We celebrated our month anniversary 2 days ago. Woohoo! It both feels like its been a month and also doesn't at all.

This first month we've been in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Germany. It's been a particularly nutty week as we've been in 4 countries just THIS week. Ireland (7) and Finland (10) were our long stays, the other countries were split, short and sweet. England we split our week across Bristol and London. Sweden and Denmark were actually stop-over stays where we only spent a day in. We arrived in Germany this past Wednesday. Our plan looks like this Bremen/Oldenburg (2) Berlin (7) and Munich (7). Eventually we'll slow down even further and stay 2 weeks in one place. But knowing that we have 90 days of Schengen travel we found it so so hard to say no to places, thus we have a bit of a crazy itinerary at times.

This month we've been so fortunate to spend time with friends and get to know their families and their cities. Bristol was one of those lovely occasions! My sister's longtime friend (and my former orchestra colleague) hosted us at her lovely house for a a few days. The neighborhood of Clifton was super cute, with plenty of shops, bars and a pretty spectacular view from the bridge. Our friends were so great to us, from setting a proper tea (complete with scones, jam and cream) to letting us escape for a date night away. What a rarity! Bristol really put on a show - complete with sunshine and warmth AND hot air balloons that just kept coming. One passed right above our heads, so close we thought it might land at the neighbors :)

Our smallest hostess, a 2.5 year old, was super adorable too. I know Harrison enjoyed her company in the backyard.

We even lucked out that the weekend we were there was a heritage week which had fun free events happening. We walked down into an WWII bomb shelter and heard about Bristol's history during the war. We also rattled through the town on a very ancient double-decker bus. The driver's assistant had to get out several times to help the driver navigate through the very skinny streets.

Bristol was a charmer!