freitag favorites + london

After another week of crazy rain, I’m thrilled to go into this weekend with an evening full of blue sky and sunshine. It won’t last long, but at least there is more sunshine in our forecast next week. Surprisingly, it was less rainy in London over the weekend than it was in Zurich. Unfortunately, our little mini-break turned into an even quicker trip after a crazy day of travel delays.We were scheduled to arrive in London on Saturday by 1pm, but our short 1:30 flight became a 12 hour travel nightmare with our first flight delayed multiple times before being finally cancelled, re-booking, waiting around the airport, and eventually departing after two more delays on our second flight. Reese was a total champ and, thankfully, we were able to find a cozy, cuddle sleeping position in-flight and she conked out for most of the trip.

Since we only arrived at our hotel late Saturday night, we missed our whole first afternoon/evening of our trip. Luckily, we still squeezed in most of our favorite stops–breakfast at Muriel’s Kitchen, a wonderful morning at The British Museum touring the special sunken cities of Egypt exhibit, lunches at Dishoom and Nopi, a delicious porridge breakfast at 26 Grains, shopping around Covent Garden and Regent Street, including the fabulous children’s book selection at Foyle’s.

It was so much fun to shop and sightsee with my mom as she hasn’t been to London since our family vacation there about 17 years ago. We’ll definitely have to return when we have more time. Reese also enjoyed the trip more than last time and loved watching everyone and everything around her. Her favorite activities seemed to be chewing on straws and flirting with other restaurant guests and the chefs at Nopi.

My mom heads home to California tomorrow and it is hard for me to believe that her 4 weeks with us are already over. 🙁 Reese has grown so much in this time and I’m so glad that she was here to share all these days with us–swimming with Reese, cuddling, reading, practicing standing and crawling prep, and seeing her first teeth come in. I’m so sad to see her go, but at least know she’ll be back with my dad in September for Reese’s birthday. And, my sister is coming in just another week so that definitely helps.

This weekend we’ll be laying low enjoying a quiet weekend at home. I hope you have relaxing/fun weekend plans, and I’ll leave with you my favorites from this week . . .

• wired // This New Yorker article Martin shared gave me fond memories of reading my dad’s early issues of Wired, and our trip to the magazine’s headquarters in San Francisco when I was 16 to learn more about their jobs for an afternoon. Of course, I wasn’t all that interested at the time, but leave it to my dad to be ahead of his time and know what would be a cool experience.
• in the kitchen // Besides Father’s Day bagels for Martin, these English muffins and pickled strawberry jam are on my baking/cooking to do list.
• royal fashion // I know I was just there, but I really want to go back later this summer/early fall to see Queen Elizabeth’s wedding dress.
• summer treat // Here’s hoping we still have some days hot enough for a fruity ice pop coming up.
• road trip // It’s our first summer in Switzerland with our own car and I’m ready for a European road trip.

Schönes Wochenende!