Our Last Week

I know this is terribly late, but I did want to recap the last week of our trip. It went by so fast it’s hard recall everything that happened, so bear with me. The first couple days we stayed with our friend in a suburb of London called Guildford. In these few days we got to relax, explore the beautiful town of Guildford, watch some really good British reality TV shows, and eat some more of Tim’s delicious cooking.

On Wednesday we took the train from Guildford to London. I was a bit antsy that morning because we were FINALLY going to get to see my mom! After the longest train and tube rides ever, we made it to the hotel in Regents Park where we would be staying and meeting my mom. We found the room, knocked on the door, and BAM, reunited! It was so incredibly good to see her again after all that time. The rest of the day was spent catching up, walking around the beautiful Regents Park (which is massive!), and turning in early as we were exhausted and mom was a bit jet lagged.

The next day, my mom had to go to a “meeting” at their office in London, and we had planned to meet her later for dinner with some friends. John said he wanted to go take some pictures of the birds we saw in Regents Park the day before. This being typical for both of them I thought nothing of it at all. After walking around the park a bit and snapping a few photos, we were walking down a path when John started taking something out of his backpack. I thought he was searching for his binoculars, but when he turned around he was holding a small brown box and had gotten down on one knee…and you can probably guess the rest. We got engaged!

We went back to the hotel to meet up with my mom (who obviously didn’t have a meeting) and John’s cousin Ericka who had flown in from Spain where she was teaching.The rest of the day was a celebration with family, friends, and of course, champagne!

The next few days were pretty busy. Filled with site seeing, catching up with family and friends, and eating way too much amazing food, we went all over London by bus and tube. We hit all the major spots like Big Ben, parliament, West Minster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace. Somehow we timed it perfectly to be able to see the changing of the guards ceremony at the palace. The last day (which was also Mothers Day) we took a boat down the River Thames to Greenwich. We got to see the Prime Meridian line which separates the Eastern and Western hemispheres and is origin of Greenwich Mean Time. We also enjoyed some lunch outside and did a bit of shopping before heading back.

Our last week went by way too fast. The day that I had feared would come was actually here. Our trip was over. While I was more than excited to go home and see my family and friends again, it was bitter sweet to know that the adventure we had talked about for so long was over. I started thinking about our trip and all of the exciting things that I couldn’t wait to share with everyone when we got home, and I realized that even though this trip was over, our adventure was just beginning.