Europe! The Beginning

I have to admit that these pics aren't the most exciting ones we took on our trip.  But then, as I was thinking back on it, the first part of our trip really wasn't that exciting.  I mean, I guess it's all relative.  Going to Europe= exciting.  But compared to everything that we did, this was less exciting.

Said Goodbye to our kiddos.  I took a picture of them in the car at the airport so I could look back on my camera at them when I got homesick.

Here we are on the airplane.  How happy do we look?!?!
I took a Lunesta and was out for 4 hours.  Fastest plane ride ever. (6 hour flight from Chicago to London)

Here I am in London!  So, we arrived at 7:00 am London time.  Felt like midnight.  But since I had slept on the plane, I was OK.
We had made plans to stay in the temple hostel that first day and do a session while we acclimated ourselves to the time change.  Good idea in theory. Super hard logistically to get to the temple from the Heathrow airport.  Expensive too.  But it was the temple and we got blessings for going so I'm glad we did!  Here I am on the temple grounds.

After the session, we decided to go running.  Our run was an adventure.  We ran to a tiny town about 3 miles away in the pitch black.  We kept thinking there would be street lamps, but there never was.  We passed by the cutest, coziest little British houses that still had their Christmas decorations up and we could see families through the windows gathered together in their living rooms hanging out.  I came to two conclusions on that run.

1. We are spoiled as Americans.  We don't need as big of houses as we think we do.
2. Less is actually more on Christmas decor.  You should have seen these cute, Charles Dickens houses and you would have to agree.  They had like one strand of lights across the front with a tiny Christmas tree in the window.  We loved it.

We ate dinner at an Indian restaurant in the little town.  We got a lot of strange looks by waltzing in there with our running clothes on.  Apparently in Europe, people get dressed up to go out.  Oh yeah, only Americans go out to eat in their sweats.  Oops!

The next day, we woke up way early to take the train to Paris.
Here we are waiting at the Lingfield train station to take us to the bigger train station.

Coming up Next:  PARIS!!!  The city of love!
PS. I do love America and Americans and wearing sweats, just want to be clear.