It was a rare bright and sunny day on Monday and we wanted to take advantage of the beautiful weather.  We landed on Hampstead Heath. And it was glorious.  But, it was quite the morning leading up to it.  Rusty and I went to yoga and then stopped a Lidls on the way home to get baguettes for lunch and Kinder Surprise eggs for the kids.  We’ve decided to bribe them with Kinder Surprise Eggs to get up in the mornings and to walk many miles a day 🙂  So far it’s working.  Lidls was such a great find.  It’s a discount grocery store filled with great stuff.  And they bake fresh bread and croissants on site.  It’s all delicious!  
Halle is going to start a new fashion trend with her Kinder Eggs 🙂

We got swimsuits on, lunch packed and we were ready to walk out the door when Blake got mad about something and stormed off in a fury.  He went into my bedroom and slammed the door.  Well….he slammed it pretty hard and he broke the handle.  He and I both tried in vain to get the door to open.  Rusty had just left for work and I quickly called him to come back.  He rushed back but he couldn’t get it unstuck either.  We tried a credit card and we tried to unscrew the handle.  Finally we called Anton, our landlord.  Her came over and tried a bunch of things to no avail.  Finally, he resorted to brute strength.  Blake hid under the bed and Anton rammed through the door with his shoulder.  At last, Blake was free!

Now we could be on our way.  We took the Overground to Hampstead Heath.  It has got to be one of the prettiest parks I’ve ever seen.  So many beautiful trees, ponds and greenery!  We love that all the dogs in London are off leash and so obedient.  We loved watching them swim in the ponds and a few of them tried to share our lunch!

We picnicked on Parliament Hill with beautiful, sweeping views of London.  I could have stayed there all day.  We had our fresh baguettes, salami and cheese, and our new London favorite, Black Currant juice.  And our other London favorite, Digestives. I swear we eat like 2 packs a day. 

Then we were off to the  frigid waters of the Mixed Bathing Ponds. A warm day in London is still a pretty cool day in Colorado, so it took some coaxing to get the kids into the pond.  After his little swim test Josh got brave and jumped in.  The water was cold enough to take your breath away, but we got used to it after a few minutes.  

After we were frozen in the water we dried off in the sun and then went searching for a treat on Hampstead High Street.  We found this adorable red telephone booth selling milkshakes and we had to give them a try.  They were so gross!  It was warm, frothy milk with some flavored powder added in.  No one would take more than a couple sips.  FAIL.

We then took an Uber to Golders Hill Park to check out the free little “zoo” and see the butterfly gardens.  This park was also beautiful!  Hampstead Heath was a little more rustic and this a little more manicured.  Google maps was not totally cooperating so we had a bit of a hard time finding the butterfly house.  But we finally did about 10 min before closing.  It was super small, but cute.  We then looked at the animals and went to the deer inclosure.  We played at the playground and climbed a fun tree.  I wanted to stay longer but the kids were beat.  We walked to the underground station and made our way home.  We made an easy dinner of Tortellini and the kids played screens while Rusty and I went for a walk.  We really scored with this neighborhood.  It is awesome and has everything you could ever need!