Over the next few months, we slowly connected with all of the people we wanted to see while we were traveling, and we started working out the details for the 11 days we would have between leaving home and boarding the cruise ship in Harwich, England on Saturday, August 31st. Everyone kept asking me who organized the trip and what company we used... um... I organized the trip. All 7 flights with boats, metros, buses, and trains in between. If you know me at all, you know that I thoroughly enjoyed every part of the planning process. Maybe I should be a travel agent.
The trip seemed like a dream in our very distant future and didn't register as reality at all until Tara dropped us off at the airport. It just snuck up on us! I couldn't believe we were on our way, with passports in hand, and wouldn't be returning until a month later.
Flying through the night is never my favorite thing but we entertained ourselves with movies. Lots of movies. Steven kept making fun of me because I wanted to watch the same thing at the same time on our little personal screens. We watched a couple of movies together, including Argo, but then he started watching some awful film with Jim Carrey and Steve Carell and I gave up about 15 minutes into it.
After a quick stop in Iceland, we boarded another plane and less than two hours later, we were in London.
I. Love. London. And I particularly like Victoria Station because it is one of the first areas of London that I ever became familiar with. It definitely has a homey feeling for me and we couldn't have been happier to be there. London is the one place we actually feel comfortable and confident getting around on our own, so, like the expert Londoners that we are, we grabbed our Oysters cards and boarded the Tube to Bayswater where we alighted and walked a few blocks to our Notting Hill Hotel.
The moment we glimpsed our tiny hotel room (city life!) we dropped our bags and made a B line for the pub. Thank God for British fish and chips! And malt vinegar. And hard cider.
Notting Hill is a really cute area and we were so happy to be outside and enjoying our second favorite city (Seattle is first, of course) that we decided to just take our time walking around the neighborhood.
Hilarious.
Earlier in the summer I contacted the family that I used to live with in Virginia Water (when I was an au pair 4 years ago) to let them know that I would be in town. The dad and his wife are currently living in Zurich -- Steven and I were so bummed that we couldn't fit Zurich into our travel plans! -- but the girls are living with their mom in Kew, just outside of London. Lauren seemed really glad to hear that we would be visiting and said she would meet us in Notting Hill for coffee. I was so exited!! I can't believe how grown up she is. She came walking up to our hotel gorgeously tan, in this posh little white outfit. Not the same girl I used to make dinner for and watch Friends with a few years back! She's going to University this year!! We had a lovely time talking with her and I sincerely hope that she comes to visit us sometime. I hope we always stay in touch to some extent. She's such a sweetheart.
We did not adjust to the time change very well, which was a bit of a surprise to me since I usually don't have much of a problem with it. It's all my husband's fault for falling asleep at 7pm on our first night there (of course, he would tell you it was my fault for leaving him alone for 5 minutes while I insisted on taking a shower -- I should have dragged him out of bed). My least favorite part (slash, the funniest part) was when I heard him roll over in the middle of the night and say, "What time is it?" "12:15" I responded. "Aw, man. I was really hoping I'd sleep longer than that..." said my dear sweet husband, "Well, hopefully you will," suggested his less sweet wife. "Oh, I don't think so..." Oh dear. We ended up watching late night/early morning British TV (freaking hilarious! Loved the Buzzcocks show) from 1am until 5:30am, and just when I could see the sky brightening and felt like it would be okay if we got up and found a coffee shop, we both fell back to sleep. When we woke up at 11:00am I kind of freaked out because I couldn't believe that we were sleeping away our one full day in London. We were out the door and sitting at the pub within 30 minutes. Good thing we slept until lunch time so we could justify some more fried fish.
Once I got over the unexpected lie-in and calmed down a bit, I melted into a state of pure bliss. I was enjoying a gorgeous sunny day sitting outside of a pub in London with my incredible husband on our third wedding anniversary! Eeeeee! Am I the luckiest ever, or what?!?! It was the best.
I made a reservation for us to have afternoon tea at the W Hotel as an anniversary treat. The last time we were in London we had tea at two different hotels and it was one of our favorite things to do together. And, oh my gosh is the W Hotel ever gorgeous! I hope that one day, maybe for a big anniversary down the road, we can stay in a nice hotel like that right in the middle of London for a few days.
This tea menu had a rock'n'roll theme, I'm guessing because that's the theme of the hotel. Most of the food was tasty, but there was certainly a lot of it, as always. We made sure to at least have a bite of everything. Steven's tea was amazing! Grapefruit vanilla by Harney & Sons. I need to get on Amazon and order some.
Before going into the hotel we noticed this little gem down the street...
M & Ms World, London style. Four floors of M & Ms candy and merchandise and general silliness.
I think we enjoyed the portraits the most but there were some really fun t-shirts too. We didn't buy any though.
And look who we found in London. I believe Erica is on her way back to the States this week as she just finished up her masters program at the end of last month. We got to see Erica a few different times on this trip and she was kind enough to let us drop off our gigantic luggage at her flat so that we didn't have to lug it all over Europe. Erica was living near to Regents Park so we spent the afternoon walking through the park and catching up with one another.
My husband climbing in the public art.
So cute.
Some cool spiral stairs in the cafe building in the middle of the park.
Panoramic photo from the top of Primrose Hill. The weather was gorgeous!
Erica is such a city girl! She fits right in and it was fun to see where she lives and hear all about what she's been up to this past year.
To finish off the best anniversary we've had yet, we saw We Will Rock You at the Dominion. It was awesome! We LOVE Queen and this is the show that initially got me into Queen when I saw it by myself one evening in London back in 2009. It has the most ridiculous plot line but, of course, the music is phenomenal and we laughed a lot. What a great way to end the evening! We snagged some fish & chips on the way back to the hotel :)
Day 2 in London: we found the fire station. Well, one of them anyway. Steven brought a few Enumclaw FD t-shirts with him so that he could do shirt trades with firefighters in the countries we visited. He is now the proud own of a London Fire Brigade t-shirt. He got to visit with one of the firefighters for quite a while. He showed Steven the truck and all of the tools. It was interesting to listen to/watch.
We walked back to our hotel from Kensington High Street. It was beginning to rain but it was still warm and it was a lovely walk back through Kensington Gardens to Notting Hill.
We had lunch with Erica that afternoon and then spent the rest of the day seeing as much of London as we could before catching our 8 o'clock plane to Oslo. The only thing that was really important to us was that we got to walk along the river and see the Parliament buildings. We just love the view. And the clouds made for some really nice photos too.
Pigeon photo bomb. Turned out pretty awesome, actually.
Puddle reflection.
Best. View. Ever. Handsome husband with the Parliament Buildings.
I want this on my wall.
We knew the instant we arrived in London that we weren't going to have enough time there and as we were leaving, I just kept thinking how I couldn't believe that we hadn't planned more time to stay there. But, this wasn't a London trip, it was a see-as-many-people-and-places-as-we-can trip and if we had stayed longer in London, we would have missed out on something else.
Did I say that I was breaking this up into one post per place to keep the posts short? That obviously wasn't true. Not true at all. I guess I broke them up so that I wouldn't have to keep them short and so that I could include as many photos from each place as I wanted to. Iceland is going to be the worst... I think we took a good 600 photos there in just two short days. Oh well. We'll deal with that when we get there.
Norway, here we come!
