London and Scotland: Part 1

Our trip to London/Scotland was upwards of 2 months ago. So I'm not sure what I was waiting on in getting this post up. I think life got in the way. When we arrived home from London after travelling for too long we came home to a house with no air (for the 2nd time) and woke up the next morning to a sick child. Olivia and I both got the flu, I started a new job and now it is almost October. Here we go....

If you know me at all you know that I take tons of pictures of everything I do. And that number has quadrupled when it comes to Olivia. Therefore, tons of pics from the trip. Which means that you will get to see several posts from this trip. And b/c I simply don't have the patience to upload all the pics I want to in one sitting.

It all started when the US Airways flight went down in the Hudson. It was a tragic thing and thank goodness no one was hurt. But something for you to know is that when tragic things like that happen....airlines put tickets on a major sale. It's sick I know. But we took advantage of it and bought cheap tickets before Olivia was even born. And seeing at the time we didn't know that Olivia would have such a great personality and be a good traveler I made Shawn buy insurance on them in case we had to cancel. Our trip was a success and we really had such a great time.

We chose London b/c we had both been there several times and were pretty familiar with it and wanted a place like that since we were travelling abroad with the baby for the first time. But still had things we wanted to do and see there.

Many people looked at us like we belonged at the crazy farm for flying that long with a baby voluntarily. But we agreed when getting pregnant that we wanted to keep travelling and wanted our kids to be cultured and get to see and do as much as possible. And I knew that unless she went through a complete personality change she would be fine flying. And she was.

We stayed in Nashville the night before so we would have to add any additional travel time on that day and it was great. We played all morning and didn't have to allow 2 hours driving time to the airport. Nville to Charlotte she slept and then we got on the big bird to London Gatwick. The flight was overnight and she probably slept 6 of the 7.5 hours. Now this was not a deep sleep and she would wake up fairly often and fuss for a second and go back to sleep. We switched off holding her and didn't get to eat much or pee....but it was almost ideal. When we landed the lady sitting right across from us said (in a great English accent)..."You're a designer baby really. My boys screamed through all flights." I assume designer baby is good:)

We arrived, cleared customs, and walked straight to our hotel, the Hilton Gatwick. Some pics are below and more later!!!

Before heading to the airport. Shawn was reading the paper and apparently someone else needed to know the headlines too.


One of the smartest things I did on the trip. I bought 2 twin sized $3 sheets at Walmart. I cut them each in half and had 4 "blankets" to take with us to put on floors. I threw them away after a day or two so we wouldn't have to reuse what had been on the airport floors. This let her crawl around w/o me worrying about germs and took up hardly any space in the suitcase!!!


We have arrived, took a nap, took shower, and are ready to hit the ground running!


I thought this was a cool pic. We were at Harrod's and the sky was very cool against the building.


The famous red telephone booths. I ALWAYS have my pic made in front of these! The irony is that they are always disgusting inside and always have inappropriate pics people have put in them.

Day 2 I think? We are strapping her in for the walk to the train. I cannot even explain what a good traveler she was.

We really tried to go to areas we had never been and this pic is in Notting Hill. I had always wanted to go and it was great! They have a famous Portabella Road flea market and it was really cool. Interesting stuff and a great atmosphere. This was a beautiful area of London and I wouldn't mind staying there next time.

Gotta love public restrooms! The cool thing about this is that when someone finishes and leaves water shoots out from everywhere and disinfects it. It was probably one of the cleanest public restrooms I've ever been in. This is one of the many reasons I love Europe.


We are chilling in Kensington Gardens here. Isn't she precious???? We tried to find parks to take breaks in around feeding time. It gave me privacy and let her crawl around and gave us a good spot to change diapers. And it was actually nice to have a slower change of pace on trips than we normally do.

Family shot....Kensington again


So we have moved on from the gardens and are in front of Kensington Palace now. We didn't go in this time but my first visit to London we toured here and it is great. They were doing an amazing display of Princess Diana's dresses. I highly recommend going here! If you look close you can see that Olivia is asleep in her carrier on me. After the first day or so she got used to the fact that when it was nap time we would put her in the carrier facing in and she would go to sleep quickly. I was amazed that the loud noise of the city never bothered her. My scarves came in handy b/c I would use them to cover her!