10 years! Ben and I love to travel and we've been planning on doing a fun trip together to celebrate 10 years of marriage (with the plan that we'll do the same thing at 20,30,40 years etc.) since we'd been married for like a year or something. It just seems like the perfect way to celebrate! We ended up going a little early (our anniversary isn't until July) because we had some airline credit that was expiring soon. After weighing a bunch of different options we landed on LONDON as our destination! I'm so glad we did- it was amazing!
We left the boys in the loving care of Nana and Papa and headed to London on March 30. Our flights were smooth and uneventful, just super super long! I was glad during those flights that we didn't have the kids with us, even though I missed them a lot! We landed in London at 7 am (midnight Utah time) after getting basically no sleep on the planes we were exhausted. We couldn't check into our hotel until later in the day, so we dropped our bags and started walking! We headed right to Kensington Gardens since we were staying nearby. It was raining and cold, the gardens we beautiful, and we were just so exhausted! I walked Ben clear over to Palace Court and showed him the BYU London Centre that I love so much! We grabbed a croissant at Pret (my fav) and walked around the gardens some more. By noon we were so cold and SO SO tired, and Ben was able to pay convince them to let us in to our hotel a few hours early and we crashed for a little bit!
We got up and walked around some more that evening, seeing St. Pauls, the millennium bridge, a tiny bit of that Tate Modern (just because we needed to use the bathrooms) and headed back towards our hotel. Speaking of which, we stayed in South Kensington and I loved it so much! The streets there were so beautiful and charming. There were so many amazing and diverse restaurants in our neighborhood, and it was a little less busy than central London. It was so great! Our room itself was laughably small, like 12 inches around the bed and that's it, but it was just fine for the two of us!
Sunday morning we headed to the Tower of London. I was so excited to take Ben here and do the Beefeater tour, which didn't disappoint. It was crowded, but we still enjoyed seeing it and learning so much about London's history.
We saw the Tower Bridge, which is one of my favorite sites ever. Hudson really wanted us to "find" this super unique bridge and was so proud of us when we sent this picture. We went back the next night to see it lit up at night, which I actually prefer. It was quiet in this area and we just sat and enjoyed the view for a while.
Sunday afternoon, after a stop at the National Gallery to see some of my favorite paintings, we stumbled upon this pub and decided to grab some fish and chips for dinner. Since we love Sherlock Holmes, we decided to give it a try and it ended up being one of our favorite meals of the trip. The ambiance was so fun and the food was good (well, Ben really liked it, I'm not a huge fish and chips fan in general, but I thought it was okay).
After seeing the British Museum on Monday we had afternoon tea at the Ham Yard Hotel. It was so fun! We loved the scones and were surprised how delicious the passionfruit-mango macaron was! It was fun to sample all these decadent treats while sipping hot chocolate in a fancy setting!
That night as we were out and about we stopped to see Buckingham Palace. Ben was unimpressed, but I made him take a picture anyway. It is huge, but I guess it does look fairly basic.
Tuesday we went to the Churchill War Rooms, which was a highlight of the trip for us! So well preserved and so interesting. It's amazing to learn about the history surrounding Britain's role in WWII and specifically Churchill. Although he really wasn't a great guy on a personal level, his leadership and commitment to fighting Hitler (opposed to appeasement like his predecessor) probably changed the whole scope of history. We were discussing how the outcome of WWII might have been different had Churchill not been there- would Hitler have been defeated? Could the USA have done it without Britain's help? Interesting (and scary) to think about. We followed this up with a fun trip to Borough Market, which was awesome!
This little place was right outside our tube stop- and we had to stop since they were called Ben's cookies!
One night we didn't have anything planned so Ben suggested we go find 221B (Sherlock Holme's home). We did! It was a fun little adventure.
Wednesday we went to the Imperial War Museum. They have a really special Holocaust museum here that we spent a lot of time at. It was so heartbreaking, and we learned a lot. It sparked a lot of interesting discussions for us about history and the correlation to what is going on in our world now. We also talked a lot about how we want to teach our children to be loving, kind and accepting- nothing like this to remind us about the devastation of discrimination.
Our last day we really chill- we didn't have much planned. We wandered around the V and A museum a little, poked around Harrods, bought some presents for the boys (not at Harrod's- too expensive!), and then grabbed some favorite pastries and headed back to Kensington Gardens. The sun was out (a rarity this week) and we sat on a bench and ate and enjoyed our last day in London.
This trip was really amazing! We loved having so much uninterrupted time together! It was also amazing to me how easy and carefree traveling is without children! I love traveling with our kids, but it was also amazing to go just the two of us. We got to reflect a lot on the last (almost) ten years of marriage how crazy life has been to us. There have been some serious twists and turns in our road, but it's still taken us somewhere amazing, even if it's not what we'd planned or pictured when we were first married. I love this man and love the life we've built together!
A little sidenote about traveling- mostly for my boys if they ever read this when they are older- One of the keys I've learned to successful traveling is that you just have to know that some things will go wrong and you have to decide not to let anything ruin your trip. This trip was amazing, but of course there were a few little things that weren't quite what we'd hoped. Big Ben is completely covered in scaffolding, making this iconic site and view quite anticlimactic. Our hotel room so much tinier than expected. Crowds were crazy in London this week, so we had to wait in some unexpected lines. And it rained and was a little chilly most of the time we were here. None of this ruined our trip! We were just able to say "oh well!" and enjoy all the beauty and fun around us, and on being together.
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