London, England

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? This year is our 10-year wedding anniversary! To celebrate, Marshall and I planned a nine-day trip to Europe, just the two of us! Woo hoo! Marshall’s parents graciously offered to fly all the way from Florida to come hang out with Tyson and Wesley while we’re away. We are so grateful …Thank you so much!!

Marshall’s parents flew in to Seattle the evening before our flight out. Since they arrived around 11pm, they wanted to stay at a hotel near the airport so they wouldn’t wake us up. So thoughtful! Marshall picked them up the following morning and spent the day catching up and going over everything they’ll need to know while we’re gone. You know, like making sure they feed and water the kids. Haha! I worked the first half of the day and then came home to spend a couple hours with Marshall’s family before heading out that evening. It was great catching up after a year since we’d last seen them!

We said our good byes and were off to the airport! After getting through security in about five minutes, we looked at each other and realized we had gotten to the airport three hours before our flight! Ooops! That’s ok, it gave us plenty of time to have a nice relaxing dinner and talk about what we were most excited about for our trip.

As we arrived at our gate and pull out our tickets, we noticed we got stuck with two middle seats one behind the other on a 9-hour flight to London. Such a bummer! As we boarded, much to the embarrassment of Marshall, I asked the people sitting in our rows if they would switch seats so that we could sit together as we were celebrating our 10-year anniversary. They all said no or just ignored me. Jerks! Needless to say, I made sure to stretch out, take over both arm rests, and prop my feet up on the arm rests in front of me.

After the long nine hours with little to no sleep, we arrived at Heathrow airport around 1pm the next day their time (5am Seattle time). We walked over to the taxi pick up spot to ask how much a taxi to our hotel would cost. The price was completely outrageous ($100+)! We turned right back around into the airport to see if we could take the train instead which was a fraction of the price. Only one problem, the train we needed to take was closed due to repairs. Welp, back to the taxi station we go to pay that astronomical price to get to our hotel. A little annoying but it was fun to ride through the city in London’s famous taxi cabs. As soon as we got to our hotel, we dropped off our bags and were ready to explore the city!

We took an Uber to the town of Notting Hill which is known for its colorful architecture. It was Saturday and there was a huge street market taking place at the Portobello market. People were selling all sorts of random oddities including hand knit clothing, antiques, and creepy old string puppets. Marshall and I stopped for a minute to see where we were on our GPS and all of a sudden I feel a thump on my head like somebody had thrown a nut at me. What in the world? I looked all around for the culprit and then Marshall starts busting up laughing and points out the big glob of bird poop in my hair. It apparently hit me square on the head then ricocheted off and landed on Marshall’s shoulder. Just wonderful! There happened to be a convenient store nearby, so we bought a giant pack of baby wipes and used almost all of them to clean all the nasty poop out of my hair and Marshall’s shirt.

Once we were all cleaned up, we’d worked up quite the appetite. We walked over to a restaurant I had picked out nearly a mile away. When we got there they said they weren’t serving food for another two hours, but their upstairs bar would start serving food in a few minutes. Perfect! We stood outside and waited…and waited…and waited! Clearly there was some miscommunication because they really meant that that no food would be served until the kitchen opened two hours later. Get it together people!

At that point, we cut our loses and looked up restaurants near our hotel. We found one with great reviews called Evolution that was walking distance from our hotel. When we got there, we were the only ones there. Pretty typical for us when we’re traveling, because we like to eat dinner around 5pm and people don’t start coming out for dinner in London (or most of Europe) until after 7pm. That’s ok, we just get top notch service! After dinner we were so tired and jet legged that we were in bed by 6:30pm. Hey, we made it to ~30 hrs with little/no sleep and experienced a lot in our first day. Not too bad!

The next morning, we woke up bright and early to watch the changing of the guards at Buckingham palace. We arrived only to find out there was a huge marathon going on so there wasn’t going to be the big shebang with a band playing like there normally is. Darn! Oh well, at least we can say we saw it (technically). We weren’t terribly impressed watching hundreds of tourists vying for a sliver of space at the fence trying to record two guys stomp their feet and move like toy soldiers, but to each their own!

At this point, we were starving and wanted to get a bite to eat before we started exploring more. We walked over to a nearby café to grab a pastry and coffee. Of course, I asked for a blended drink like a Frappuccino and got a drink nothing like a Frappuccino, but it was even more amazing! Marshall ordered something he’d never heard that had layers of espresso, chocolate and steamed milk which was super tasty also. Good find! We downed those and headed out to see what else we could find.

This was our one full day to explore London so we walked around the city checking out all the major sites such as the London eye, tower bridge, parliament, and everything between. Unfortunately, Big Ben was under construction and completely covered in white plastic and scaffolding. But all the rest of the beautiful architecture made up for it! We made our way to the river Thames, crossed the bridge and strolled along the promenade that was filled with cute little cafes and street performers.

By lunch time we had made our way to The Shard which is a tall glass building that has a beautiful 360-degree view of the city. I had made reservations at a restaurant inside called The Oblix for their famous Sunday roast. Marshall ordered the steak roast and I had the chicken roast (surprise, surprise). The meat was so tender and was drizzled with delicious gravy. The cocktails were super fancy and had homemade rock candy hanging on the glass. Yum!

We headed back toward the river to continue walking along the promenade. It started to sprinkle and we happened to be passing by a fancy lounge where people were sipping afternoon tea. We went in and grabbed a table by the window to people watch. We ordered a cappuccino and enjoyed lounging as we waited out the rain. As soon as it stopped we continued strolling and passed by more street performers. We stopped to watch a guy that was about to do a trick where he stood on a platform that was on top of a rolling cylinder. Marshall was looking down at his phone trying to order an Uber back to our hotel and the performer quickly noticed that Marshall wasn’t paying attention to his show. How rude! He handed Marshall a bowling pin and dragged him on stage to be part of his act. Street performers are very good at pumping up the crowd to get ready for their ‘amazing’ show and then fifteen minutes later finally performing their unimpressive trick. Lol! Interesting way to make a living, that’s for sure!

After walking for EIGHT MILES around the city, our feet were desperate for a break. We took an Uber back to our hotel and relaxed for a few hours. We had planned to go out to dinner but were so exhausted that we just ordered a pizza and had it delivered to our hotel. This was the spiciest pizza on the planet. Our mouths were on fire and we were dripping in sweat! I know, so attractive. After dousing a ton of water to cool off, we didn’t want to waste any more time in our room and mustered up just enough energy to go out on the town.

Marshall and I love checking out speakeasies in each city we go to. We try to find the best atmosphere and most unique cocktail at each place. I had a list of speakeasies I wanted to check out in London so we started with the one closest to our hotel. We were unhappily surprised to find a sign on the door saying it was closed that day. Welp, good thing I had more on the list…on to the next! We walked into a hotel a few blocks away that the secret bar called Bart’s was located in. We opened the unmarked door and see a tiny waiting space with comic strips all over the walls with dim red lighting. So cool! We knocked on the next door hidden behind more comic strips for what seemed to be ten minutes. Eventually, a man opens the mail slot on the door, looks at us and says they are closed for a private party. Strike two! We just said screw it and walked into another bar next door. It wasn’t the speakeasy we were looking for, but we had a good time. Can’t win ‘em all!

The following morning we had planned a full day tour of Stonehenge and the city of Bath. The meeting time was 7:30am but luckily the meeting spot was conveniently located a couple blocks from our hotel. There was about 50 of us on this tour. Generally, we like to explore on our own, but we didn’t want to deal with renting a car for only a day and this was a very affordable tour with full flexibility to go wherever we wanted once we arrived at each location. We’ll occasionally take the tourist paths when they make things that easy.

We drove two hours to Stonehenge, a historical and mysterious monument consisting of a ring of standing stones. The site is not as big as we expected from pictures we’d seen. We expected them to be like 3x the size and maybe be levitating or singing a song of the sirens or something cool. Maybe we set our expectations too high? Once we took a few pictures and walked around it, we spent the rest of our time in their little café and gift shop. We were starving and grabbed a ‘pasty’ that looked similar to a calzone. They generally have meat inside like the one Marshall scarfed down but I got one that was stuffed with vegetables in a curry sauce. So good!

As soon as we’d taken our last bite, it was already time to get back on the bus and drive an hour through the English countryside to the city of Bath. This city is a picturesque town that is known for its Roman baths and was a vacation spot for the Romans to go and relax (with quite a few ‘adult’ themed purposes we won’t go into here). We didn’t have any intention on spending all our time standing in a line to see the baths, so once we were given three hours to explore the town we just started wandering down random streets. The town is built on a steep hillside, so we eventually made our way to the top, stopping occasionally to see the sights and amazing architecture of the old buildings. After about two hours of exploring, we were hankering for another pasty so made our way back to the main town.

We found a well-known little café selling them and found a table outside to people watch as we wolfed down our second pasty of the day. We still had about an hour left in Bath, so we wandered over to the river to take some scenic shots. We noticed a boat docked on the side of the river that was converted into a fun little floating bar. Sweet! We grabbed a spot on the top deck and sipped a drink while we basked in the sun. There was a lady sitting right next to Marshall and when she stood up to leave, she farted ridiculously loud, leaving Marshall to bask in that as well. No shame whatsoever! On that note, it was definitely time to head back to the bus.

We drove three hours back to London passing through more of the countryside with more historical commentary from our tour guide. The drop off point was in a different area of London we hadn’t explored yet so we figured we try a restaurant nearby for dinner. We saw a brightly colored, modern restaurant called Bills across the street and stopped in for a lovely meal and great conversation about our family and future plans. We cherish traveling with the boys, but we appreciated the time to focus on each other and really dive in and deepen our relationship even further.
​
Speaking of romance, tomorrow we are headed to the beautiful Greek island of Santorini! We’re excited for warm sun and relaxation!