London Calling

After Garrett's Easter illness Jon and I considered canceling our upcoming trip to London, but in the end we decided to go.   When we left Garrett seemed to be back to normal. Next time I think we will be more likely to trust our instincts.  On Tuesday of last week we headed off for a 4 day trip to London.

The trip started off okay, we flew into Stansted Airport and we had hired a private transfer for the 6 of us, Nannie came too.  The van ride into the city was nice, despite the traffic.

Our driver took us through the scenic route, Trafalgar Square.

Riding by the River Thames,

I am so thankful now for this mini tour of London, it was almost all of London that I got to see.

The Palace.

As we got closer to our hotel we started seeing a lot of nice cars.  We drove by a Lamborghini dealership just before we got to our hotel.

Some of the names I didn't even recognize because I had never seen them before.

Getting settled into our hotel, there may or may not be another post about the hotel.  We had a few major issues, paint peeling off the walls, no hot water for 2 days, but they were able to get us new rooms and fix most of the problems.  

Heading out to dinner.

The kids eating their ice cream after our first dinner in London.  This was the last really nice moment we had as a whole family, it was Tuesday night.  Ben, Addie, and I all ended up sick the next day.

The next picture I took wasn't until Thursday evening when Nannie, Ben and I made it out to see Big Ben.

We have been talking about Ben seeing Big Ben and he was really excited.  Unfortunately Addie was already sick at this point and not able to leave the room.

Nannie in front of an Undergound sign.

I loved that they had this painted at a lot of the cross walks reminding people which way to look before crossing the road.

It was freezing the night we went out, but the window boxes were still out and beautiful.  

Unfortunately that is all I really got to see of London.  On Friday morning Addison woke up still quite sick.  She had not been able to deep anything at all down for 36 hours at that point.  We were getting very worried about her getting too dehydrated so I called a taxi and took her to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.  The hospital was less than a mile from our hotel and they had a separate ER just for pediatrics.  Addie was seen very quickly and it was decided that she was dehydrated and they got an IV started to get some fluids in her.  The doctors and nurses were very sweet to her and made getting the IV as easy as possible.  Addie was so sick at this point that she was ready for anything that would help her feel better.   

This is the picture I took of Addie once the IV was in. 

After this they told me that we would be heading upstairs to a room.  I will admit I was surprised. 

 I thought they would give her some fluids and we would head home, I did not realize they would be admitting her.  We were moved to a private room in the children's wing where we spent the rest of the day.  They kept Addie on fluids all day and you could see her perk up as the day went on.  She was able to start sipping some water and she kept that down so I knew we were headed in the right direction.  We finally left the hospital at 11 PM and headed back to our hotel, only to turn around and get up at 4 AM with the rest of the family and head to the airport.  Our flight headed home right on time and we were back in our house by lunch time.  Thankfully everyone is healthy now and hoping to stay that way for a while.  

Nannie managed to avoid all of the sickness, even as she took care of all of us as we got sick in turn.  

Everyone home and on the mend.

This will go down for us as our worst vacation to date.  We did learn some valuable lessons from this trip and we are looking forward to going back to London one day.  At this point we are looking forward to staying close to home for a while.