Hello, again. By this time, now, my mom will be re-interested and re-invested in the blog since January 6th was technically her last day with us. So yay! Hi, Mom! Golly, you have no idea how difficult it was to talk to *other people*. Glad that’s over.

So, Mom, if you remember, we began this lovely Sunday morning by shipping you off to the airport.

It started with a very stressful game of packing and shuffling around the room so as not to wake Jonathan too badly. The main reason it was stressful was because I was the navigator, except that my phone had about 10% power and no internet connection because of the famous Blown Fuse of January 6, 2018. We made it out to the buses (it was pitch black still, seeing as how it was about five in the morning), and I paid special attention to the side of the street we were meant to be on. Heaven forbid my mom should miss her flight because I forgot we were in the U.K.

We got to see some pretty cool things from our spot at the front of the top level of the our double decker.

That’s a dark and blurry picture of St. Paul’s Cathedral!

So anyway. It was two buses together, and then we found ourselves at Victoria Station.

Or at least, that’s what the bus stop was called. The station itself was actually pretty hard to find because there was a ton of construction going on in the area. At first, I led us to the Underground station at Victoria, but that’s not where we wanted to be. I was trying to put my mom on the Gatwick Express, and her train left in less than ten minutes. I tried not to let it show because Mama was already pretty stressed out, but I was getting quite worried.

Finally, thankfully, we found the station. I continued my brisk pace, and soon we were at the platform. Oh, but the ticket on her phone wouldn’t scan. Cue more panic on her end. Luckily the dude manning the gate just looked at her ticket and let her in.

As I was hugging her goodbye, she suddenly shoved me off of her with a look of crazed panic the likes of which I had never seen, and then she booked it through the gate and toward the train with a frantic, “IT’S LEAVIIIING!!!!!!!!!!!”

I’ve literally never seen her run so fast.

It freaked me out, I must admit.

I was mostly just confused, because her train didn’t leave for another five minutes. She managed to disappear onto the train without my even noticing, but I spied on a few other people and figured out what the issue had been.

The train worked on the system which requires each passenger or set of passengers to push a button to open the door and enter. The door then automatically closes behind them. My mom hadn’t noticed this, and all she saw was that the doors were closing. Closing doors = train leaving = PANIC!

I wonder what she was thinking as she sat on the non-moving train for those five minutes, likely hyperventilating. Oh, Mom. Hahahahaa.

The events had left me a bit shaken, and I still didn’t have much battery power left in my phone. I quickly connected to the train station WiFi so I could notify our Airbnb host of the outlet/ WiFi problem, took some screenshots of directions back to the apartment, and off I was on my own. I would have taken my mom all the way to the airport, but airport transfers are preposterously expensive in London, so that fun little joy ride would have cost me upwards of $50. Not about that.

Even more concerning was that my mom’s WiFi didn’t connect properly in the airport, so I never got any confirmation from her that she made it to her gate or onto the plane. In fact, the first I heard of her whereabouts was when she landed in Seattle about thirteen hours later. Ugh. At least she made it.

I made it back to the apartment unscathed and crawled back in bed where I stayed firmly put until about noon. Whoops.

When Jonathan and I finally surfaced from sleep, the outlets and WiFi were back in commission. Commence phone charging and a breakfast of champions (aka: some more of those pastries from the day before).

Then it was time for some adventuring!

I have a thing about pretty doors. Every single one presents a photo opportunity.

Same view of St. Paul’s, but this time in the daylight!

I also forced Jonathan to pretend to use a pay phone in a London phone booth. He typed out some very long and complicated phone number. Wonder who he was calling…

Our first stop of the day was the British Museum! Neither of us had ever been, and it was free, so I mean…. What’s the harm? I’m a museum fan, and this one seemed like a big one. We bargained for about an hour here.

Plans quickly changed once we got inside.

And that was only after seeing the architecture! Imagine our surprise when the first piece of history we encountered was THE Rosetta Stone.

Like, the real one.

There were even pamphlets explaining that Egypt wanted the Stone returned. Big surprise, but the Stone, like much in the museum, was stolen long ago through wars and pillaging. It has resided in the British Museum since 1802, though, so it’s probably not going anywhere any time soon.

There were other cool old things, though, too.

It’s hard to appreciate from a photograph just how big that dude’s arm is, but trust me – it was huge.

After agreeing to slash our later-in-the-day plans so that we could spend more time in the museum, we wandered the exhibits for another hour or so.

At some point, we stumbled upon a restaurant that was housed on one of the upper floors and suspended in the center of the museum. It was about three or four at this point.

Those privy to British culture may have realized that we had stumbled unwittingly upon tea-time!

It hadn’t been in the plan originally, but afternoon tea in the middle of the British museum was a little too hard to pass up. We grabbed a table and were quickly met with adorable green china and Prosecco to match!

Soon after came the tea and goodies!

Can’t get more British than scones with jam and clotted cream. I was pretty happy with how the afternoon had unfolded, clearly.

Feeling on a roll with the London-y activities, we then decided to hit up Harrods, London’s famous and preposterously gigantic department store.

Unsurprisingly, it had gotten dark by the time we got out of the British Museum. Harrods is that beam of twinkle lights in the distance. Also, enjoy this warped and blurry panorama of the store front.

And here’s me taking advantage of the fancy bathroom mirrors:

And here’s a dress I would have totally gotten if it had been on clearance for $35 or less:

We got to Harrods about fifteen minutes before closing, so we basically ran around its six floors like chickens with our heads cut off, trying to see as much as possible. There was one section called “Advanced Designer.” After analyzing the selection presented in this wing, we decided “advanced” designers are the ones who think they are from a future where humans stop wearing clothes and start wearing hideous modern art pieces and hobo-chic neon fur jackets. The elevators were cool, though.

After Harrods, we lived in limbo for a bit. We had dinner plans at eight, but it was only 6 o’clock. So naturally, I spent a good portion of this time trying to convince Jonathan that he had to buy me this adorable tiny phone from a souvenir shop:

Just look how happy I am with that phone!!!! How could he say no?! (Okay, technically he said ‘Yes,’ but I know what he was really thinking was: “You look cute, but you’re ridiculous and you’re embarrassing me. Put the tiny phone down.”)

Then we wandered around in the dark for a while near Hyde Park and around the Kensington Gardens (they had just closed).

It’s hard to tell, but the above two photos depict mansions along this road which was home to the backside of Kensington Palace along with all the wealthiest embassy buildings. Supposedly these places go for around $100,000,000. (I got that info from Jonathan, though, so who really knows?)

Finally, we made it to dinner! Yay!

I finally figured out the name of that Indian restaurant we had been looking for the day before, so we met Jonathan’s friend Molly in Camden Town and tucked in!

She was pretty cute. Most of the dinner consisted of discussions about the very wonderful game Runescape. (This is not a paid advertisement.)

Okay. I think that just about covers it. We made it back to the Airbnb, slept a wink, and were off to the airport the next morning!

The airport was a breeze, except for the part where we didn’t buy enough food for the flight and where I accidentally bought some coffee that had something in it I was allergic to, so I had to ask a flight attendant to dump it for me. Yay!

We didn’t get a window seat, but it didn’t matter too much seeing as how we were also sitting in the only row on the plane that did not have a window. At the start of the flight, a little video played touting the new, 60% bigger windows on this Boeing Dreamliner, and we just solemnly stared at the reinforced plastic wall to our left and imagined we could see pretty things.

We passed the time by watching The House with Amy Poehler and Will Farrell (pretty ridiculous, yet funny movie) and some other movie I can’t remember right now. We then switched to TV because there weren’t any other movies we could agree upon. And then we played some Schnapsen! (It’s a card game. Don’t worry.)

Check out these pretty lights, though:

And this gorgeous shot of Canada out the window of the poor unsuspecting chap in front of us:

Gorgeous! And speaking of gorgeous, check out this very beautiful photograph of myself marveling at the turbine engines on our plane as we deboarded and I forgot that I hadn’t washed my hair in four days or something (give or take two).

Last minute proof that we were at an airport at some point:

And that’s really about it! Security was a mess and we ended up standing in a white and crowded hallway that was under construction for about an hour. At least we had hundreds of angry and confused strangers to keep us company! And they gave us tiny water bottles! Woohoo!

Yowzers. I’m sitting at my desk at work right now, back in Seattle, trying to figure out how to wrap up my fourth Europe trip with a BANG!

But I’m coming up empty. I was actually pretty tired at the end of this trip, not gonna lie. I think it was all the coldness and the darkness. I really need to pay more attention to the climate when I plan my seasonal travels! It’s okay, though, because for next year’s New Year Adventure, I’ve already decided to go to St. Petersburg, and a quick Google search tells me that the high might be a whopping 13 degrees on Monday! (Fahrenheit.)

Overall takeaways from this trip: Norways is awesome. Fjords are amazing. Tea is non-negotiable. Family is Forever, Danish or Otherwise. They do fireworks better in Denmark. Oh, and I think I may have given the bug back to my mom. The travel bug, that is. Be strong, Mom! Be strong!

Love you all. Hold tight until the next adventure.

Cheers/ Venlig Hilsen/ Best Regards!

Lizzy-wa