Travel Log: London

And so we come to the end of my Europe travel recaps (although someone asked me if I was going to write a post about our budgeting and spending on this trip, which I might do!). This is kinda long, so I'm going to put a link to our London travel video here at the top. It's also embedded at the bottom of this post!

We left Cambridge on Thursday and took the train to London, where we stayed at a hotel very near the Paddington underground station (for anyone reading who knows where that is). The above photo was taken on the street outside our hotel on our last morning. There was a whole thing I'll have to mention if I do our budgeting post. I originally booked an Air BnB with what I now realize was a really bad cancellation policy. Lesson learned! After doing a bit more research, we realized that we didn't want to stay in that location because it would be too far and annoying to commute into central London each day. So we cancelled that (losing 50% of our payment super bummer!), and I was able to get one of the last rooms at a hotel that was a bit more expensive than the Air BnB but so much better location-wise. And it really wasn't even that expensive... right around $100 per night.

Anyway, enough about that. We spent the rest of Thursday, all day Friday, all day Saturday, and the morning on Sunday in London. Our flight back to Boston left in the late afternoon, and we ended up just going to the airport super early because we didn't want to carry our bags around and we had to check out of the hotel.

Our schedule for Friday and Saturday looked pretty much the same: set alarms for 8:00, leave the hotel by 9:00, stop at the bakery next door and get muffins for "take away" (to go in British speak), walk through Hyde Park into central London, and spend the day walking around. We  didn't get back to our hotel until 6:30 or 7:00 or so and estimate that we walked at least 10 miles each day!

After spending 4.5 days in three smaller towns, London was definitely quite the experience. It was louder and busier and more expensive, and I think if we had to choose, we preferred our time in Liverpool and York the best. However, we thought London was super neat and had such a great time wandering around! It was fun to be somewhere that was so international. I mean there's just nowhere quite like it.

November in 5 Things

Thing 1: Broccoli

In case any of you read my previous post and doubted how much my kids love broccoli, R literally named it as a leaf on her Thanksgiving thankful tree that she made in Sunday school. You will also note that BBQ Chicken made an appearance, giving food just about one third of the thankfulness in my gluttonous 3-year-old's heart. My favorite daycare craft ever is still the one where they took a picture of her and put it on a paper plate that said Favorite Food: Food. I still laugh every time I look at it.

Thing 2: Dishes

This is the sink situation I came home to after our weekend in Pawhuska. I am totally not trying to throw Jordan under the bus here. He really does a lot to help out, and in his defense he did unload the dishwasher. Basically I'm just saying dishes just are dumb, and I can never stay on top of them never ever. If my sink isn't full to the top with dishes, I feel accomplished in life, and that is a fact.

A Visit to Pioneer Woman's Restaurant

RIP, my blog, am I right? Ever since we came back from England, I have not been able to get into a rhythm. I can't seem to get my crap together in basically any area of life. 

You don't even want to know the weird meals we've been eating due to my lack of meal planning. More than once the past two months, Jordan's been like, "um... these things don't really go together..." THERE'S A VEGETABLE AND A PROTEIN JUST EAT IT. Never mind that the vegetable is a bag of microwavable steamed broccoli for the fourth day in a row because my children are both aliens and love broccoli. They eat it all and ask for more. I'm not going to ask any questions.

Anyway.

What I'm here to tell you about is not the fun times of my personal cooking life but about the super fun trip I took this past weekend to the Pioneer Woman restaurant and shop in Pawhuska, Oklahoma! 

Travel Log: Cambridge, UK

We left York after lunch on Wednesday and headed south to Cambridge. We chose Cambridge as our third and final destination before settling in London for the end of our trip because it was in a good location to complete our circle(ish) train ride around northern England and not too far from London, so we wouldn't have a long ride on Thursday. 

We were intrigued by the history there, the famous colleges, and the architecture. What we were not prepared for were all the BIKES. So many bikes. So many. Honestly, never in my life have I been anywhere with so many people riding bikes. Which makes sense now that I think about it, because it's a small college town, so biking is an inexpensive way to get around. But it was crazy how many bikes there were. Every single wall, post, and railing had some kind of sign attached to it stating whether or not you were able to use it as a bike rack. When we crossed the street, we were more scared of a bike running us over than a car. I'm not exaggerating!

After two Air BnB experiences, we booked a hotel in Cambridge. It was unlike any hotel I've stayed at in the US and was basically like an Air BnB because it was self-check-in! A week before our arrival I received an email telling me instructions for how to get to the hotel and the key code to get into the building and into our room. There was a note on the bed when we got there with my name on it that had instructions for the WiFi and the check-out time.