Friday 13 November 2015

Remembering the Fallen in London Town

On Sunday, Shelby made a surprise visit to London! I was really excited she came, and hadn't expected her at all. I had almost forgotten that I was going to be in London for Rememberance Sunday (Although I had my poppy on), but we decided to head to Le Pain Quotidient. It didn't seem like they were going to be turning of the music and standing for the two minutes silence, so we left our brunch and headed outside where we could see St. Pauls. They were holding a service, and a bunch of people observed the silence at 11am. It just feels so moving, to be there and be part of the silence. It's not often I am in a place to observe it - usually I am watching it on TV. But the whole world feels so quiet. And it's a powerful thing. After the silence, there was a band, and a march, and we ate brunch and went back to shopping, but it was a nice change to the day to remember the fallen.

London will always be in my heart!

I convinced Mummy to come meet me in London - I was so desperate to travel - and it seemed like a great idea to go do some Christmas shopping! On Friday, I flew into City airport ( easily the best airport), and took the DLR into the city. It was so nostalgic to be back, given that it had been over a year since I had been to my once home. London always feels a little special because I lived there. I guess it will always feel that way to me. I met Mummy, and we stayed up talking. In the morning, we got up early, and literally shopped all day - making it to Primark for when it opened at 8am, and then shopped all day! I got a new winter coat, and lots of ideas for Christmas presents. It was even warm, which was great too! It felt so Christmassy to be shopping on Oxford Street! I was so glad I still remembered my way around too! We had dinner in Covent Garden at Cantina Loredo - and it was just such a nice day!

A little family Fall fun

It was nice, because we didn't end up staying in Krakow very long....in the morning we got up, and headed right home to Frankfurt. It was nice to have some time back home before going back to work. I convinced Josh that we needed some fall photos - so we got dressed up and headed to the park across the street to take some photos! Because of daylights savings time, we havent been able to have much light by the time we get home. And sadly, we didn't really get many proffesional looking photos for our Christmas cards, but we did get a few cute ones just for our collection. It was nice and sunny but so, so cold! So it probably was a great day to go, else it would be too cold and the leaves would have all changed!

Overcast in Auschwitz

Travelling in winter usually sucks because it is so cold and miserable. We headed to Poland one weekend - after several time travelling with Steph, we decided that we should head to see Auschwitz before we leave Germany. So we headed there nice and late after school on Friday.
It's nice to travel Friday nights. The airport in Krakow was really nice, and we got picked up and went to this cute little Air B and B. It was probably the nicest one we have stayed in so far! In the morning we got picked up, and headed over to Auschwitz. We were super unprepared, and not dressed warm enough at all. The tour of the camp wasn't very good, and actually, they didn't tell us too much more than we had seen at Yad Vashem in Israel, but it was interesting to see up close. It was so sad to think about what had happened there, and they hadn't made it touristy,
just left like it was so people can see it. Afterwards, we went to the Birkenau camp too. I was sad to say that we were way too cold to fully pay attention to the tour, but you can see how miserable it would have been for people in these camps. After we left the camp, the driver took us to this lovely place for dinner, where we had nice traditional food. After that, we had booked like a combi tour for the salt mines. Who knew the salt mine would be so interesting! It was much bigger than I anticipated, and we even got to lick the walls! They really told us we could, and we did! It was very interesting, but then, when we got back into Krakow, we walked around a little bit to get perogis. We had some great ones and then walked back to the flat. It seemed like it was such a pretty city, and very clean but it was impossible to see because it was so foggy!