Kyle visits the Motherland

Porter's Dad, Kyle, told us he had bought tickets to visit us the last week in April and the first week of May.  He is the first of our parents to make it to the Motherland, so we were pretty excited to see him.  The morning he arrived we met our lovely friends: Tom, Vicki, and Susie for brunch.

We have had a lot of company lately and have been traveling a lot, so we were very relieved when Kyle let us know that he was fine taking it easy.  We did a lot of hikes around the city and Wimbledon.  We ate lots of yummy food, played some music, visited some maritime museums and Kyle also did a bit of sailing in south west England around Plymouth.

I took Kyle to an old bookstore.  He loved it, and I found some fun old sheet music.

We, of course, had to do the walking tour around Big Ben, the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, and Exhibition Row.  The walk is roughly 5 miles.  We also took the dogs, and they LOVED it!  However, the tube ride home was during rush hour.  I was super impressed with how well the dogs did on the train.  They just sat, squashed among fifty other bodies, and waited for our stop.

We stopped by the palace for some tea with the Queen.

We took Kyle to one of our favorite Indian restaurants, Curry Royal.  I think he is a fan.

Puck was super excited to have a new human to snuggle.

Kyle is very into sailing.  He lived on a sail boat for a few years, and frequently spends winters in Mexico sailing around.  He actually has his own blog where he talks about all his adventures.  We all took a trip down to Greenwich for a visit to the National Maritime Museum.

They loved looking at the ships.

GBK is one of our favorite burger joints.  Kyle ordered a burger that was almost as big as his head, haha!  But really, we go there for the rosemary fries.  You can see them at the bottom of this picture.....pure heaven!

We hiked all over Wimbledon Common.  The dogs had a blast with all the walking they got to do.  

We finally discovered a nice stream where they can play without getting too muddy, and without chasing ducks.  On one of our hikes, the dogs were off leash, and we accidentally let them go into a pond where different birds were nesting.  There was a lot of excitement (from the dogs), yelling, splashing, and frantic grabbing, but we got them out with out any ducks becoming chew toys. Phew!

On our way up to Wimbledon Village.

Long hikes deserve long naps.

Nitro ice cream from Camden Town Market.  I told Kyle we should split it, but he said no.  He was ready to face that ice cream sandwich all by himself!

Porter and his Dad in front of our Local, The Dog and Fox.

We found a funny little Mexican place with a real life, plush, Mexican giraffe.

Walking under the Thames.

Kyle also spent a weekend dingy cruising around Plymouth.  He has a whole blog post on it.  I stole a few pictures from Facebook to put on here.  It looks beautiful!

We loved having Kyle visit!  And the dogs loved going on 5 mile hikes every other day.  Hopefully he can come back and do a little more dingy cruising.