London!

Our first stop in Europe was London. I really wanted to cram in as many castles as possible on our trip, so we headed straight from the airport to Windsor Castle. Thank goodness we had Laura's savvy travel sense to get us on the right bus. Windsor Castle was one of my favorite stops on this trip.

 Our next day in London was spent on the hop-on, hop-off sightseeing bus. I made Laura get off at the first castle we spotted (she is a good sport to put up with my castle fetish), the Tower of London.

 After spending way too long at the Tower of London, we hopped back on our bus and saw lots of fun things, including the Olympic Clock (if you look really closely, you can see it counting down the time until the Summer Olympics):

 Here's me looking just super with chattering teeth on the hop-on/hop-off. We were completely frozen the entire time we were in London. The only warm article of clothing I brought was my black sweater, which you will see a lot of in all my pictures. I wore it over everything.

When (notice I did not say "if," I return to London, I will actually go and take a tour of this - Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. We didn't have time this trip, but doesn't it look amazing?

 We got off the bus at St. Paul's Cathedral, just one of the many amazing churches in Europe. We arrived just in time for Evensong, which means we got to enter free and hear some amazing music! I loved the going into all the beautiful churches.

We also visited Harrod's and Piccadilly Circus and had dinner at Ottolenghi (amazing food and totally non-touristy), and ate scones with clotted cream (yummmm!).