I Fell in Love With London
Here’s the story of how and why our whole family met in London (and fell in love with the city) for a few short days.
Last fall, my older sister, Katie, group facetimed the whole family with a wild idea: let’s see if we can get tickets to see Adele in Hyde Park. Unfortunately, the tickets were going on sale in the middle of the night, but Katie was going to set an alarm and see if she could snag some.
Here’s some more helpful info for context:
- my whole family is obsessed with Adele (the youngest of 11 cousins is actually named Adele)
- Katie is the best kind of enneagram 7 with an 8 wing who can talk you into doing something fun and spontaneous
- I am the worst kind of enneagram 8 with a *tiny* 7 wing who hates adventure and loves structure
On the group facetime, we all agreed – if we could get seven tickets by some miracle, we’d take the leap and go.
But lo and behold, Katie’s alarm didn’t go off. Do you know who DID happen to wake up in the middle of the night without planning to? ME.
And when I didn’t see a text from Katie saying she bought the tickets, I made a wild-middle-of-the-night-call and bought them myself.
Thus, we started planning this London meetup. For Nick, Josh, Katie, and I – it would be like a long layover on the way home from Togo. Mom and Gibson would come earlier and stay later to do some extra site-seeing, and my younger sister Caroline would also come and meet us there for family time.
So after two flights from Togo, the four of us landed in London, had just enough time to check into our hotels and change, and we were off to meet the other three for dinner!
If Togo was long beautiful days of mission and working together, London was filled with equally long (maybe longer) days of site-seeing, family, food, and taking in the city.
We were OBSESSED with London. The weather, the culture, the people, cabs, the fashion, the food, and so much more.
My mom planned our first night together, Caroline planned one day, I planned our last day, and we let Katie off the hook from most of the planning since the whole thing had been her idea. And then… the last few hours of the last day, it was time to take partake in what had brought us across the pond in the first place.
ADELE. She defied all expectations. As soon as the music started, I knew I was making a core memory that would last forever. At one point, I may have spun around to some new British friends and said, “Can you believe we get to experience this together?!”
We danced, cried a little, hugged strangers, sang our hearts out, and then walked back through the crowds to our hotel to pack everything up and prepare to leave the following day at 6 am.
It’s been one week since the concert, and Nick and I are still exclusively listening to Adele and watching the videos we took that night to remind ourselves: THAT WAS REAL, THAT HAPPENED.
About twenty-four hours after the concert started, we were pulling into our driveway at home – hugging our kids and unpacking little goodies we’d picked up for them in the UK + Africa.
It was undoubtedly the trip of a lifetime, and I’m incredibly grateful.