DAYS 2 AND 3: THE JOYS OF AIMLESSNESS

LONDON — The theme-apparent of our life right now is "aimlessness." We got no plans, we got no home. We're just four happy wanderers biding our time until our July 8 entry into Barcelona. But even once we reach our new city, the aimlessness continues: Aaron has no idea what his job will be, and we have no idea how long we'll live abroad. 

All that aimlessness would've presented a real psychological challenge for my former self; right now, I'm just trying to soak it all in. As someone who has uber-planned much of my life, becoming a little directionless is really quite liberating. And it turns out this unexpected 38-day European detour is a really fun manifestation of the aimlessness challenge.

For each of the last two mornings, we set out late with no particular itinerary, and ended up tackling many must-sees on the Anglophile checklist: we gawked at dinosaur bones in the Natural History Museum, gazed up at Big Ben, chased pigeons in Saint James's Park, wondered why "Nutcrackers" are guarding Buckingham Palace, played hide-and-seek in Hyde Park, braved the circus that is Oxford Street, ate lunch at Spitalfields, walked across London Bridge (after making sure it was not actually falling down), rode atop some double-decker buses, and minded many a gap on the Underground. It was aimlessness at its best.

Besides creating no expectations to exceed or fall short of, aimlessness also has another benefit: when things start to get a little meh, you can just re-aim in another direction. We were initially thinking that we'd stay in London for another few days, but (and here comes yet another tourist lodging the same complaint) the weather is bloody awful. We haven't seen the sun since we were still flying above the clouds on Tuesday, and it hasn't warmed past 60; it doesn't make me like London any less, but we didn't leave Boston for nothin'. Next week's forecast for Scotland promises sun and warm temps, so we're going to chase the good weather and hop on a Sunday train to Edinburgh.

as i interrupted her bread and jam eating, She had no idea why i thought it necessary to take a picture of her face.

he was tickled when he realized why i was asking him to hold his hand out like that.