When you’re in Turkey and your friends (who are expecting) are in London, you make the trip to see them! Everybody knows that’s the way it works, right? To be clear, this was not a touristy weekend. Rather, this was our break from touring, a chance to soak up some time with our friends.
Like Amsterdam, London isn’t particularly close to Ankara, so we knew it would be a short weekend. We were so excited to get there! Despite arriving early on Friday evening, the insanely long line at passport control sealed our fate: the weekend would have to start on Saturday.
We kicked off Saturday with a lovely breakfast with the Cowies. We headed from there to the spa. I’ll admit, when Lindsey suggested we go for Russian banya treatments, I was very skeptical. But as the Dennis Quaid look-alike wafted my body with eucalyptus leaves as I laid in a steaming hot sauna, I softened to the idea. The entire experience was magical — even when fake Dennis left me wrapped in a sheet to be photographed.
Leaving more relaxed than I thought imaginable, we cleaned up and set off for brunch at The Botanist. We initially booked the trip just to see the Lindsey and Sean, but we had some last-minute surprises from some of our favorite people quite fortuitously. Meadows’ mom just happened to book a trip to see his sister in England over that weekend, so she rode the train up to London and met us for the afternoon!
We chose to avoid any and all tourism, but we visited London on the weekend of the Queen’s 90th birthday celebration. Tudda went and saw the celebration, although she risked being blinded by the Queen’s neon green garb…
After lunch, our whole group headed to Elizabeth Street to partake in the birthday celebrations. To be clear, this meant drinking beer (cider for me!) and eating patriotic cake in the midst of the quaintest street festival you’ve ever seen. It occurred to me that, in addition to creating our entire country, the Brits invented the “flag cake” (with strawberries and blueberries), which I so love to eat on the 4th of July.
And guess who showed up… Another one of our college besties, Hill!
Just before dinner, we said goodbye to Tudda as she headed back to Winchester. We proceeded to enjoy a fabulous dinner at Kurobuta. Lindsey arranged a private room for our group, which worked out so perfectly for our Vandy group.
I don’t have very many photos from Saturday (or the trip in general) because we were busy having so much fun with our friends. It was AWESOME to be together! But I did capture the boys’ post-dinner huddle:
One of Lindsey’s many great traits is her affinity for props. I should’ve known she would have something in store for us! Truthfully, my Queen mask came in handy when we were exhausted on Sunday morning. (I really wish I had a photo of Meadows in his trashy London tourist hat!!)
We ate our delicious brioche for breakfast and snapped our only picture with the Cowies (why couldn’t we have taken one when we looked better?). Farewell, London; and thanks for planning the best weekend, Linds!
What a life !!! Grandmother
Glad you could make it and sorry we didn’t get to connect this time. Its been really tough lately. I haven’t gotten to spend much time with your brother. I’m sure everything will be fine before Thanksgiving and it’ll be good to see you and the family again. I just miss him so much. I wish Kate and Will would just let us be public, ugh they are so controlling! Oh gosh, I’ve probably said too much. Talk to you later.