For those of you who don’t know this already, my brothers and I are first generation US Citizens. My mother grew up in Warsaw, Poland and my dad grew up all over, but calls England home. I spent almost every summer growing up visiting my paternal grandparents. We spent most of the summer staying with my grandma, who lived by the ocean in a tiny town called Keyhaven. However, I always loved to visit my grandpa who owned a bed & breakfast in the English countryside, in another small town called Devon.

My grandma passed away suddenly when I was 13, which was extremely tough on all of us and cut back quite a bit on our trips to England. While my time with my grandpa was limited in recent years, we kept in touch, but I still wish I spent more time with him before his health deteriorated. When my grandpa Desmond passed away in May, I flew back to what I still consider my second home, Keyhaven, to celebrate his life.

While it’s always hard to lose someone you love, I was glad he was no longer in pain and a lot of my family came together to celebrate the incredible life he lived. My grandpa was an engineer and lived all over the world. I like to think my passion for travel and exploration came from him. We spent a long weekend remembering the wonderful times we all shared with him and spending time with family I hadn’t seen in a long time.

While I was in England, I got to spend some time in London visiting a college best friend who now lives there. He showed me around the night before my flight and we had a great time catching up.

Here are a few more photos from the time I spent in England…