husband

Porto

11:20 PM


We went into this part of our trip with zero recommendations from friends so I was pretty worried it would just wander aimlessly and be a mistake to add to our itinerary since there was still so much to see in Lisbon...happy to say I was wrong! It ended up being our favourite city.

We fell in love the city immediately. It was all dressed up for Christmas and even though it was the coldest part of Portugal (which was still 30F degrees warmer than London so no love lost) 

If you follow my personal account on Instagram, you might remember THIS from when we tried to get a random person to take our picture in front of the Roman Colosseum.
Short story: FAIL. And guess what? Same thing happened when we tried to get a specific picture on this cute bench swing.
I know BENCH SWING! It could have been great...but I love this guy.
Cute French couple for this win! I have zero confidence in the random people but I won't give up because I never get to be in our travel pictures.

Christmas selfie!

Cais da Ribeira

A UNESCO World Heritage Site from the coolest/scariest bridge

Across the top of Ponte Dom Luis I, there is little to zero barrier between the pedestrian path and the train. On the lower level, a narrow pedestrian path means two people can't comfortably pass in opposing directions. So you're always just THIS close to being hit by a car or train haha



Roberta Square :)

Palacio da Bolsa



TILES!

Doors!









They are all just so charming and photographable.





I seriously love all the tile facades

Inside the Porto Cathedral

We love to find a building or place to get up high and see the city we are visiting from above. The Clergios Tower was a pretty good view!

It's pink on the inside!

View from the Tower

Sao Bento, one of the prettiest train stations I've ever seen

The blue tile work is gorgeous

See??

We tracked down a recommendation along the Cais da Riberia for one of the many, many recipes for the dried cod that the Portuguese love so much.

One of the weirdest things I can't get over about the traditional Portuguese food is this: while there are over 350 dishes in which they prepare cod, they never have FRESH cod! Probably have never tried fresh cod ever. It's always salt dried cod. WHAAA? (Refer to my Lisbon post to see the photo of the dried cod)

This is the cod post-multiple water soaks to remove the majority of the salt, roasted with potatoes and crumbled cornbread with a generous amount of olive oil.
Very tasty but a different texture to the fish which needs no additional salt or flavouring.

We were in London for such a short time in December that Taylor had to get a little groomed in order to go back to work.

My favourite guy all cleaned up and handsome. Gosh, I love him.

adventure

La Sagrada Familia

7:55 PM

We got on the Hop on-Hop Off tour bus from Plaza Catalunya to get to La Sagrada Familia (no. 5 on TripAdvisor's recent Traveler's Choice list of Top 25 Landmarks of the World!)

Even if you see all the pictures, nothing compares to standing in front of Antoni Gaudi's masterpiece (still incomplete...decades later)

We stepped off the bus and our mouths were just hanging open the whole time. It is an impressive Catalan Modernist building with all the ceramic, carpentry, spots of bright colour and sculptures and gorgeous stonework on the outside. (all unedited photos, also I'm learning the setting on my camera ok. Still a newbie but I'm obsessed. Obviously...)

The Nativity
Directly above baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph you'll see the tree of life. It looks like a real life tree!

THEN YOU STEP INSIDE


The whole building is like a living, breathing thing. Trees instead columns stretch to the ceiling which is covered in stone vegetation. Gaudi was inspired by three passions: architecture, nature and religion.

An interesting thing I read about him: he preferred to create 3-D models of his designs and rarely drew any plans, molding the details as it came to him. He followed the organic forms found in nature.

And can we just talk about the stained glass for a minute?
There is so much light allowed to flow through this giant main room that the feeling is unlike any other cathedral/abbey/basilica that I have ever visited.


Colours and light refracted everywhere.

I'm a stained glass lover. Taylor didn't even get mad about the dozens of photos I took. :)

He thought of every single detail, down to the thickness of the glass; varying the thickness to control the light's intensity.


It's not hard to see why it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, 5th on the World's Top Landmarks. I see a Gaudi-specific trip in our future....

Bruce

Family Visit to London - Feb 2015

3:56 PM

We wanted to show off our city to our first family visitor! 

We walked from the Waterloo Bridge to the Shard. It's about a mile and a half walk along the river Thames so we got to see some iconic London sights on the 30 min walk on the Southbank. 

First stop: Get the view from the Top of the Shard. This is the tallest building in Western Europe. It houses a hotel, corporate offices and private apartments. It was imagined as a building where people can work, relax, and live. 73 floors up, you get views like this...

To the west. See if you can spot: Millenium Bridge, Blackfriar Bridge, Tate Modern, and the Coca-Cola London Eye

To the North (and east-ish): the Walkie-Talkie, the Cheesegrater, the Gherkin, London Bridge, HMS Belfast, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, City Hall and waaaay off in the distance is Canary Wharf. 

Larson's way up high above London Town

Love these guys

My favourite human

When you're on the Southbank, you HAVE to go to Borough Market. For a snack, for a meal, or just for browsing. 

Like this! Even if you don't love olives, doesn't it look beautiful??

After wandering all around the market, getting some samples (favourite was a mushroom pâté), we decided on Ethiopian food. YUM!

Next stop: St Paul's Cathedral tour

Secret picture of the inside of Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece
The dome is absolutely incredible. Favourite architectural gem in London!

View from the top of the St Paul's dome. A great view from the other side of the river.

One New Change, Gherkin, Walkie-Talkie, Cheesegrater from the top of the dome.

After showing Bruce our flat and around our neighbourhood, we wandered over to St John's Wood. I had walked through this park before but never noticed the tombstones!  

We hopped on some Barclay's Bike (now red Santander) and biked down the canal in Regent's Park to get to Camden Town and Market. We had walked poor Bruce around like crazy, forgetting that the jet lag coming this way is REAL.

 
We got to check out the Camden Lock/Chalk Farm Market.

Busy and exciting place. TONS of food that looks like it would be worth a try!







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