Are we excited? Maybe a little.

We are way beyond excited about our upcoming journey.   

So now the research and planning has begun.  The first stop was the library:

But then......after doing some research, we came up with another brilliant idea.

Let's go here on a day trip from London:

So we are seriously considering taking a guided tour which will take us on a bullet train from London to Paris.  We will spend the entire day in Paris and the tour includes a double decker bus tour of the city, a 1 hour cruise down the Seine River, going up the Eiffel Tower, and going to the Louve Museum.  You then take the train back to London.  However, this entire tour is 16 hours so it makes for a very long day.....but what the heck -- we'll be on vacation!

We got a smoking deal with our airline tickets using our flight miles -- so our initial costs for 2 round trip non-stop tickets from Houston were 120,000 miles + $382.  We did upgrade our seats though because we really wanted the extra legroom and space for a 10.5 hour flight.  We didn't want to finance our house to pay for the little pod bed/seats.....but crossing our fingers we get a free upgrade  (haha......you never know).

We've spent the last 2 days (and way too many hours on deciding a hotel to stay in).  Our criteria was we wanted to be near things to do at night, had to be a London charm building with character (not some modern metal highrise), and conveniently located near subway.  We plan heavily on using public transportation and walking and want to be near things.

We splurged a little on this hotel because it's in the PERFECT location.....but still got an excellent deal at 50% off their regular rate.

Yay.....can't wait.  But now I have to get the house cleaned for company next week and I'm dying to go shopping for all the new clothes that I will need to go to London and Paris!  Seriously, a girl can't go on a vacation like this and not have new things to wear!