A Scrap of Life

We've been home just over two weeks now and the great news is that we're feeling good. Nothing to point towards us being sick, but we're complying with the "stay home, save lives" philosophy. Let's start with the numbers: Days away from home: 28 (includes 2 full travel days) Countries visited: 6 Miles flown: 14,430 over 11 legs Miles in trains: 214 miles for Eurotunnel plus tons of tube rides in London and France Miles driven: 380, all but ¼ mile on the left hand side of the road. 😉 Miles walked: 207 Flights of stairs climbed: 448 Steps taken: 471,514 Yes, we took nearly half a million steps over the course of our trip, all of them together. It was an amazing adventure and I can’t wait to do it again! Now, for the long part. Here’s some other random tidbits about packing, planning, and our favorite parts. Be prepared for more information than you probably want. LOL And if we don't answer your question(s) below, feel free to ask in the comments o...

And here we are - loaded up with our packs and then on a plane headed for the states. Friday the 13th, flying out of gate 13. Good thing we’re not superstitious. Amidst all the hubub and chaos we keep hearing, we came home to a lot of nothing. When landing in Seattle, no one asked where we came from. No one checked our temperature or reminded us to self-quarantine. We just quietly walked back onto US soil like Coronavirus wasn't a thing. But we did get home safely, so all is well that ends well. 

Our final day abroad was simply finishing up some things we didn’t see our first stop in London. We started with Big Ben, Parliament and Westminster Abbey, all of which are under construction at the moment. We got to see some of them but it would have been better to see them in all their glory.  We jumped on the tube and got off near Buckingham Palace. There were no tours on Thursday and the Queen was in residence so we just took a look from outside. While there, the Queens Life Guard traveled by on their beautiful horses.  After that, we just walked down the street, past the park and to Trafalgar Square.  We loved the statue with the lions in the square and had to take pictures with it before moving on to our destination - Leicester Square. There we visited the TKTS booth where we got great (and cheap) tickets for the West End showing off The Lion King. We had lunch at a local venue that said business was down over 50%. I expect it will only get worse in the near future....

Today was a light day for us. We had a leisurely morning and breakfast at the hotel before waving goodbye to Disneyland Paris. We traveled by train for the first time this trip, taking the euro train from France to London. We got checked into our AirBNB in enough time to go grab dinner before our big event - Hamilton on London’s West End. We have been planning this since the beginning and were so excited! We had great seats center stage on the lower level. They were perfect! The show was really good - the king was the best king out of the three times we've seen it. He was HILARIOUS! I'm so glad we got to see it!  The most exciting thing was during intermission when Brian realized Colin Farrell was sitting 2 seats directly in front of him. I really didn’t believe him until I walked forward to “look at the stage” and heard his voice (ironically talking to someone about Coronavirus). I took a glance at him on the way back to my seat and sure enough, there he was.  We got to bed a...

Today was a pretty light day yet somehow we still walked over 11 miles. We started off with early entry, this time to the Disney Studios park. This park is tiny. Like really tiny. I know they are doing some additions to it right now (which is why Rock n Rollercoaster is down  🙁 ) but there are really just a few things we wanted to do here and extra magic hours is our opportunity to do those with no wait. Plus it gave us a chance to see DLP’s version of the Partners statue, since it lives in the studios as opposed to Disneyland/Magic Kingdom in the states. The first stop was an entirely new-to-us ride, Ratatouille. This is currently being added to EPCOT’s France pavilion at Disney World but it’s not open yet. The interesting thing about this ride is that it’s trackless. This means your ratmobile can scurry and scram with a really natural feel. What I didn’t love was the big 3D screens. Those really ignite my motion sickness but I did ok by closing my eyes a few times. All in all, i...