Amanda and Megan Do Europe Part 2- Day 2 in London

On Thursday July 27, 2017 Megan and I woke up after a much needed long night of sleep. For the duration of our trip if one of us was feeling lazy in the morning we'd proclaim while resting our head on the pillow "you be shower girl number one". After getting ready and enjoying the breakfast in our hotel, we made our way out to continue exploring London. We hopped on our tour bus near Trafalgar Square and headed to The British Museum. After waiting in line for awhile and going through security, we were in! There was so much to see! We saw lots of Greek statues, artifacts, mummies, dishes, paintings by Michelangelo and the actual Rosetta stone. There was even an exhibit about the pacific northwest United States and we were like "Those are our people!". After some coffee and ice cream we moved on to our next adventure.

We decided to take the tour bus to a "Jack The Ripper Walking Tour". The tour bus was totally cool, but when you're trying to get somewhere in a timely matter, it was not the most efficient way. The tour we wanted to go on started at 3:30, and at the rate our bus was going and the round-a-bout route it took we'd never make it in time. We hopped off the bus and decided to take the tube. After a quick ride we made it with time to spare, enough time to get a hot dog (you can take the girl out of America, but you can't take the hot dog out of the girl...???). Our walking tour was lots of fun even though it rained like crazy for part of it. Our guide was really knowledgeable, and we learned a lot about London's history. We went to the site where 3 of Jack the Ripper's murder's took place, and learned some theories about who he was (he was never caught).

After the tour we got back on the tube and headed to London's West End to watch a musical. After a pizza dinner we went to the Prince of Wales Theatre to watch "The Book of Mormon". It was so good! After the show we debated going to a club or bar but ended up just walking around for awhile and walked all the way back to our hotel, in the dark, through a scary park... which probably wasn't the safest thing to do in an unfamiliar city, but we lived to tell the tale. Back at our hotel we were starving and ordered the most delicious appetizer platter. It had cheese, chutney, pears, shepherds pie, some kind of soft meat stuff, and bread. After that we got ready for bed and randomly watched Bridget Jones's Diary as we fell asleep.

Amanda and Megan Do Europe Part 1-Flight and Day 1 in London

My sister Megan and I had been talking about doing a backpacking trip through Europe since we were practically in diapers. We had hoped to do it while we were in college, but I kept popping out kids. The years were passing and I wondered if we'd ever get around to it. Finally we decided to go for it during summer 2017, why the heck not?! Waiting until we were in our late 20s allowed us to be more financially stable and be able to stay in hotels and instead of hostels and enjoy a few more of the finer things, such as the lounge at Seatac where we began our journey. I had always wanted to try out one of the fancy airport lounges that offered unlimited food and drinks. I got to Seatac from Spokane at about 2pm and our flight to London didn't leave until 7. I bought a $45 lounge day pass and put my feet up and took full advantage of the all you can eat food and drinks. Megan joined me at about 4 o'clock and we had a great time sipping champagne and excitingly waiting to get on my first international flight.

When it was time to board we anxiously waited our turn and got on and found our seats. I was so excited about every little thing on the plane. Our seats had blankets, pillows, and earbuds on them and you would have though I won the lottery by how excited I was about that. We took off without any issues and were on our way! The service was comparable to some 1st class flights I've been on. We were served a huge dinner with complimentary wine and had screens in our seats to watch new release movies and play games. After we ate Megan and I tried to sleep a little bit for the 9.5 hour flight. I think I managed to get about 5 hours, which is pretty good for me as I usually have a really hard time sleeping on planes. When we woke up they were serving a traditional English breakfast with scones and tea and pretty soon it was time to land in London!

After landing we made our way through London Heathrow airport and through customs. We figured out their subway system and hopped on the tube towards our hotel. It was about 12:30 pm London time when we landed and we made it to our hotel around 3, just in time for check in. We stayed at "Hub by Premier Inn" near Westminster Abbey and St. James Park. We did a lot of research in choosing all our hotels. The most important factor was "hote loke" aka hotel location. We wanted to be near the center of town and most of the popular attractions and we definitely chose wisely in London. We were within walking distance of Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, The London Eye, Trafalgar Square, and Buckingham Palace; and also right across from a metro station that could take us anywhere. The hotel had free breakfast, snacks, and coffee, and a cool lounge with a good happy hour and friendly staff. The rooms were modern and pretty cool. The only downside of the hotel, which didn't bother us, was the room was small and didn't have a window. We got to our room, put our bags down and thought about taking a nap... but we were too excited! We freshened up, drank some coffee, and set out to explore!

Our first stop was Buckingham Palace. We walked there and found it easily. We took pictures of the guards with the cool hats and admired the huge statues and gardens near the palace. Our next plan was to get on The Original Tour bus. It's a cool double-decker bus that has different routes that take you around London's attractions. You can get off and on at whatever spots you want and tour at your own pace. Our only problem was we couldn't find the bus stop. After some walking in circles we eventually found it (the map provided by the company was NOT to scale or in the correct orientation, not that I'm blaming anyone...) Once on the bus, we plugged in our earbuds and listened to some history and information as we drove by Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the London Eye, and crossed London bridge. We got off the bus near the bridge and decided to take a cruise down the Thames.

We grabbed a London pride beer and a bag of chips each and listened to the guide as we cruised down the river. The bank of the river is lined with lion head statues that indicate flood levels in London. Our funny tour guide stated the rhyme "When the lions drink, London will sink. When it's up to their manes, we'll go down the drains. When the water is sucked, you can be sure London is... in trouble". The relaxing boat ride ended near Big Ben and we got off and walked back towards our hotel. We walked by a traditional English phone booth (photo op!) and a statue of Abe Lincoln ("that's our guy!"). We also walked by this giant sanded area called Horse Guards Parade, that I'm still not really sure what it's used for, but it looked cool. We walked through Trafalgar Square (also know to us as truffleupagus square, ttutankhamun square, tootie-fruitie square, tuna noodle casserole square, etc...) We ended the evening having a pint of peroni and a plate of fish and chips at the pub right by our hotel. We called it a night at about 9:30 pm and had a great night's sleep in our hotel

Mama and William do Texas

When I was on leave​ for my surrogate pregnancy and contemplating whether I wanted to go back to work or not I had asked the kids “Do you really want to travel a lot?” And their answer was always a resounding “Yes!!!” I asked William where he wanted to go and he'd say “I really want to go to Texas so I can say “howdy y'all, I ain't from Texas, I'm from Spokane!” (In an unconvincing southern accent) I'm happy to say that William and I made that ridiculous dream come true and went to Dallas, Texas y'all!

This was definitely a spur of the moment trip. I worked Friday morning and got off at about 9:30 am. It was my Friday and the calendar’s Friday so I had the whole day and weekend in front of me. The kids had a special lunch thing at their school so I got ready for that. As I was blow drying my hair I started looking at flights just for fun like I always love to do. I saw some San Diego flights looked pretty open and some Virgin flights to LA looked good. I looked at my calendar and literally had nothing on it so I thought, why the heck not? I picked William up from his advanced program school to take him to his regular school for the special lunch and ran the idea of going on a trip by him. "Yeah sure, whatever" was his response. As we were eating lunch with Maddie and Daddy at school I looked at more flights. There were a bunch of flights out of Seattle at 5 pm but in order to make it to Seattle we would have to leave the Spokane airport at 1:30. "I don't think it's gonna work buddy" I told William "If we want to make it anywhere we would literally have to leave right now." "Then you better get going" my hubs encouraged me. With a shrug William and I cleaned up our lunch and rushed to the airport with nothing but my purse and thankfully a breast pump (don't get me started on that... yes the jugs are still flowing). They were starting to board as we got to the gate and we were assigned a row to ourselves in the back of the plane.

We made it to Seatac without any issues and looked at the info for our next flight, which I remembered I hadn't even listed for yet. For some reason California didn't seem that exciting to William or me anymore since we've both been there multiple times. I remembered William's random urge to go to Texas and we decided to go there instead. While we waited for our flight we collectively had a slice of apple pie, a whopper jr, a strawberry lemonade, and a glass of pinot grigio.

We got our seats on a Dallas flight (woohoo!) and got on the plane with a whole row to ourselves. When some people hear about these short trips I like to do they say "Oh it's not even worth it to fly all the way there for such a short time". But me and my big kids legit love flying. We love sitting there with our snack box, tablet/smartphone, and wine/juice and relaxing and watching a movie or reading a book. The flight itself is always part of the adventure.(and it's literally the only place I watch new movies now... Alaska offers movies for free on your own device)

With the time change we landed in Dallas super late, almost midnight. I had booked a hotwire hotel right before we took off. With hotwire you don't know exactly what hotel you'll get but you know the area and how many stars and the price. We got The Hilton in Grapevine, TX less than 10 minutes from the airport. We took an Uber there and checked into the gorgeous hotel with two queen beds. William and I both slept so great.

When I woke up in the morning at 7 am I began googling "attractions near me" because I had literally no idea what we were going to do all day. I saw that we were really close to a mall with an aquarium and close to historical downtown grapevine, which both looked fun and interesting. We took our time getting ready and got some toothbrushes and deodorant from the front desk (since we literally packed nothing). We put on the same clothes we wore the day before and set out for the day. We had a quick lunch in the hotel coffee shop and followed google's directions to the mall that was about 15 minutes away.

Once we got to the mall the first thing on William's agenda was to find a cowboy hat (since we were in Texas.. duh!) After a few stores we found one that he liked and I liked the price. We went to a few other stores and bought a couple more random things like a backpack for William, some random shoes for me, and some snacks. We found the aquarium and started our tour. It was a great aquarium and we saw lots of fish, sharks,an octopus, starfish, and other sea life. William was probably one of the oldest kids there. I love that he's old enough to be a fun travel buddy but young enough to enjoy the kid stuff.He also enjoyed playing in a play-place they had that he was technically an inch too tall for but we are rebels.

After we had seen all the exhibits and William filled out his little passport of the sea and got his prize (a plastic gold medal) we made our way to the food court for some lunch. We shared a plate of chicken teriyaki with noodles and William had a milkshake.

William wanted to ride a little carousel in the mall and then we found an arcade. We played a competitive round of ski-ball (William beat me and I did not even let him) and played a Mario Olympics game where Princess Peach(me) beat Mario (William) by a hair. We decided to make our way to historical downtown Grapevine and called an Uber.

The visitors center in Grapevine, Texas was one of the coolest visitors center I have ever seen. They had this amazing model of a train and city and a bunch of fun stuff for kids to do in a museum like setting, all for free. We could have spent awhile there... but true to our travel style we did a substantial walk-through and moved on.

Right by the visitors center there were a group of FOUR little museums/historical buildings. For just randomly picking a place to visit, we hit the cultural jackpot. The history buff in me was so excited. The first was housed in an old barn that was turned into a traditional museum where we learned about the history of Grapevine and it's beginnings as a small farm town. The second was an old schoolhouse set up like a school with original artifacts where we learned about education in the 1800s. The third building talked about the town's main crop of cotton and their farming methods. The fourth building was an old house where we saw artifacts from some of the towns earliest settlers. This whole museum quartet was entirely free.

After we got our fill of history (I could have stayed there all day and read everything... William had had enough) we walked down the main drag. There were so many cute shops and restaurants. We went to a cute market and enjoyed some Texas tea and doctor pepper. We shopped around in the shops and William got a Texas license-plate key chain for his teacher. We were starting to get a little hungry again so we stopped and had gelato in an Italian restaurant. They had a craft fair going on and we wondered the booths looking at all the beautiful handmade crafts made by the locals. A poop emoji pencil caught William's eye and he got it for his sister. The woman who sold it said "I spend hours knitting these hats and stuffed animals and my most popular item is a poop pencil" haha! We saw a historic log cabin that housed some of the town's earliest inhabitants. After a little more walking and shopping we were ready for some dinner. We found a cute little saloon/winery type of restaurant. One of my favorite things to do when traveling is to go wine tasting and I can't exactly walk into a bar or winery with William, but this restaurant had an extensive wine list and I got to try two different kinds and had the best fruit and cheese platter that I have ever had in my life. William had spaghetti and meatballs.

After we had our fill of wine, cheese, and meatballs it was about time to head to the airport. We ordered an uber and made our way there. I gave us plenty of time in case there were long security lines but there was no one in line. We had about an hour to relax by the time we made it to our gate, which was nice after being on the go all day. Eventually I looked out the window and saw the familiar old Eskimo rolling into the gate. They assigned us seats as the plane was almost done boarding and we got another row to ourselves for the journey home. We landed early in Seattle and we even managed to make it on an earlier flight home to Spokane (with a little sprinting through the airport which is always fun). I was so relieved that every part of this impromptu trip to Texas worked out. I love being able to show my babes different parts of the country!