England, Croatia and Germany

 We had been talking about visiting Croatia for a few years (and then COVID hit and all travel came to a screeching hold) and we finally made it happen this summer.

We had somewhat of a limited timeframe due to Athletic dead periods for Hannah.  We ended up having 17 days and we packed a lot into our time in Europe.  We flew into London and got to spend a little bit of time with Ashley and Derek.

We landed, dropped our stuff off at the hotel and hit the road running......I should say we hit the road walking.  Nora's Garmin showed 28,000 steps by the end of that day!  We didn't have much of a plan and just wanted to explore by walking around.  

It was still really early (we landed at 7am) and still a little overcast, which was nice.  It turned into a pretty hot day after a while....

This giant swan was just sitting in the middle of the road and Evan and Nora tried to get somewhat close :)

We were walking towards Buckingham Palace and then quickly realized that we were there during the changing of the guards, so it was really crowded.  We caught a little bit of it, but didn't want to deal with the crowds.

We wandered around some more and found Big Ben :)

We walked around a bunch more, did some shopping and then met Ashley and my friend Nina for lunch.  We ended up at a Vegan Mexican place (we didn't know it was vegan until after we sat down) and discovered that you can not fool Evan with plant based meat :)

We did have tickets to go on the London Eye for late afternoon.....we thought it would be a good way to keep everyone moving and awake.  We were starting to feel the jet lag a little.

The last time we did the London Eye Nora was tiny and Evan was a toddler that kept trying to climb up and swing on the handrail inside the Pod.....

Evan loves to take pictures and edit them.....I find all kinds edited of pictures on my phone

The kids with aunt Ashley

After the London Eye we were fading pretty quickly and got some dinner and tried to go to bed at a decent time.

The next morning we took the train to Brighton to see where aunt Ashley and Derek live.  It was a beautiful summer day and so much fun to spend the day on the coast. (it was still little overcast in the mornings and then turned into a great day)

Ashley and Derek recently got a puppy and the kids were smitten with her right away.

You don't make it very far walking on the Boardwalk with a puppy.  You get stopped every few yards, because people want to pet her and say hello:)

I told Evan when he is older and wants to meet women he just needs to get a puppy :)

The puppy needed a little rest on Nora's lap

Evan was really excited for some fish and chips

We spent the evening on the beach and it was perfect and so much fun.  

We found some puppy ice cream for Islay.....

.....and some ice cream for the humans as well :)

Drinks, pizza and play time on the beach until almost 10pm......I love European summer nights when it stays light out for so long!

The water was a bit cold for me, but that didn't stop Evan, Nora and Ashley from swimming

We have decided that pebble beaches have several pros over sand beaches :)

It is actually quite comfortable to sit on or lay down (kids discovered that it could also double as massage rocks/hot stone therapy), you can stack pebbles as a game and you don't get sand everywhere.....you don't have to clean anything up and sand doesn't stick to you.

Biggest con is that it's hard to walk on for us old folks.  Haha.  Didn't seem to bother the kids at all.

The kids spent the night at aunt Ashley's house......

The next morning we had breakfast on the boardwalk and then some more time on the beach before heading to the train station to get to the airport.

Evan was running on the beach and wrestling with Islay.....I really don't know how he ran on the pebbles, but it was very entertaining to watch him

It was a great first few days of our trip.

We arrived in Split, Croatia fairly late at night due to delays, but we still ventured out to the boardwalk and had ice cream at 11:30pm!