The rest of Detroit

We were in Detroit for a few days before and after our grand European adventure. Aunt Jenny (or, as Natalie says, "Jenji") was also there.

We spent lots of time playing - in the backyard, at parks, and inside with all of Bubbe and Grrr's great toys. Of course, outside play was generally Natalie's favorite - poor girl can't get enough time running around outside, and it's much too hot here to let her do that to her heart's content.

Nothing says summer like a hammock, no? 

Soccer city! Not that I think these things are genetic, but, well, alert the college scouts! Although, we may need to refine our understanding of "the rules of the game".

Summer is also, apparently, for the (My Little) Ponies.

Natalie still loves swings!

But the best part of this park? The rocks!

Everybody loved the park!

 

We left for Europe the next day, but here are a few of my favorite photos taken by Bubbe and Grrr of all the fun Natalie had while we were gone. I know some of these appeared in their post, but, well, I couldn't resist!

She had an awesome week, no? When we came back, we were SO HAPPY to see our girl!

And our girl was happy to see us (and our iphones)!

Training the animals:

Washing up:

 New York ladies are so stylish:

We also spent the last few days in Detroit celebrating cousin Zak's wedding. Or, as Mike prefers to call it, Mike's time as captain of the chuppah(-carrying) team.

That was it! Then we chugged / rolled on back to Texas.

p.s. [for the tech folks out there] I upgraded to the new version of blogger. I sort of like it, but I'm also irritated that that the wysiwyg editor seems to have vanished - my photo layout never looks like it does in the actual browser preview. So I then spend a lot of time tweaking the code, for a sort of so-so result. Thoughts?

p.p.s. I've also thought about migrating the whole blog over to wordpress, but I feel trapped with blogger because of our wonky subscriber situation. Right now, a few folks read through RSS, but the majority of our 7 or so readers get the posts via an email bounce from Mike's gmail. I'm not sure that such a set-up would be possible with wordpress. What I need is a way to subscribe people to full-text emails of each new post (without the recipients doing anything at all to subscribe themselves). Hello, spam!? Thoughts? I really would like to think about wordpress....

London

Since our flight was in and out of London and since we had an early departure on our last day, we always knew we'd end up back in London. Rather than just stay in an airport hotel for one night, we decided to split our trip between London and Paris, and stay in the city and see some things.

We took the Eurostar train between the two cities. We thought it would be a good extension of our Japanese train experience. It was. I mean, it was fine. Not blog-worthy. Moving right along.

To London!

We were lucky enough to hook up with our very good friends from Seattle. In a happy accident, they just happened to be there at the same time.

Our friends are real London experts - which was a relief to us! After a few days of calling upon my memory of things in Paris or looking them up in guidebooks, we were happy to let our friends take the lead. And they did not disappoint! Minutes after arriving at our hotel, they were skillfully guiding us to a yummy vegetarian lunch. We then did a little shopping, but Mike wouldn't let me bring this 32,000 piece(!) puzzle home. Oh, the injustice!

Then we hit Hyde Park:

Then it was time for tea! (of course!)

The next day, the three of us headed to Hampton Court Palace.

It was a good way for us to see how the locals lived. Note the clock with the sun rotating around the earth.

The palace is actually really beautiful and interesting and has some amazing art.

And the gardens, oh, the gardens . . . I miss the color green!

A special statue for all the mothers:

And more gardens (because I never tire, and because this is my blog):

We even toured the maze. It was actually harder than I thought it would be. We found our way out, but we never found the center.

That evening, we went dinner with my British cousins.

We all share the same great-grandparents:

The next day, we hit the British Museum. I try very hard not to be one of those obnoxious people taking pictures in museums. I, however, have no such shame about the views from bridges.

Why did the Texans cross the bridge? To get to the Fish and Chips, of course!

(No, we didn't finish it all. Yes, it was really, really, really good.)

That evening, we joined our friend for Thai food (at the London location of the place we went to cooking class when we were in Thailand. How cool is that?). Out friend ordered tea, and got a pretty awesome teapot.

The next morning, it was off to the airport very early. We had a quick breakfast in the airport - Mike was in heaven with all the sauce options!

(heaven is apparently a very contemplative place). 

Anyway, we didn't eat this for breakfast, but I found it amusing all the same....

After that, it was home to see our girl. We were ready! Mike and I both agreed that while the flight was long (8 hours), it definitely felt no longer than a 3 hour flight where constant amusement and game-playing is required. So, well, that's something! 

Next up: the rest of Detroit!