London, Portugal, Paris, Peak District..Part 1

I have already written about my favorite part of our trip to Portugal, but there is a whole lot I haven’t written about! It was such an incredible trip, and it is difficult to sum up in a few photos and a few paragraphs. Therefore, it is going to take at least two posts. This first post actually feels like it is more like the pre-trip, but I don’t want to forget a thing. 🙂

Ben and I headed off to London on the train in the morning on Saturday, 28th June. We had managed to get first class tickets for just a few extra pounds, so we started the trip off with a bit of luxury!

I love this statue at London St. Pancras…

We walked past the hotel where Ben and I stayed on our first trip to London over five years ago.

Iconic London…and although you can’t see the iconic rain, it was there too.

We had a delicious lunch at Wagamama, and I discovered free all you can drink green tea.

And after lunch and wandering, we headed to our hotel. We had planned to have a relaxing evening and watch Brazil play in the World Cup before meeting my parents and aunt and uncle at the airport. However, when Ben called his parents to let them know we had made it, and to see how they were settling into their holiday in Devon…we found out that Ben’s dad had badly injured his achilles tendon. Luckily, he wasn’t in too much pain, but Ben’s parents were at the emergency room for many hours, and we were obviously really worried and hated flying out of the country when this was going on. They insisted that they would be okay, so we headed to Heathrow to meet my family while checking in with Ben’s parents regularly to see what the doctors said. After a long wait, Ben’s parents finished at the emergency room and headed to their apartment in Devon…and at around the same time, my family came through customs. We took a few minutes for hugs and catching up, then ran for the free shuttle bus to our hotel. We missed it by minutes, and ended up taking a very expensive taxi ride back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep before heading back to Heathrow for our flights to Portugal.

The next morning, we set off early for the airport, and after a short flight, we made it to Lisbon.

More of the adventure to follow… 🙂