Five for Friday

Hello! I am linking up with Della Devoted, Cup of Tea and Bright on a Budget for another edition of Five for Friday! It's been super hot around here this past week! It was 108 on Sunday (that's 42.2 for those of you not in the US!) and over 100 all week long. I am definitely hoping the hot weather ends soon! Anyways, here's my Five for Friday...

1. My brother got back from France on Monday! It has been really great having him home. It's nice having him around when I want to ask him a question instead of having to text him and wait for a reply! 

2. I started sharing our trip to Europe this past week. I posted about our day 1 and day 2 adventures in London! I'll be posting much more in the weeks to come!

3. I bought some hydrangeas from Trader Joe's late Wednesday afternoon and by Thursday morning they were almost dead :( I needed them for a photography project and I was thankfully able to get what I needed, but I was disappointed they didn't last. 

4. We've been watching a lot of Shark Tank lately. I don't know why we never started watching it sooner (it's been on since 2009!) but it's pretty good! It's about entrepreneurs who are looking for investments into products they've invented. The 'sharks' have to decide if they want to invest or not. It's pretty interesting and I have actually learned a lot about business by watching it! Which might come in handy considering my brother is studying international business! Definitely worth watching if you have never seen it before.

(source)

5. I bought a couple over-the-door shoe organizers this week. They work great for organizing so much more than shoes! Our bathroom has almost no storage, so this is really handy for keeping the stuff we use the most out and within reach. Same goes for the one I bought for my bedroom, it's so nice to have stuff easily accessible instead of shoved into a drawer. I bought the one on the left at Target, and the one on the right from Walmart. I couldn't find either of them online, but they were less than $20 each.

Have a great holiday weekend! Anyone doing anything fun for the Fourth of July?

London - Day 2

Day 1 - Day 3 - Day 4

After breakfast, we made our way to Waterloo Station where we started our sightseeing at the London Eye. We skipped going on it, mostly because of the time it took and the line was quite long!

We then walked across Westminster bridge to see Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster. 

Westminster Abbey.

 Buckingham Palace.

 We weren't there during the "official" changing of the guard, but the queen did come in while we were there. 

 The flag on the left is the flag that is raised signaling that the queen is in.

 Looking down The Mall toward Buckingham Palace.

 Regent Street.

 Covent Garden.

 We had dinner at Shake Shack. It was SO good! Definitely recommend it!

Shakespeare's Globe theater.

 The Millennium bridge.

 On the Millennium bridge looking toward Tower Bridge (L) and the Shard (R).

 St. Paul's cathedral.

We stopped by St. Dunstan In The East, but unfortunately it was closed. But we did stop by another time!

By the time we took the tube back to the station we were staying by, stopped by the store and got to the apartment, it was pretty late. It was quite cold outside and the heaters didn't work in our apartment. To make a long store short, our apartment was a dump, among the fact that the lady who owned the place would not return calls and the heaters didn't work, there was a multitude of other problems with the place (mold and unsafe wiring being a few of the problems.) We were so fed up with the place that my mom ended up calling Airbnb.  

Fortunately for us Airbnb has excellent customer service! The lady from Airbnb ended up telling us it would probably be a good idea to leave the apartment (Which we were happy to do despite it being around 11:30pm.) She reimbursed us for our stay in the apartment, plus gave us money to cover a night in a hotel room. We were very thankful to have such helpful customer service! 

So we found a hotel a little ways away, packed up our stuff and headed out to the hotel. Unfortunately for the trip budget, the hotel was a pretty big extra expense. Even with the credit from Airbnb, it was way more than we would ever spend on a hotel in the US! But, it was very clean, the beds were pretty comfortable, the heaters worked, and they had a continental breakfast; so we were happy!

Check back next week for day 3 of our trip! 
Day 3 was spent exploring a very magical place ;)

London - Day 1

Day 2 - Day 3 - Day 4

We left Boise on May 30, and flew from Boise to Seattle, Seattle to Calgary, and then Calgary to London. We arrived at London Heathrow in the afternoon on May 31st. 

The flight from Boise to Seattle was so beautiful! It was clear out and we saw Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood, Mount St. Helens, AND Mt. Rainier! 

Yeah, I know, Mt. Hood looks pretty incredible in this picture. Haha, it was easier to see in person. Dirty airplane windows certainly don't help! And I apparently deleted the picture I had of Mount St. Helens.

Mt. Rainier certainly looked stunning though! I never tire of seeing Mt. Rainier. 

Flying into Seattle. Sorry, I won't bore you with airplane pictures for too much longer!

We had a three hour layover in Seattle before heading on to Calgary, Canada. 

During the flight we flew by Mt. Baker. It was so cool to see! I grew up near Baker, and had spent a lot of time there camping, hiking, and sledding in the winter.

(From L to R - myself, my mom, my sister Hannah, and my dad)

Our last picture before heading to London! 

We left Calgary at about 10:30pm on the 30th, which I think worked out perfectly because we were able to sleep a little on the plane, spend a few hours sightseeing when we arrived, and then be able to go to sleep that night. 

Fortunately for us, none of us got jet-lagged! A lot of people made a big deal about jet lag and we were a little worried about how we would handle it, but it really didn't affect any of us. I think it might have been worse had we arrived in London in the morning GMT.

So the flight was okay. It kind of was annoying being on the plane for 8ish hours! But it wasn't as bad as I thought. (It's typically a 9 hour flight, but we were in the jet stream and made good time.) 

We were fed two meals on the plane (one at midnight, dinner, and breakfast an hour before we landed.) I slept a little bit. Not as well as I would have liked, but not too bad. 

Anyways, we landed at about 3:30 GMT, got through customs and immigration without any trouble, and exited the terminal where we met up with my brother who was waiting for us. He had flown in a few hours prior from France. We were all excited to see him since we hadn't seen him since Christmas.

We had ordered Oyster cards (London tube passes) before our trip, and we took the tube to the apartment we were going to be staying at in Northeastern London. It took us about an hour to get there from the airport and we were surprised at how cold and windy it was outside! Now, we are no strangers to the cold and wind considering we are from Western Washington, and I had always read that London and Seattle have pretty similar weather, so I guess I was kind of thinking that it would be more spring-like weather wise.

So we were supposed to meet the lady we were renting the apartment from at 5:30, and since we were an hour early, we gave her a call to let her know. She didn't answer or respond. So we waited in the cold for an hour. 5:30 comes and goes and no word from the lady we were renting from. At this point we were all a little tired and getting irritated because this lady had not been very good about getting back with us; and we were wasting valuable sightseeing time! Sometime after 5:30 we finally get ahold of the lady, and she is shocked that we were there. (Um, hadn't we agreed to meet at 5:30? And we had left several messages with her.) 

So we wait around some more and she doesn't show, so my dad finally goes up to the apartment and to see if the lady was there (she had said she would be right down, so we weren't sure if she was in the apartment and wouldn't let us in, or it was taking her a while to get there.) Turns out the cleaning lady had arrived right before we did and was just getting started cleaning the room. 

Finally, our host shows up and takes us to the room. We took a quick look around, a little unsure about the place since it didn't look very much like the pictures we had seen online. But we just left our stuff and headed back to the tube station to go sightseeing!

The apartment did have a pretty nice view!

We took the tube to Tower Hill and made our way across the road to the Tower of London.

We walked around for a bit, stopped and had dinner at Pret (which was quite good!) and when walked across the Tower Bridge.

The Tower Bridge seen from The Tower of London.

        Me | My brother

After it started getting dark, we headed back out to our apartment to sleep and then get ready for the next day of more exploring! 

Check back on Wednesday for day 2 of our trip!

Five for Friday

Hello! I am linking up with Della Devoted, Coffee With Caitlin, Cup of Tea and Bright on a Budget for another edition of Five for Friday!

I'm finally getting caught up on stuff after being gone for 17 days. I've gone through and edited some of my pictures and should be able to start posting my Europe pictures on Monday!

1. So, pictures. I definitely took over 2,000 pictures while in Europe! Which, honestly isn't as many as I thought I was going to take! Definitely a perk/problem with being a photographer!

2. We went to the farmer's market this past weekend and picked up some berries. Raspberries and blueberries are one of my favorite things about summer. 

3. My brother is going to be coming back on Monday! He had to stay for a couple more weeks after we left because he had some more testing for school to do. While I know he is really sad to be leaving France (and now that I have visited there, I don't blame him! I didn't want to leave either!) we are going to be happy to have him home.

4. While at Target, I picked up a couple of things from the Dollar Spot. I have already used the little clothes pins to hang up some of the post cards I bought while in Europe. 

5. Since it's been so hot here, we have been grilling and eating a lot of salads lately. I found some slider buns at Whole Foods and made bbq bacon and mushroom sliders for dinner. They were so good! I don't know why, but sliders are just more fun than a regular burger!

Hope you have a great weekend!