Washington DC

This past week Andrew I were in Washington DC with his family. While I fell in love with the Virginia countryside, the humidity made me rethink my plans of buying a cottage and a farm and settling in. Here are some pictures compliments of instagr.am.

Washington Monument

Lincoln Memorial

Great Falls Park

Great Falls Park

Mt. Vernon

Colonial Williamsburg

Richmond, Virginia

On a side note, how did people live before macaroni and cheese was invented (read: we ate some really good Southern comfort food while there)?

More England and Ireland Pictures

Wow, I feel like I've gotten so behind on reading blogs/writing my own posts I don't know if I'll ever catch up.

Anyway, here are some of my favorite pictures from our trip. Andrew still has two rolls of undeveloped 35 mm film, so I might be putting some more up in the future.

We went to England with my family because my dad was invited to speak at a conference at Oxford University and my parents decided to rent a house and said Andrew and I could stay with them for free. My dad has a Masters and PhD from Oxford in Anthropology and I was born in England while he was attending school. When I was little we lived in England and Africa (where my dad completed his anthropological fieldwork) before moving to the United States when I was almost 5 years old. Before this trip I hadn't been back to England since I was 15, so needless to say, I was really excited. I think I have Andrew almost convinced to buy a cottage in the Cotswolds and move there permanently. We'll see, haha.

...and We're Back

Although I miss England already, I have to say it's good to be home. Especially home in a country where there are free drink refills in restaurants and lots of air-conditioning, haha.

These pictures were all taken using the insta.gram app on my iPhone, but Andrew took a lot of cameras with us, so I'll post some much better pictures (including Polaroids!) soon.

We had a lovely time and I can't wait to put more pictures up.

London Underground

Big Ben

Westminster Abbey

I don't know what these flowers were called,
but they were everywhere

Old garage by the place we were staying in Oxford

Randolph Hotel in Oxford

St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin

A park I don't remember the name of in Dublin

James Joyce Centre in Dublin,
"The Dead" is probably my favorite short story

Door from Leopold Bloom's apartment in Ulysses
that actually existed in real life

Packing List

I'm leaving for my trip to England one week from today. Is it just me, or is packing to look cute on vacation really hard? I usually arrive, look at the selection of clothes in my suitcase and think "What was I thinking when I packed?!" Also, by the end of a family vacation (especially one in a foreign country) I feel walked to death and so tired that I don't even care what I look like.

However, I am determined to look cute this time, so I made a packing list like a month in advance (and I've been fine tuning it for the past week or so because I'm OCD like that) and I also looked over Lauren Conrad's Style book that I received for Christmas last year. LC has some pretty good travel wardrobe tips.


Anyway, my main issue of indecision right now is deciding whether or not to bring these babies across the pond with me:

via

How do you pack when you travel? Any tips?