Jolly Voyager

"See you for gin in the morning!"  Some memorable words as said by our lovely friend Ben as he clumsily tripped off the tube when it came to a halt, and we all giggled uncontrollably.  Something I can for sure say, and if I haven't said it before I'll say it again. The best part of traveling is always the friends you spend time with and the new people you meet.  I'll say that these two days were some of the most entertaining and fun nights we had with friends.  When you go out to dinner with a bunch of new people and then they ask you if you want to go to a pub afterward you know you've made new friends. I won't forget either when looking for a good pub to go to we somehow ended app in this bar or, I don't know what it was, but they were blasting Benny and the Jets then changed  to singing Happy Birthday whilst our other friend Ben was singing along conducting the song with his fingers.  Oh man, so many laughs.   I slap my hand for not writing this sooner because I can't remember all that we did in compete detail but the pictures sure do bring back memories.  And because I never finished writing about this England trip I'll probably do shorter posts the next couple I put up and focus more on the photos.  Ah, there's so much I need to catch up on.  But for now, here's a handful of photos from this lovely day with friends and around London.
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I was happy we ate here as its' in one of.... Sorry, our actual favorite movie.



Oh yeah, and our Notting Hill flat we stayed in had a ladder to climb to the roof so some of us who weren't deathly afraid of heights climbed up it.  Also, this photo makes me happy.

- Kenzie x

So I finally decided to stop being lazy about writing these blog posts.  I've also been waiting a while to write this post and hesitating to write it because this day was pretty special so I felt the post needed to be special as well.  So the reason why this day was special is because we got to meet Greg James.  Greg James and Chris Smith are from BBC Radio 1 and host a podcast of their best bits of their show every week.  Actually, as I'm writing this I also happens to be listening to the podcast.  So does that makes me a blogstard...?  I don't know.  Also, thanks for motivating me to finally write this, Greg.  Anyways, if you have no idea what I'm going on about you have to listen for yourself.  This is me passing the podcast to you, or, well.... whoever reads these posts.


Let me tell you, this podcast gets me laughing so hard as well as my sister with their ongoing inside jokes, squeaky gates sounding like the Jurassic Park theme (one of my favorite bits), the game cheese ball, rage against the answer machine, and Greg just being.... himself.  Anytime I'm feeling down or just really need a good laugh Greg's podcast is my go to.

Before the trip, Maddi had emailed Greg's producer asking if it'd be possible we could pop in and meet Greg briefly while in their part of the world. Then to our surprise, while in Oxford (at Fudge Kitchen) Maddi got a call from Greg's producer, Ian saying that we could come in the next day to meet Greg to which we squealed with excitement.  Now, we thought it'd just be a brief visit but what ended up happening was once we entered the studio with Grace (thank you, Grace!) and did our greetings with Greg and Chris, and Ian, Greg goes "now have a seat, we're going to do the podcast!" (I'm feeling so much excitement just writing about it).   So Greg has us sit down, put our headphones on, and be a part of the podcast as guests.  And it was just the best.  We got to play cheese ball, chat with Greg and Chris, but mostly we sat giggling at Greg and Chris as they did their parts for the podcast.

Thank you BBC Radio 1, Greg, Chris, Ian, and Grace for letting us visit with you all!  It was a big highlight of our trip and certainly a treat.  We're very happy we got to meet you all and that you were kind enough to let us be a part of it.

-Kenzie x

I'm sure you can imagine how excited we were to find out that our flat we stayed in while in Notting Hill was just a couple blocks away from a Portuguese bakery. The very next morning, after getting settled in our flat my sister and I walked over to the bakery to bring back some pastries and coffee for the rest of the girls.  I love Notting Hill. If I could live in London somewhere it'd probably be there. Everything in England is charming, but each part has its own character.  Maddi and I had a nice walk over to the bakery enjoying the unique artwork and quirky colorful buildings of Notting Hill and just feeling happy to be back in our favorite city.

The main thing Maddi was excited to try were the Portuguese custard tarts, which she absolutely loved from her visit to Portugal this past summer.  So of course, we got a couple of those as well as another pastry that was similar to pan dulce with a custard filling. Ugh, so good! The bakery was called Lisboa Patisserie if you'd like to check it out.  Oh also, I loved the adorable terrace we had at our flat. We had a lovely view of the city and nice backdrop for some pastry photo taking. Here is Maddi being adorable and happy with her custard tart.