Monday's Memories: The End

It's been a year and four months since our plane landed in London, and with little to no sleep between the two of us, we spent a day walking around the city, praying we wouldn't pass out from exhaustion.  

On our last day, tired and ready to take the train back to our hotel, we decided we might as well walk by Buckingham Palace.

Another trip I might want to go inside and take a tour, but it wasn't high on my priorities that time around.  It was impressive to look at, though, and we walked around it on our way to the station.

I think I must have reached a burn-out point on taking pictures, because this is the last one I took on our trip.  There are no pictures of our last train ride, of our hotel, of us at the airport, etc.  

I remember that when we got back to the hotel that night 1) I had walked 24,000 steps according to my pedometer, and 2) I'd walked a hole in the toe of one of my socks.  We did a lot of walking that day. 

The plane ride back was a lot more enjoyable than coming over, despite the fact that it was a couple of hours longer.  I dozed a little, read a lot, and it was nice not to feel the frustration of feeling like I needed to go to sleep and couldn't.

I think this trip ruined me on a lot of levels.  I don't know if any other "big" vacation will do for me again.  Some people like cruises, and I will always want to go back to England.  I was reflecting this morning on the million little whys of why it was so wonderful.

• KJ and I hadn't taken a week-long trip anywhere since our honeymoon, so it had been over 7 years since we did anything big like that.   
• My life for the previous 5 years was spent mothering at home, and it was good for my heart and mind to have such a horizon-expanding experience.
• It was really nice to talk uninterrupted to my husband for two whole weeks.
• Probably 90% of my favorite books are written by British authors and take place in England, and being there and finding it all just as I'd been reading about it for 19 years was...sublime?  It's hard to think of a good word.
• I love history and learning and understanding the past and how it relates to the present, and there was a lot of that happening.
• And of course, there were things like this:

 

What's not to love?