London!

So the day after Keith left, I flew to London to meet up with my parents. It's always been my mom's dream to go to London so I was glad she finally got to go, my dad on the other hand didn't really care, he was just happy to see me.

My flight got delayed and somehow I ended up on British Airways instead of Iberia and also somehow ended up in first class - however I managed to fall asleep before takeoff and missed all of the food - I wasn't happy.

When I finally got to London and through security and customs my parents were waiting with a sign saying "KARI" on it and I got lots of hugs and they bought me a quick lunch - you know, the good stuff.

So we spent about a week in London visiting different places - The Eye, Changing of the Guard, Tower of London, Crown Jewels, my mom and I went and saw Wicked (for the 6th time), went on a river cruise, ate Chipotle (thank god - not the same as the US, but still satisfying), and all kinds of other amazing little adventures.

We ended up going to Paris on a day trip and went through the Chunnel - not what I had expected, but I think it was probably better than flying. So we went on a river cruise there and ate lunch on the Eiffel Tower, and we visited the bridge where Keith and I put our locks (yes, they were still there) - Dad of course was examining the bridge and trying to guesstimate the average weight of each lock and eventually determined that the bridge was not designed to hold that much extra weight and will eventually collapse because of it. Fun stuff right? Mom said one day we'll be able to tell our kids we contributed to the disaster...

For my brother we went and visited the Dr. Who store - which is not in the best part of town I might add.

And we also took an overnight trip to see Stonehenge. We stayed at this really cool 13th century (updated) hotel in a little town near Stonehenge and then got up super early so we could go walk inside the stones and watch the sunrise (of course there were clouds) - but it was super cool. I really wanted to tell my mom they were "just a bunch of rocks" but really it was pretty cool. I don't have a clue how people did that so long ago. The same statement goes for the architecture I adore throughout Europe.

It was a great week and nice to see my parents. It was pretty hard to communicate with Keith because we weren't in the hotel very often, but we survived. His family all got the flu so he was living at my house to avoid them (he's terrified of being sick) so he was having a much harder week than I was, as well as going from spending every minute together while he was here to readjusting to being 6,000 miles apart.

All in all, I'm happy. I liked the city - it reminded me a little of Chicago and overall was a lot like the US. I've figured out London is about 4 times the size of Madrid, and it defiantly felt more like a city. (However the metro system madness still never compared to the horrid metro strikes here in Madrid)