We’re getting settled into the English part of the trip – riding the tube, eating fish and chips (Sam), drinking pints (J and I) and looking for traffic on the left when we cross the street (all of us). We’re all getting acclimated to the accents and languages around us all of the time, as well as the personal control that we need to get around in such a busy city. Clare can’t dance down the middle of the tube car and Sam can’t just leap on everything he sees (though they both try). But we’re out and about everyday. Here’s a rundown of our first few days in England.

On Day 2 we headed to the Natural History Museum. I’d heard that they had skeletons of dinosaurs and of a blue whale that I thought would be fun. The museum was cool… in a dusty sort of way. There were lots of taxidermied animals that probably would be cool if we hadn’t seen the real things in zoos or on TV. But there were some interesting parts about it. The dinosaur skeletons didn’t impress, but the animatronic Tyranisaurus Rex was pretty cool.

Hey look! It’s a blue whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling! It did actually show how huge a blue whale actually is.

But the best parts were the earth science section and the butterfly exhibit. We got to the earth science section with the coolest escalator that went into a giant red planet (pictured above). We also really liked the volcano and earthquake section with an earthquake simulation of the Kobe earthquake. And we finished in the tropical world of butterflies.

We finished our day with a bus ride to another playground. Our daily playground visits are essential for two kids who are used to having a lot of freedom and room to roam. I generally sit back and let them run, climb and shout to their heart’s content. I figure it’s fair since most of the day they have to stand still, keep their hands to themselves and use inside voices. My favorite part of this day was when Clare and Sam were playing with another brother and sister on the zip line and the climbing structure. When we left Clare told me “they didn’t speak English, but we figured it out. They were fun to play with.”

On our third day in England, we decided to leave London for a bit. We hopped a train to Warwick to explore the Warwick Castle.

The castle is quite the tourist destination and is owned and run by the same company that runs LegoLand and Madame Taussads. It was a bit more glitz than authenticity, but it was very family-friendly and accessible to the kiddos.

And it had ice cream. So that was good.

We saw a trebuchet fire, show arrows, fawned over princesses and watched falconry. We got home after 10 pm that night after a long day filled with 20,000 steps, memories, laughter, and some glitzed-up history.