Sept 16 - 23: London and Barcelona

On the night of our second wedding anniversary we flew to London where our official "Around the World" plane ticket began. (For anyone considering taking this adventure, the cheapest tickets start from London. So for us, even though we´re travelling west, it made sense to buy a flight to London and start there.) Plus, it gave us the chance to visit friends in London and check out a city - Barcelona - that neither of us had been to.

It was great to catch up with Kevin, Andrea, Vanessa, John and Delia in London. A huge thanks to Ned for lending us his flat (although we were sad to miss him!). We lucked into some beautiful Fall weather for our visit so days were spent mostly wandering the neighborhoods.

Allison tried to visit Barcelona three separate times when studying in France during college and was blocked by train strikes on all three occasions... So it was great to finally make it there! The city lived up to it´s reputation - beautiful architecture and lots of fun. Sadly, Barca didn't have a home game while we were there. But we watched an away game at a local pub with university students so Nader still had somewhat of a chance to soak in the energy. Late night dinners fit perfectly into our plan to not get too comfortable with European time zones since we were only coming back west in a few days -

We arrived in Lima last night after a marathon 14 hour flight. Our brief trip to UK/Europe was fun but our budget for the year is very happy to have finally reached cheaper South America!