Holiday Monday

August 31st--The last day of August...wow! I can't believe that we are almost to September. It's hard to believe that we are planning the last couple of months before heading back to the States. It's also hard to believe that Abby is almost 6. Today, was her "first day of Kindergarten"...home school style. My mom had sent over the A Beka materials and so we started working on the material. Much of what we are doing now is actually a recap of what she already learned and covered in her mothers-day-out program before we left. While Abby and I were "schooling", Mike spent the morning planning out our future travel agenda. Today was a holiday in London so we took it slow this morning. We weren't sure what would be open or better yet what would be so crowded due to the holiday. So, we decided to visit St. Paul's Cathedral today. After lunch we headed out to the church. The church was fairly empty which was nice. This is the church that Prince Charles and Lady Diana got married in. We walked around the Cathedral floor before climbing the stairs into the dome. We made it to the Whispering Gallery which is 30 meters from the ground and 257 steps up. At this point, Abby didn't want to climb any further so she and I headed back down while Mike and Austin climbed the rest of the way up totalling 528 steps up. By the time they made it back down, they were thirsty. So, we went down in the Crypt to the cafe for some water and then walked around the Crypt area before exiting the church. We left the church a little after 4:00 and walked across the river via the Millennium Bridge. We were walking to a Christmas Shop that was located close to the London Bridge. We arrived at the store a little after 5:00. After looking at all the Christmas stuff, we managed to figure out which bus would take us to Victoria Station. We were meeting Angel and her boyfriend, Karim, for dinner at Nando's which was close to Victoria Station. We arrived at the restaurant right at 6:30 to meet for dinner. Nando's is home of legendary, Portuguese flame-grilled, PERI-PERI chicken. The restaurant was family style and self service. We all enjoyed some wonderful food of chicken, spicy rice, corn on the cob, french fries and cole slaw. The food and company were wonderful!