Sometimes things seem too good to be true and it’s often not until later that I realize how great something truly was. That’s why photography is incredibly special to me. To me, pictures allow me to relive the most amazing days of my life. I’ve been putting off sharing my photos from Europe because I’ve been at a loss for words. People keep asking me, “How was England? How was Iceland?” All I can say back is, “Good! It was absolutely beautiful.” It’s hard to put words to such an amazing two-week adventure…

This trip is honestly one of those moments that seemed too good to be true — it still does. I can’t believe it happened and that I got to travel out of the country for the very first time. It’s been something I’ve dreamed of for so long. After traveling a lot around the U.S. in the past few years, I really wanted to go out of the states and I didn’t care where. Well, I met a girl named Jessie over the summer when I was looking for a new place to live. That’s a whole different story but I thought I was going to have to move because our townhouse foreclosed (due to our landlord) and I considered moving in with her. I got to stay in my townhouse (praise the Lord) so I didn’t get to live with Jessie (so sad!) but we started hanging out and going for walks. We were sitting downtown at Mudhouse one morning when Jessie was telling me the story of how she was born in England and how her dad (American) met her mom (Brit). Wow, I really like parentheses…. Anyway, she mentioned that she didn’t get to visit her family in England at their most recent reunion due to work and that she was considering going around Christmas. I told her I was jealous and that she HAD to go.

Well, I got a text from her a couple days later asking if I wanted to go to England with her. Ummmm, WHAT?! I was shocked. Of course I wanted to go. We got together to look at flights and were originally planning to do England with her family for a few days and then visit Venice and Paris for fun after. We found some great, cheap flights but they were gone the next day when we went to book. I was so bummed but I also knew it would be okay and God would make it clear if I was supposed to go. We gave our trip a rest for a couple weeks but one day I was scrolling around on the Flight Deal looking for a flight to Poland for my friend and I found two week round trip flights to London and Iceland for $380 on Iceland Air. I thought it was a scam at first but it wasn’t and we immediately booked!! YAY!! The trip was happening. I had known Jessie for two months and we decided to go on a two-week trip to Europe together! Haha!! Welcome to my life. 😉

We started out at Dulles and flew straight to Reykjavik on a red-eye for our 12 hour layover before flying into London, where our trip would really begin. Our layover in Reykjavik was probably the main reason our flights were cheap and although it sucked, looking back, it was one of the funniest things the whole trip. Actually, we were cracking up at the time too because we literally arrived at the airport at about 1AM our time and not only were there no restaurants in our terminal, it was FREEZING cold and we had to sleep on metal benches. ???? I was so sleep-deprived that after my computer ran out of battery, I thought I couldn’t use it anymore because I didn’t have the Icelandic plug. Well, I noticed two weeks later when we were flying back home from Iceland that there were American plugs at a desk about ten steps from where we “slept.” So glad I wasted an entire 12 hours on my phone doing NOTHING. Haha!!

Our layover was so long that we were obviously sure we wouldn’t miss our flight. We would get there with plenty of time to spare…. Well, I don’t know what was up with us but we realized while walking to our gate (that we couldn’t find anywhere because the numbers were laid out in a way that made no sense) that the board said “final boarding.” We thought the boarding was just about to start. AHHHH. We ran as fast as we could while laughing all the way and arrived just in time. Expert travelers — that’s us! ????

We finally arrived in London that evening and after grabbing an Uber (finding your Uber driver at an airport like Heathrow is literally the most stressful thing in life), we were on our way to our Airbnb. As we passed some restaurants and pubs, we realized we hadn’t eaten real food since being in DC the day before and things were closing (that’s something I didn’t know about Europe — things close around 8PM). We had Uber guy drop us off with our giant rolling obnoxious suitcases and we ran around in search of anything open. Everything was closed except bars but we ran into a drunk guy who kindly told us of a nice Chinese restaurant down the street that would probably be open. We ran down there and the server said he’d let us in if we ordered a one course meal. A one course meal? That sounded simple enough…….. We sat down and he pointed to the three things we could order, conveniently all over the price of $40. ???? We were so hungry at this point that we didn’t care. We both ordered and one dish at a time, they filled the ENTIRE table with food. In fact, they had to bring a separate small table for the extra dishes. LOL. It was like Thanksgiving dinner times 100. So funny!

We finally made our way to our Airbnb, which was along the Thames River, in such a pretty area and we were down for the count, ready to make the next full day (our only day) in London a good one. We walked fifteen miles that day and literally did as much as possible! My favorite thing of the day was probably going up in the London Eye and seeing the city from above! It was magical and Big Big looked SO COOL with the sun setting behind it! The whole day was a blast and I cannot WAIT to go back and spend more time there!! Hope you guys enjoyed the images throughout the post! Cambridge photos and Iceland photos coming soon!