London by the Numbers

London. I have been dreaming about visiting London for a very long time. I knew that I would eventually make my way to the UK, but we had never quite prioritized this destination. Even this trip was not a long-planned one. Originally we had planned on a trip to California with my brother and his wife later in the fall, but given the political climate, the wildfires that ravaged LA last year, and the horrendous exchange rate between the US and Canada, we pivoted. Isabelle and I found a good deal on flights to London, so off we went.

When looking back at the trip to London that Isabelle and I took just about a month ago, a lot of different numbers presented themselves to me. I thought this would make for an interesting take on my traditional back-from-vacation post. With that in mind, here’s my London by the Numbers.

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The Obligatory Egypt Post

One week ago today, I returned from my epic trip to Egypt. I’m still processing everything about the trip, which explains why I have yet to publish a new blog post on this topic. I tried to start writing it during some of my downtime at the end of the trip, but it just wouldn’t come. I thought about it over the past week, but it still would not flow. Maybe I was trying to hard to summarize everything that I experienced, everything that I saw, everything that I felt over the course of my 17 day trip.

Today, I will try to put a few words down. It will not be an in-depth, detailed tour summary. I just want to summarize the trip high-level(-ish), and talk about how and why the trip was important to me. So here we go.

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October Fun

One year ago today, my beautiful wife and I made a (very) long drive some 440 km back home from our aborted anniversary getaway weekend in Cape Breton. We had driven the same 440 km to Cape Breton the day before. A stomach bug got the best of the missus that day, and I was soon to follow after we got back home. We spent a miserable 72 or so hours for our 11th anniversary. That was when we decided we would book this year’s anniversary getaway on the spot. Booked and paid for a year in advance. Now we get to have some fun glamping.

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Life is Meant to be Lived

I was out for a drive on my own yesterday and put on a carpool karaoke-style playlist of songs that I love to rock out to. As I hit the road, I hit play and the first song that came on was Paranoid by Black Sabbath. Perfection for setting the tone of my drive: up-tempo, rocking and, above all, fun. What would be up next on my randomly shuffled playlist?

Song number two: Paranoid by Black Sabbath.

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DINKs and Death Cab

Last week, my wife and I took off on a short little getaway vacation to Toronto.  Although only a three-night stay, the fact of traveling to another city, in another province, did a lot of good for both of us. I find that going away forces your brain to realize, “Hey, I’m not at home.  I don’t have to worry about my job, or laundry, or yard work, or anything else.” 

We were in Toronto for a total of 72 hours (landed at 2:30 on Wednesday, took off at 2:30 on Saturday), and got in a total of 50 KM of walking over those 72 hours.  Here’s a quick rundown of our DINK Days.

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