Carried away by the wind

I'm back in Canada after a lovely yet bittersweet three weeks in Europe with MM. We met in the airport in Rome, spent a few quiet days in a little Italian port city then boarded a cruise. 15 days and a dozen beautiful European city-ports later, we disembarked in the east of England and spent a few days in London before saying tearful goodbyes at Heathrow last weekend.

(a house on the canals in Bruges, Belgium)

Looking back at the pictures of the trip, and remembering the whole thing over again, I'm struck by how many of our pictures are of architectural details. Whether it was the fantastically highly wrought churches in Florence, the beautiful balconies of Barcelona, the steeply pitched roofs of Bruges (Belgium) or the limestone buildings in London, our pictures seem to be about the grand and little details of each of the places we experienced.

(the Duomo in Florence, Italy)

Granted we have a decent number of pictures of each other, usually of MM with a beer in his hand (he enjoyed sampling the various local varieties) or of me with my fun and silly custom made hat courtesy of a fabulous Etsy crafter, WorthyGoods.

(me on an open-topped tour bus in Barcelona)

And we have pictures of food, things we ate that seemed distinctive, like the gigantic and silly sundaes we ate in London's iconic Harrods department store.


They were straight of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party! (Sidenote: Imagine something like this instead of a wedding cake? Talk about wow factor!)

But overall, the pictures we took seem to act as memory boxes of the unique character of each city or town or country area. The markets, the streetscapes, the buildings, the statuary, these are what we wanted captured on film. And hopefully, too, some of the joy we felt at being together after a three month absence, and yes the poignancy of having to part again in London.

(MM & I near the port in Cadiz, Spain)


So now that the wind under the plane's wings has parted us both, me back here to Ottawa, MM back to Afghanistan, we will be able to use those photos over the next few months to remember the feeling and flavour and unique nature of each place and of the simple and profound joy of being hand in hand again, walking a city's streets, basking in togetherness.