We have been talking for years about how we wanted to celebrate this milestone. Originally we thought we would go back to Maui (where we spent our honeymoon) to celebrate where everything kind of started. Then we started throwing around the idea of Walt Disney World. We both love Disney (if you hadn't guessed by now) and thought it would be super fun to take a trip there!
The problem we kept running into was timing. We didn't have enough money saved to go in February (when our anniversary is). So we thought about going in September to give us more time to save up. We were seriously planning on going in September until all of the hurricanes hit last year (2017). Realizing that we would be there during hurricane season, we figured it probably wasn't the best plan. So, we decided to shoot for our 11th wedding anniversary since we should be out of hurricane season by then.
Fast forward to this year. Josh was getting email alerts about cheap flights pretty often. And he'd joke with me about going somewhere like Paris or Italy. I honestly thought that was never going to happen for us. But then we started looking into how much a trip like that would cost. And with a cheap flight, we would actually be spending about the same amount of money to go to Europe as we would to go to Florida!
So, we started saving our money and soon had our trip planned!
All of that to say, we spent almost two weeks in August in Paris, London and Dublin!
I could literally write pages upon pages about everything we did and saw and experienced, but I'm going to sum everything up so it's not too long!
We started our trip in Paris! We spent two days in Disneyland Paris and 1.5 days exploring the city! We went to Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysees!
In front of their Sleeping Beauty castle!
The entrance to the park! It's so pretty!
We ate at the Ratatouille restaurant!
Inside Disney Studios
Notre Dame!
In front of the Arc de Triomphe
At a sidewalk cafe on the Champs Elysees
From there, we headed to Dublin! Dublin was a last minute addition. When we initially talked about the trip, we were thinking we would go to Paris and Italy. But quickly realized we needed a lot of time in Italy to go to all of the places we wanted to see. So then we decided on Paris and London (for two major reasons: Disneyland Paris and the WB Harry Potter Studio Tour)! As we started planning out where we were going to stay, we decided to throw in 2 days in Dublin (because flights and trains and a lot of the transportation over there is really inexpensive). We ended up having less than 48 hours in Dublin but I loved every minute of it! I wish we'd had more time but we got to do a lot of cool stuff! We went to The Temple Bar and other pubs in the Temple Bar district, we toured the Guinness plant, visited Christ's Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral, as well as Trinity College and St. Stephen's Green.
The Temple Bar!
Learning how to properly drink Guinness
Former Guinness Advertisements
Christ's Church
St. Patrick's Cathedral
A very old library inside Trinity College
St. Stephen's Green
We then spent 3.5 days in London! We did a double decker bus tour, visited Westminster Abbey, saw a play (Aladdin) and did the Harry Potter Studio Tour!
On the top of the double decker bus
The dragons signify that you are entering the City of London
Tower Bridge
Westminster Abbey
Waiting to see Aladdin!
At Platform 9 3/4 in the real Kings Cross Station
I let all those pictures speak for themselves. The tour was one of my most favorite parts of our whole trip!
It was a lot of fun but we were definitely both ready to come home! Paris was our least favorite place and we don't necessarily feel like we ever have to go there again. But we would love to go back to Dublin and London someday!
