Oh, just a little dream trip.

Brad's field of study has an annual meeting in Chicago (the North American Patristics Society: NAPS), except for every fourth year when they go international and meet at Oxford with the world's Patristics scholars (yes, this is a thing). This year was just such a year, and Brad had a paper accepted! So, we begged our parents to keep our children, and he and I got to take the trip of my dreams. 

Literal, actual dreams.

We planned it out so that we went touristing together for a week prior to the conference, I left for home (to pack for our fall semester move), and Brad remained for the 5-day conference. We had about 7 days and all of the UK at our disposal! It was a tad difficult to narrow down what we wanted to do/where we wanted to go (spoiler: we will need to make many a return trip in order to do all the things that didn't make the cut. Plus redo all of the things that we loved from this trip. It's going to be a lot of trips, y'all). 

The itinerary we landed on:
Fly to Edinburgh and spend 3 days.
Fly to London for 2 days.
Train to Oxford for 2 days.

!!!
Perfect. 

Perfect because I'm an anglophile and history lover and general traveler AND because we've discovered that it's vitally important to our marriage to have a few days about once a year during which we are child-free and can just talk with each other. It's SO NICE to be reminded of how much we like each other. That sounds funny, I know, but I mean it in all seriousness. We're in the "little" days, which are physically and emotionally demanding, so time just to talk is hard to come by. We know our parents all get this and value it for us, and for that, we're very grateful.

So, we shipped the girls off the Tennessee (they were later returned to Durham, where my parents took over) and began our trip! I didn't even know what to do with myself the morning we left: there was no crazy rushing around or searching for invaluable lovies. I felt like I was forgetting something every time I turned around!

Just wanted some documentation that when I'm not packing the children up for travel, I can pack quite light: backpack + underseater! Note: Brad ended up packing in a midsize suitcase that we checked. He needed touristy/sightseeing clothes for the first part of our trip and then needed dress clothes for the conference.

Waiting at our gate in Durham

Super cute reading nook at the Philly airport

Trying to get more pictures of the two of us. We have shockingly few these days.

A not-so-fun fact: I wore a pair of shoes for our trip that I have worn for at least three years. They are well broken-in. And yet, somehow, walking around the PHL airport gave me the WORST blisters. That story to be continued in Edinburgh...