One of the perils of being a professional photographer is that often your own personal photos get put on the backburner. I’ve been meaning to share our vacation photos from this past June, better late than never, right? This summer we took an amazing and wonderful trip to Europe for my friend Laura’s wedding in France that I was photographing. Since you don’t get to go to Europe every day or every year for that matter, we turned this jaunt across the pond into a big summer trip. I was so excited because I love going to Europe and it was Cent’s first time since he was born. He was born in Germany, but his family moved back to the US two weeks later.

To make the most of this trip, we decided where we wanted to go and all the places we could see given the amount of time we had. We ended up going to London, Toulouse, Aspet (the village where the wedding was hosted), Lyon (where I studied abroad), Paris, and Berlin. It was so much fun!

One of the things that I didn’t really think about when planning a trip to Europe in the summer is just how EARLY the sun rises and how LATE it sets. The sun rose around 5:30am for the entirety of our trip, and without blackout curtains in some places, it was a bit of a rude awakening. But then I remembered that we were in Europe, so it was all worth it.

We arrived in London and started our adventure. We were so lucky to have great weather when we were in London. London is typically known for its fog and gray and gloomy weather, but we had beautiful clear skies!

The London Eye and Big Ben, two of London’s iconic sights.

Our friends recommended that we take the Beefeater Tour at the Tower of London, and I’m so glad that we did. I love historical trivia, so a tour like this was right up my alley. Here is Steve, our tour guide. The Beefeaters have a great sense of humor and are great story tellers. Did you know that they live at the Tower of London?

This is the Tower Bridge – not to be confused with the London Bridge.

We spent a couple of lunch breaks sitting in Trafalgar Square people watching. That’s the National Gallery behind the fountain. I loved visiting the National Portrait Gallery which had portraits dating back to the Tudors — Henry the Eighth — as well as contemporary work including a new portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton. I loved that so many of the national museums were free admission.

Now, if anyone wants to have their senior portraits done in Europe, I’m your girl! I have a passport and will travel! Send me a note here.

Until the next installment of our adventure…