s, weapons, furniture, & even an executioner’s block where Ann Bolyn was beheaded. It was all very interesting to learn about. We loved our time here.
After the tower tour, we made our way to Spitalfiends Market for dinner. It was only 4:30, but we were surprised to find all of the shops closing up early. Everything was closed by 5pm. We hurriedly found a little Thai shop that was still making food & got some Pad Thai which was delicious, walked around a cute little decorating store, & then headed back toward the place we stored our luggage.
We picked up our luggage & decided to have some yummy dessert at Shake Shack just around the corner from the luggage storage & got some delicious frozen custard. Mine had pieces of salted caramel toffee & caramel syrup in it. It was heavenly. Lorien got a milkshake & loved it too. Then we made our way back to Liverpool station with all our luggage & backpacks in tow so we could board the Stansted Express back to the airport. We arrived around 9pm & checked into the adorable little hotel attached to the airport. I slept in the same room as the 3 girls & then Jennica & Emily shared a smaller room. We went to bed early so we could wake up at 4am so we could be at the airport by 5.
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