London!

Last August, I had a friend post about this fantastic deal they found that included round-trip airfare and hotels for a 10-day stay to London, Edinburgh, and Paris for less than $1,000 each.

I was stunned at the cost--that is a cheap price, even to a total cheapskate like me, and because I was feeling wild and crazy, I decided to actually click on the website and see what it would be like to actually, you know, TRAVEL.

Preface to this story--other than serving my LDS mission in Taiwan, I have never been a traveler.  I have been to approximately 3 states other than the one in which I have resided for the majority of my life, and my only time on an airplane other than my mission was to fly up to Idaho (glamorous, I know) to visit my sister when my first nephew was born.

I don't travel.

But I've always wanted to.  So when I actually got the nerve to CALL this place (Fleetway Travel, just so you know), and started getting prices on trips, I was genuinely freaking out at the idea that I might actually GO somewhere.  With my husband!  And without my kids!

Fast forward a few months, and thanks to a semi-spontaneous purchase by me, a husband who worked a crazy amount of overtime in January, and an incredibly service-oriented sister who had just come back from her mission and was willing to watch our four children for us (along with my incredibly service-oriented parents who helped her out more than we will probably ever know), Steve and I got to go on a trip to London, Edinburgh, and Paris!!!

Because I'm paranoid, I didn't post anything about it online either before or after the event (I didn't like the idea of people knowing we weren't home with our kids because I watch too many crime shows), but now all of you lucky readers get to read about and see pictures of our once-in-a-lifetime trip to Europe!

I still can't believe it happened, to be honest.

The vacation for me actually started the day before our flight left LAX...we headed down to the Valley to eat crab meat out of a bag:
...and watched "Finding Neverland" at Gammage Auditorium together.

One of the things that I love about marriage after having kids is that any time away from the kids can feel like a romantic date, because you get to the point where any time alone is precious, and so you treat it as such.  Hence, for us, even the many hours of driving, flying on airplanes, or even just wandering around downtown Tempe waiting for our show to start were fun.  I enjoy getting to invest in our marriage once in a while and reminding myself that I was a wife before I was a mother.

The next day, we drove over to LA, where we parked our car and rode in a shuttle (all while getting to know our amazing shuttle driver, Isaac from Peru) to the airport.  We sent a picture to our mothers to show them we'd arrived that far safely,
And then we took our first red-eye (10-hour) flight to London!

Now, I'll be honest, the pictures at this point aren't exactly in order, but they are all from the first three days of our trip in London, so I'll just do my best to caption as I go, because when I try to get all precious about my posts and make sure the pictures show up exactly as I want them to, it ends up taking me forever to blog, and I just never end up doing it.

And since it's more important to me that these posts be finished than that they be perfect, I'm apologizing in advance for how convoluted these may turn out.

So now that that apology is out of the way, I can start talking about our AWESOME Europe trip!

The flight was awesome, and although customs took a while to get through (something I did remember from visiting Taiwan), we got to our hotel (after a little frustration with trying to figure out the London Underground system) by 4:00.  We spent the first night wandering around a bit, and then got to watch Matilda in the Cambridge Theatre, which was INCREDIBLE. 

By the way, just assume that I shall be over-using my caps locks.  

Honestly, I don't know if it was the amazing seats we had, the smaller theatre (I've attended several shows in Gammage, which is huge in comparison, so that was the only other professional experience I had to contrast it with), or just the energy of being on this once-in-a-lifetime trip, but I was completely blown away by the performance we watched.  I laughed, I cried, and I gasped at all the right moments.  Trunchbull was simultaneously terrifying and hilarious, the Wormwoods were the perfect amount of obnoxious, and Miss Honey was sweetly pitiful.

It was fun after loving the book so much as a child and listening to the Broadway music for years to watch it come to life right before my eyes.


And the TECH.
Swoon.
We also ate in our very first London pub.  I wasn't all that impressed by the food, but not surprised; while the British are known for several incredible accomplishments, food is not one of them.

We had a fun trip through the Kensington Palace (and the gardens adjacent to the building itself).  It is a fascinating thing to walk through places where history has happened and to learn about hundreds of years of history over the course of a couple of hours.  Definitely gives some perspective to the chaos we're experiencing now!
I couldn't get over how green everything was.  Look at that lawn!! For a girl from the arid high deserts of Northern Arizona, even in pre-spring (daffodils and crocuses were out, but the trees were all mostly bare still, except for the occasional flowering apple or peach), the landscape just seemed so lovely to me.

Thanks to a London Pass that Steve had the foresight to buy ahead of time, we were able to get into just about every attraction for free, which saved us a TON of money--had we not had the London Pass, it was an average of 10-20 pounds to get into just about anywhere, not to mention hour-plus waiting times that we got to cut in front of because of our pass.  It also came with an Oyster card (travel on trains, buses, and river boats), which we overused, and a restaurant discount card, which we never ended up successfully using. Overall, I highly recommend the pass for anyone going to London.

The first full day of visiting was so surreal, to be seeing all of these beautiful, historic, and iconic places in person.  I was giddy, as you can tell by my slightly shell-shocked grin in all of the pictures we took.

We have had many people ask us if we were in London during the terrorist attack at the Parliament, and we were blessed enough to have moved on to Scotland by that time, but it definitely shook us up to see pictures of this horrific incident plastered all over the news when we had literally been standing there only two days earlier.  My heart (and prayers) still go out to everyone involved.  What a traumatizing thing to happen in such a beautiful place.


Steve's reaction when he saw Big Ben?  "It's smaller in person than I expected."  Haha.

I kept thinking of Parks and Recreation, when Ron Swanson goes to London and refuses to be impressed by anything he sees, but has to take pictures for his fiancĂ© back home.  "Oh, look.  A clock.  We don't have THAT in America."


 We swapped picture-taking with some other tourists...


 SOOO crazy.

 While we were there, we visited the Florence Nightingale Museum, which was fascinating.  It was nice to see a balanced view of an imperfect woman who did the best she could in the situation she was in to make a difference in what she saw as her calling to help others.
 It was especially fun to see how my husband reacted.  I love that he has such a passion for his career!


It was amazing to think of the changes that have happened to my personal life because of the people we learned about here, an ocean and several centuries away from where and when I live.



 One of the first places we wanted to visit was the famous London Bridge (I laughed at the irony that I've already actually walked across the London Bridge--one of the four bridges on this site was sold to a rich man who reassembled it in Lake Havasu, Arizona, and I've been across it!)

When we got off the subway, we saw something called the "London Bridge Experience."  It was on our passes, so we went through, and I'm so glad we did!  The first segment was a group of us walking from area to area under the city as actors explained various aspects of the usually dark and bloody history of the London Bridge (which has crossed the River Thames in the exact same place for hundreds of years!), after which we walked through a haunted maze-type thing.  It was fun, and a very interesting way to learn of the history of that particular spot stemming back to Norman and Roman times.

We grabbed a shot of our scared picture:

 And then went on top of the bridge to eat fish and chips on the London Bridge.

We were surprised to see that the bridge we had always thought of as the London Bridge was actually the Tower Bridge--a few blocks away.  The one we were on was actually rather simple looking, and a little bit of a let-down after the whole presentation, haha!  But the view was incredible, and the fish and chips were delicious.  Best tasting thing we ate in London, hands down!
 We then went over to the London Tower Bridge, where we got to climb up into the top levels, have some fun on the glass floors, and learn about the history of this iconic emblem of London.

As Steve put it, "The interesting-looking bridge doesn't really have that much history, while the really interesting historical bridge is really boring-looking!"  It was good to experience both.

 Standing on glass over 42 meters over the Thames was a little trippy, and definitely messed with my fear of heights.
 We took a video, too.  We're tourists.  It's what we do.
 The guide encouraged us to get creative with pictures on the glass floor, so we did...

 And then as soon as we left, a whole bunch of other people started laying on the glass and taking pictures with similar poses.  What can we say, we're trend-setters.
 Absolutely stunning.  I couldn't get over how BEAUTIFUL all of the architecture was, and it was so fun to imagine (and sometimes learn for fact) what had happened in these places that were literally centuries old, some of them.

The London Pass also covered a double-decker bus tour (I loved that it had ear buds you could listen to as you drove through.  So fascinating!

And a River Boat tour!  




At nights, after we had literally been going nonstop for the entire day, we would finally return to our hotel room (which, by the way, was quite nice albeit smaller than we Westerners are used to), where  I would crash and poor Steve would have to do school work.  I'm grateful for online schooling where he could still do what was needed halfway around the world, and I'm grateful for a husband who is so diligent about his schooling.  He had really gotten ahead on most things, but still needed to check in occasionally, so although it took a bit, it never really intruded on our trip.
One of the nights, we stopped by Piccadilly Circus, which was, surprisingly enough, one of my favorite stops.  It had such a fun energy, and I enjoyed watching some of the street performers.  While it's not exactly a career I would encourage my children to seek after, I was impressed with the creativity and dedication of these people. 

The stereotypical "statue:"
This next performer would stand holding a pair of glasses with a sign telling you to take them.  Once you did, he would pose you in some fantastic pose and then pose himself around you (usually making it look as though you were beating him up--I was impressed with his flexibility and strength!), and then let you take pictures for Facebook. It was a clever idea!


This next shot is of our first night out--I can tell because my hair is still curled and we were just so excited about being in London that we had to grab a picture, even though there's nothing incredible iconic (that I'm aware of) behind us.  Lol

By the next day, I learned that with the rain and wind, it was pointless to spend any extra time prepping my hair and make-up when it would usually get trashed after just half an hour of navigating the subway system, so after the first night I keep things much simpler.  Besides, who wants to spend 45 minutes working on make-up and hair when those 45 minutes could be spent either sleeping or out exploring? 



I was interested to note (even in these English-speaking countries) the definite feeling I experienced of being an outsider in a foreign country.

I had experienced that before as a missionary in Taiwan (made even more noticeable because of my skin and hair color--or lack thereof, in my case), but I felt that the moment we opened our mouths (or got lost, or looked at our maps in public, or didn't know exactly how we were supposed to get our bills in the restaurants we ate at), people knew we didn't belong there.  It was surprising and more unsettling than I expected it to be, and although no one was really ever rude to us (in fact, people were very kind!), I felt quite insecure about inadvertently committing some kind of faux pas.

I also realized that Steve and I are quite a bit taller compared to the general population than I remembered....I felt like a giant in most of those places!!




The first night, as I was so star-struck (can you be star-struck about a place?  Because I most definitely was about London), I was just grinning ear-to-ear as we walked from place to place.  We passed one particular homeless man who had a dog, and I complimented him on his very pretty dog.  He grinned in return, and said, "You keep smiling, girlie!"  It made my night.  What a pleasant man.

I've found that while wandering and exploring on your own creates some magical and unexpected experiences (for example, ending up at King's Cross when we hadn't planned to be there, and me almost being brought to tears when I saw the adorable shop and photo set-up they had there in tribute to Harry Potter), I also really appreciate tours and tour guides.  When we visited the London Tower, it was a blast to hear our tour guide explain the fascinating stories that had happened there over the centuries.  It was fun to think of the fact that the majority of what he told us about happened before our country even had been founded.

We had several more adventures and literally hundreds of pictures from London that I shall probably post on a separate post (I really want to get this published), but I am wanting to at least get these online so I don't have to worry about them any longer.

Next stop, our flight to Scotland, and our surprise at it turning out to be our favorite part of the trip!

Comments

I am loving your post, I can not wait for your Scotland report. Scotland has been on my travel list for a couple years but everytime I save up to go, something happens!
Cristin said…
I can't wait to read more about your trip! I love finding travel deals. Are you hooked yet? It's ridiculous how cheaply you can travel to Europe and Asia right now.
Sarah said…
I love this! It looks like you had SO MUCH FUN! I'm so glad you guys got to go. What an awesome experience. I'm glad you guys were safe, too. I love all the pictures. Excited to read more (but no pressure, haha). Love ya!