Quick tour for you. And I promise there will be more…

Here’s where Matt works. St Thomas’ Hospital from the back faces Parliament/Big Ben. That’s what he stares at all day…when he’s not furiously rushing around, interrupting groups of sweet old ladies (which are discussing the plans for the upcoming royal wedding) to talk about their meds. It’s pretty sweet. (I feel like he should be wearing a batman backpack and hold a brown lunch bag with jelly stains on his face in this pic)

After this shot, we walked around back of the hospital to get this shot. We felt all of you really needed to see us rather than the beautiful setting behind us. Appreciate it.

The lovely panorama…

The next two: Westminster Abbey.

You’ll notice i don’t take a lot of full shots of places. Its usually because I get fixed on one thing I like and can’t walk away. For me it was the door and windows here wondering who all has walked through this exact door.

A sweet statue outside of Buckingham Palace. My buckingham shots will have to be shared another time. Too many people. Ick. looked all touristy in my shot.

About 20 minutes later, still at buckingham palace.

Westminster Bridge at night with a perfectly timed bus, human (in front of the eye), and london eye lit up.

5DmkII, 35 mm 1.4L, handheld  at ISO 100, f/2.8, shutter 0.5 sec…in case you’re curious.

Shot from the very front of the second level of a double decker. I thought we were going to squash people everywhere on every turn.

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Sorry for the long delay. I wasn’t ignoring you and your request for pics. Just busy settling in.

We left London on 12/26 for France. Took the train. I Sudoku’d for 2 hrs. I’m seriously good at these puzzles. I challenge any of you to a Sudoku-off. (i will most likely win….if you don’t have professional sudoku experience). Lets make a note here that THIS is when I started getting sick. It lasted exactly the duration of our week-long road trip. Such is life.

(Forgive me because there’s a TON of stops and sleeps missing in here. I don’t want to overwhelm you. I’ll be making an album of the entire trip and am happy to share if you’re ever DYING to see it all. And, of course if you need recommendations on places to stay for a trip like ours, I’m your girl)

Here are a few faves from our trip to France…

Matt, sleepy. With dirty hole-y socks.

The train…

LOVE this one too.

White pigeon flying through the train station…

Notre Dame…

Book stands along a street in Notre Dame…

My MOST FAVE photo from this entire trip. This little girl had bread in her hands and the birds came flying in! So happy to take a photo of a human being and not a landscape for a change:) I wish it wasn’t awkward to walk around taking photos of people you don’t know.

When I think of the Eiffel tower, I think of all the street vendors.

It was heavy…

Our French family, the lovely Kishbaugh’s. They were so kind to let us stay with them.

Carl bought some chestnuts roasting on an open fire…

Inside Galeries Lafayette…

Then we got a car and I had my first Autobahn (sp?) experience. (if you didn’t go AT LEAST this speed you were hazardous)

Then came Germany…and our desperate attempts to translate dinner menus. We did alright

I got Putenmedaillons vom Grill. The only word i knew was “pommes frites” because they say the same in France. Means fries. That’s honestly the only reason I ordered it. The entire dish came out super yummy!

We steered clear of big cities for the most part and drove on roads we struggled to find on the maps. It lead us to places like this…

(sometimes “no plan” is the best plan:)

We took a SUPER tiny and slightly dangerous snow-covered road to the top of a huge hill so I could snap this photo of the town…

Bakery in another town in Germany…

This is where we discovered the humongo pretzels (after we ordered the medium one first)

The big papa pretzel, or “Bretzel” as the sign read…

They’re quite the creative-type in Germany…

Another little town…

Then we changed course and headed to Switzerland via Austria. I want to kick myself in the head (not possible) for taking hardly any photos on this part of the trip. I was on round two of being sick. See?

But I did get this shot…

And these two when we stopped in Luzern…

All things swiss right here…

Then New Years eve rolled in and I was laying in a bed at our hotel in Zurich with a hot towel on my ear. I had so much pressure build-up that I couldn’t hear. Rough night. We managed to get in a great dinner but I took no photos. Nada. Until the morning. Then I snapped this LOUSY PIC, of the view from our room, on my computer and called it a day. I think I wanted meds, a bed and the ability to hear.

Then we routed back through Paris on our way home and stayed at our most favorite location. Les Degres de Notre Dame. We found it when we walked Paris the first day we visited. We would have never found it and would NOT have booked it based on the photos on TripAdvisor (i pay close attention to these things) but after they showed us the room, we were sold…

It was a full trip with tons of photos (not even showing you a 10th of what we took here!) that we’ll enjoy putting into an album. Matt even typed out a day-by-day account of our journey for us to relive when we read it again.

Bye-bye France and Germany…

Hello again to London. Here’s a quick video tour of our new apartment. We’re no longer in the Notting hill area. We’re now Lambeth-ites.

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Stay tuned for some fun London pics…

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There really is SOOOOO much to share. But honestly, we’ve had 5 seconds of internet every couple days and the time we have we end up using to tell our families where we are (this trip has literally had NO plan).

So, let me give you a couple quick visuals to give you an idea of whats to come!

Last time we “chatted” it was Christmas eve, I think.

- Christmas Day was perfect. We slept in until noon, skype’d both families, had our own Christmas lunch at a Thai restaurant a couple blocks from of our apartment, stopped for a latte and a frosted mint hot chocolate (tasted like an andes mint and was pure heaven), skype’d more, walked around Hyde Park at dusk and took the below picture (among many others), then came home to plan our trip and eat left overs for dinner and skype w/ family again. Happy day:)

- The day after Christmas we hopped a train to Paris. I could ride that train anywhere because I get to stare at Matt and make faces at him the ENTIRE ride. Then we got seafood as a snack. Who gives seafood as a snack? The EuroRail.

Now of course I have many pics to share. And I’ll be putting them on Facebook but for now here is a snapshot of where we’ve been since catching the train. The bottom half is what we’re doing today and tomorrow…

I have photos to show you from that entire loop. I promise I’ll share them. In general, we’ve avoided actually staying in a big city (with the exception of Mannheim) and instead found tiny towns w/ b&b’s along the way. Wouldn’t do it any different. Even if we get stuck in the snow and have to be pulled out by 5 germans in Rothenburg. It’s worth it:)

Until later…

(we ate that big pretzel over 2 days)

IT’S CHRISTMAS IN LONDON!

…and everyone just wrapped up their shopping. It was INSANE today/tonight on the streets. Stores packed. Looked like rush hour in New York City…but worse. I literally had to hold on to the strap of Matt’s backpack to make sure we didn’t separate. They closed a couple of the tube station stops due to overcrowding.

Here’s a list of what you’ve missed (or not missed if we’re friends on FB)

• Our apt is tiny, tiny, tiny. Or maybe I’ll say “cozy” I haven’t had a chance to get a great shot out front so here’s a google map street view for you… (we’re the top floor of 77)

• Our luggage still hasn’t arrived. And they’re estimated 10-15 days now. SWEET.
• It’s NOT freezing here. And honestly, we haven’t seen a bit of snow. Not sure what all the London flight cancelations are about.
• We have walked everywhere. Several miles a day.
• We have 6 flights of stairs leading to our apartment. No lift. After day 3 of running up and down the stairs, i’m finally not winded anymore.
• The only good food we’ve had is Indian. The rumors are true.
• I attended my first midnight mass tonight. (it must have been obvious we were the non-catholic out-of-towners)
• Starbucks DOES NOT taste the same in every country.
• If the price on a rental seems too good to be true, it absolutely is.
• I have missed my puppies about 20 times a day.
• Matt and I have become directional-geniuses. Lots of guessing where we are (since we don’t have our phones or maps) and lots of being right (so far). First time i’ve survived w/out a GPS.
• The tube ROCKS. Columbus, lets get on that.
• Chai at Cafe Nero is simply the best.

I’ve pulled out the camera a few times ….look at all the colors?! I’m in heaven.

I’m headed to bed now. Santa is coming (i hope). It’s 4:18 in London and we have big plans to do a yummy Christmas lunch out. Hopefully London can “bring it” in the food arena for Christmas day at least. I’ll leave you with this image I snapped on our 30 minute walk home from midnight mass. Around 1-something in the morning. LOVE>

Merry Christmas, friends.

A bike cart picked us up at our Inn and took us over to Rue de Jean for a patio lunch with the puppies. Took us 10-15 minutes to get there in the cart and we got ambitious and decided to walk home in the heat. 45 minutes later with no sunscreen and in flip flops, we arrived back at the Inn with too pooped out pups. I walked out of the room for a second and came back in to Matt napping with the pups.

We’re off to walk around town a little more, hitting up a coffee shop then heading over to Folly Beach to shoot Kurt and Nina’s beach front wedding. Pics to come!