London

London holds a special charm for us.  It was the first place outside the US that we traveled together, and almost certainly where David finally fell in love with travel.  We spent just two days there on our first visit in 2003; we were traveling with David’s mother, and drove on through England and Wales, and finally Ireland (as an aside, this is also when we discovered how much more fun travel could be with other people).  We returned for 5 days in 2006, celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary.  This was our third visit.  Generally, we are much more interested in traveling to new places than revisiting old ones, but London keeps drawing us back.  It’s the only foreign destination we’ve been to more than twice.

Aston Martin

We happened to be in London during two big events.  One was the birth of Prince George, which was more interesting to watch other people be excited about.  The other was the 100th anniversary of Aston Martin, which Lana wasn’t that interested in.  David was riveted.  The centenary was held in Kensington Gardens, just a few blocks from our hotel, and Lana very patiently spent part of a morning there as David ogled and snapped pictures.  She did have some interesting people watching, as it drew a different crowd than the park typically sees.

Scotland

We flew from Amsterdam to Edinburgh, Scotland, where we rented a car, and immediately drove to Glasgow, an hour to the west.  We rented a cottage in Glasgow for a week (a cheaper town than Edinburgh), and were looking forward to a slower pace, and cooking our own meals.  Our travel fatigue is obvious when we reviewed our pictures for the first two days.  On the first day, David took his normal series of pictures of our accommodation, as a visual mnemonic, and we both had snapshots of amusing aisles in the grocery store while we shopped for our meals.  Half of one, long aisle was devoted to canned beans, from single cans, to 4-packs, and even small, wheeled palettes (maybe 30 cans each?), ready for customer pickup.  We didn’t know the Scots were so serious about beans.  Another aisle was taken up by ketchup, mayo, and other condiments.  On the second day, there are only pictures of the three meals we made—we didn’t even leave the cottage.  It was wonderful!  The cottage itself was another AirBnB arrangement, and was very nice.  We had a full kitchen at our disposal, as well as a washing machine (and clothes lines in the large back yard, for drying).  The street out front has little car traffic, but lots of pedestrians, and we enjoyed people watching.  It was in the 70s, and apparently that’s roasting hot for the locals, who are all wearing as little as possible, and sporting lobster red sunburns.  We read books, reviewed our photos—we were just catching up to pictures from Croatia by then—and watched a movie.