Book Tours and Palaces - Exploring London Day 1

While searching for materials for our Mommy Arts School I discovered the author James Mayhew.  Sadly I've only seen a few of his books in U.S.A. but his books are treasures and worth the price of shipping!  One of our favorites series by him is the Katie books.  Most of the books in the series is about Katie going to museums and climbing into famous paintings, but some of the other books are about Katie visiting cities and "Katie in London" is probably our most read and the reason my little dynamic duo have been begging to go to London.

So today we began a book tour inspired by Katie's adventure.

Our first stop was Trafalgar Square where Katie and her brother Jack climb on the lion while their Grandma takes a nap on a bench.  The the lion comes to life and takes the kids on a site seeing adventure.

Due to time and the spacing of these sites we are not going to be able to do them all in order or in one day but hopefully we will hit them all at some point.

Our next stop was Buckingham Palace, we didn't make it in time to see the Changing of the Guard but we did see a few guardsmen.

This is where the Katie tour had to end for the day because their Daddy wanted to finish the tour and had to go to work.  We decided to head back to Kensington Palace to see the exhibits.  

We were looking forward to the fashion exhibit where we were going to see gowns worn by Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margret and Princess Diana but exhibit on Queen Victoria took the cake!  

Oh if walls could talk... We were able to explore rooms from her childhood home and throughout this palace you found many of her writings on carpets, mirrors and even this little sofa.  Mostly they were words that she had written to Prince Albert the girls were just as excited to read these  as they were to see her gowns.  You could honestly feel how much she loved him.

One room held her childhood toys

Look at that dollhouse, even my girls wanted to play with it!

We found her dancing shoes.

Going up the Grand Staircase to King George's Gallery

Upon seeing the Gallery they began dancing saying "This must be where they held the balls."

But a guard sat there with the girls, telling them that this was King George's private room and only he could come in here and maybe one of his friends if they were invited, the girls asked if his wife could go in the room and he said not even his wife. 

Maybe this wasn't the type of artistic adventure we usually have but by roaming the halls and exploring history we see art everywhere and with these adventures we are painting the backdrops for our imaginations to soar.