Hotel Streit

With the beauty of London in the spring/summer in full swing, our guest room has been filled with family members visiting the last several months.

Our first visitors, Geoff's parents, arrived in mid May. They were with us for about a week before they headed up north to Scotland for some adventures and we headed to Greece. We were grateful that the timing of their visit to London coincided with Ashton's baby dedication at our church. What a blessing it is to have our family support us in this journey of parenthood and in our responsibility to teach Ashton and Olivia what it means to follow Jesus. We pray that Ashton will be a warrior for Christ and that she will come to know Him in her heart at an early age. (And sometimes I also pray that she will never get a tattoo, strange body piercings or dye her hair an unusual color. :) )

Our next visitors were Uncle Steve (my 18 year old brother) and a couple of his buddies. After first making a stop in Barcelona (I think it hopes of meeting some Spanish babes :) ) for a few days, they arrived in London to do the typical sightseeing stuff. Alls fun when Uncle Stevie comes to town.

A few days after Stephen and his friends left, my sister Emily arrived. She had just finished a three week program in Amsterdam and added on a visit to London at its conclusion. It was fun having her here as she and I got to spend lots of time together taking in some of my favorite spots around the city.

It wouldn't be visit to London without seeing Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament

The London Eye

Westminster Abbey

Love this beautiful city!

One evening she was here, Geoff came home from work early so that Emily and I could go on a Jack the Ripper walking tour. Quite fascinating. Not only did we learn about the grisly murders of five women that occurred in the late 1800s (the identity of the murderer, "Jack", has never been determined), but also got a history lesson of the City of London and the east side of the city. A quick fact about London: the City of London + City of Westminster + 33 boroughs collectively make up London.

The Gherkin in East London

One of the murder locations

Moving on to happier thoughts than ghastly murders, another morning Emily and I wandered around the neighborhood of Notting Hill. This is becoming one of my favorite neighborhoods in London. It is very quaint and so colorful! Houses in all shades of the rainbow are represented multiple times over.

Last but not least, Emily is a big Jane Austen fan and requested we go visit her house museum. It was about a 90 minute train ride away in a small village southwest of London. Emily loved it and was in Jane Austen heaven. I spent most of the visit trying to prevent the girls from climbing on old furniture in the house and from touching breakable things. Phew...quite the task but I'm happy to say we left the house in the same condition as when we arrived.