We are absolutely pinching ourselves! It is just unreal that we are taking our family back on another adventure in Lithuania! Kaleidoscope Pictures will be shooting another Christmas movie for BYUtv - Instrument of War. The story takes place in a German POW camp. However, it is too expensive to shoot in Germany and Utah doesn't look a thing like Germany, so the decision was made to go back to Lithuania where both problems are solved. And since we loved our time there so much last year, there was just no hesitation to come back.
So here we are at 8:30 in the morning, loaded up in an airport shuttle on our way to spend 2 days in London and then fly on to Lithuania. Of course, our whole family isn't in this picture. And that's because we aren't all going just yet. Since this is Tyson's senior year and he has graduation coming up, he could only miss 2 months of school. We will be gone 2 months and 3 weeks, so if you factor in the week of Spring break, he can only be gone 2 months and 1 week. So we made the decision to leave him behind and have him join us after finishing 2 more weeks of school. He wasn't nearly as sad to see us leave as we were to leave without him. But to make up for him not being with us, we brought Adam's sister, Sarah, along with us instead. This trip was the break she needed in her life right now and we are super excited to have her along with us!
Our flight to Philadelphia was a typical flight. We watched movies and endured the tight seating. However, our leg to London was a dream come true!
Here is the view from my seat to Jacob's seat. Yes, the flight was not very full and almost every passenger had their own row! We each took a sleeping pill and snuggled down into our row with blankets and pillows. Jacob struggled to sleep, but I know I got at least 3-4 hours straight. Unheard of! It sure made the flight feel like it went by pretty quickly.
However, that didn't necessarily make London easier. We still felt the pull of jet lag as we found our way onto the underground, minding the gap, of course, then dragging our suitcases to our hotel. Thankfully, they had a room open for us even though we were early, so we could drop off our bags and freshen up. We all so desperately wanted to lay down and sleep, but fought the temptation and headed back to the subway and the Tower of London.
Our hotel underground stop - Stamford Brook
Jet lag on the underground
I worked really hard in planning this trip to find a hotel near a subway line from the airport and into town so we could get around quickly and easily. We got on to hear the announcement that the line that was supposed to take us out to the Tower of London was closed for the weekend for maintenance work. Grrr. We ended having to do a little extra walking - about 3/4 mile to get there.
At least we got to walk across the London Bridge and get a great shot of Tower Bridge in the background. (Although, this shot shows that we haven't quite mastered the art of the selfie stick yet, as the bridge is almost not in the shot. Yes, I caved and got a selfie stick for this trip.)
We got an even better shot of Tower Bridge from the Tower of London.
An almost smile from jet lagged Jacob at the Tower.
The White Tower
Catching the Changing of the Guard
Since there was no close subway, we attempted a bus. We luckily found bus #15 that took us to Trafalgar Square, a place on our list of things to see.
I took this picture back in July when we were in London for the music recording of Winter Thaw, but I didn't take a picture this time. There was an India festival going on here in July.
This is one of my favorite Van Gogh's. My mom did a cross stitch of this back in the 70's and it hung in our house for years. Jacob was annoyed I made him look at the art, but since I am his home-school teacher now, I insisted he look at something educational while we were there. He also had to look at Seurat and Monet. Poor, picked on kid!
Back in July, we ate at an Indian restaurant that we really liked, so our next stop was the Covent Garden section of town and Punjabs. We loved the food, but probably would have enjoyed the meal more if we hadn't all been tempted to make a pillow out of the rice bowl to rest our jet lagged heads.
We were in luck finding a working subway line that got us back to our hotel. I bet we were all sound asleep by 8.
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