Always leave a note: "What's wrong with that noodle?": Keegan comes to Wee Britain!

Keegan's visit was just the best thing ever. I missed him so much! It went by quicker than I ever thought possible. We spent so much time together laughing, talking, and exploring. It was eleven days, but far too short. I think it makes more sense fo me to tell you everything we did on the captions of the pictures instead of writing a big long paragraph in the beginning, so here goes!

We started off the week with a visit to the Borough Markets, absolutely one of my favorite places in London. We walked around the stalls and tried samples of really stinky cheeses and really thick olive oil. And our trip wasn't complete without a visit to Bridget Jones' house from the movie!

Some beautiful stinky cheeses from the Borough Market.

After the market, we took a walk over to the Shard. It's absolutely enormous! We tried to take the elevator to the top but it was 30 pounds. Lame.

After the Borough Markets, we just wandered for a bit around London. We crossed the London Bridge and got some great views of the Thames by walking on a river path at sunset.

Only seems a little bit dangerous...

Me being silly on the Thames at sunset.

And me being silly yet again...

The beautiful city at sunset.

Our walk finished up at the Tate Modern, after we crossed the Millenium Bridge. Here's a good view of the bridge with the river and St. Paul's Cathedral in the background.

For the next few hours, we walked through the Tate Modern and criticized all of the weird contemporary art.

...Such as this "gate"...

Millenium Bridge and St. Paul's at night. Lovely!

The next day, we visited Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. This picture was taken outside of the Westminster Abbey Cloisters.

Me and the boy outside of Big Ben on a rare sunny (ish) day in London.

Inside the Westminster Abbey Cloisters.

Really cool old grave stones and memorials inside the Westminster Abbey Cloisters.

Pretty window into the courtyard.

Westminster Abbey Cloister with Houses of Parliament in the background.

Beautiful stained glass, Westminster Abbey Cloisters.

Teeny tiny Monk door perhaps?

Westminster Abbey at sunset. This picture was taken right before Keegan and I went into the church for a free organ recital. Being in the massive church with loud organ music echoing through the nave was such a cool experience!

After the organ recital, we walked to the bridge next to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament for some typical London pictures.

Houses of Parliament and the Thames at sundown.

The London Eye! At this time of night, you can see little camera flashes going off at every little pod along the wheel.

The beginning of our Big Ben photo shoot.

Happy me outside of Big Ben.

Another one of Keegan and me outside of Big Ben.

Look mom, I'm a model!

Winston Churchill-esque?

Lookin good, pal!

Keegan being silly.

More silliness...

This reminds me of Peter Pan! Big Ben and the London Eye at night.

The next day, Keegan and I began our 3-day trip to Wales. We had just boarded the train at Paddington Station in this picture. Keegan loves trains. Can you see the excitement on his face??

Overexposed sleepy train picture.

After a two hour train ride, followed by a nauseating but beautiful bus ride through the picturesque Welsh countryside, we arrived at our destination, Monmouth, Wales - the town of the first Phelps people!

After dropping our stuff off in our hotel, we took a walk around town. We found a great cafe on a rooftop in the town center and got a cup of hot chocolate. It was surprisingly warm and sunny out!

Hot chocolate on a rooftop in Wales.

We walked to the medieval bridge that stood at the entrance of the town on the Wye River.

View of Monmouth from the bridge. Absolutely beautiful.

Here's another good view of the bridge.

Street sign with Welsh translations. I know what you're thinking, and yes - the names are pronounced exactly as they're spelled (heehee).

We finished up the day with a walk around the rest of the town. We ended up at the Monmouth castle just in time for sunset, where we saw beautiful castle ruins silhouetted by the glowing country sky.

The road leading up to the castle. Almost all of the houses in Monmouth were painted a pretty pastel color.

Keegan tricked me into thinking we had only auto-timed one picture on his camera...

When he actually took ten consecutive ones! So funny.

A view from Monmouth at sunset.

Keegan being silly in front of a museum in Monmouth.

Monmouth, Wales - the first Wikipedia town in history! There were QR codes like this all over the city. Really cool idea, I wish the internet on my phone worked!

We spent the rest of the evening walking through the adorable side-streets of the town.

Here's another picture of Monmouth after sundown. A beautiful little town.

The next day, we took a bus to Tintern Abbey, the famous ruined Cistercian Monastery written about by William Wordsworth and painted by J.M.W. Turner.

The empty windows and fallen walls amidst a foggy mountainous backdrop was really breathtaking.

We were the only ones there, so we decided to play a game of hide-and-seek among the ruins. So much fun!

A picture of Keegan and me wandering through the monastery.

More wandering pictures.

Another group of self-timed silly pictures, haha.

...Being goofballs.

More beauty inside Tintern Abbey.

Cool old column bases.

I loved these big empty windows! I can only imagine the stained glass that must have filled them at some point.

Inside the cathedral. I loved the grass on the ground around the columns. It was so cool!

Absolutely sublime.

Some columns in black and white.

A view of some of the rooms of the monastery.

A view of the Abbey from down the road.

An absolutely enormous place!

After the abbey, we stopped in a little cafe in quiet Tintern for tea, where we ate traditional Welsh cakes!

We returned to Monmouth in the evening for dinner at an Indian restaurant, where a ton of musicians have eaten, such as Oasis, the Spice Girls, and Black Sabbath. The town's claim to fame is a recording studio a little bit outside of the city walls!

Funny Welsh words in the grocery store.

Another walk around Monmouth.

The next day, we woke up early and went of the town of Abergavenny, where we thought we would be able to hop on a trail and do some hiking through the Brecon Beacons. Unfortunately, the weather had other plans for us. You can see the emotion that we were feeling on Keegan's face when we tried to kill some time by visiting the Abergavenny castle, next to a museum that was closed.

Although our original plans were ruined, we still had a good time being silly around the castle ruins.

More pictures of the Abergavenny castle.

We walked around the town a little bit, and stumbled upon a really nice cooking shop. We had fun loking at the absurd amount of egg accessories they had, such as this egg pillow. Which is super useful, you know, for holding your egg...

A little egg man egg cup with little hammer and spoon for cracking and eating your egg. Really ridiculous haha.

...yet another egg accessory...

...and another...

Really? An egg sleeping bag? NOW this is getting ridiculous!

Abergavenny was really pretty, but we did get an overwhelming sense that the town doesn't get many tourists, especially during terrible weather.

A walk in the Abergavenny park.

Some cool rocks Keegan and I found along the banks of a river.

We cut our trip in Abergavenny short because of the weather, and took a detour to Cardiff instead. We spent some time walking through this big indoor market, which basically has remained unchanged since it was built in the 1800s.

Cardiff was a really lovely city. We didn't wee a lot of it, but the area that we were in was a really well-planned new development that mixed in old architecture and buildings with modern structures in a really beautiful way. Normally I don't like that kind of thing, but it was really well done here!

We spent about an hour sifting through records at this cool old record store in the covered market...

...where we found gems like THIS one!!

We walked through a mall in central Cardiff and played in the Lego store for a while. Here's two mini lego people we made into us! I gave Keegan his peg leg.

Official-looking buildings in Cardiff at the end of our Wales trip.

The next day, I met Keegan at the British Museum after my morning lecture. I've never been before, so it was really cool to go with him!

Outside the British Museum on a rainy day.

Keegan excited to be in the British Museum!

Silly kids!

Seeing the Rosetta stone was so cool! There was a hugs crowd around it and everyone was taking pictures.

Wandering through the British Museum (we spent 4 whole hours there!).

These were funny medieval plaques that depicted the adolescence of Jesus. Some medieval artist thought that part of his life was underrepresented, so they decided to fill in the gaps with these hilarious things. Most of them involved Jesus getting bullied, Jesus getting mad and killing his bully, Mary swooping in and yelling at Jesus, and Jesus bringing his bully back to life, haha.

NOT made by slaves! An East India Sugar cup from slave-era Britain.

Islamic art section. So cool!

We spent a long time in the Greek and ROman sculpture section, so we started to get creative.

The next day, we took a walk through my neighborhood and went to the Portobello Road Markets in Notting Hill. Here's a cute pub around the corner from my house!