I’m not really into sports at all, but I love watching the Olympics. I especially love the stories of the Olympics—athletes overcoming odd to get to the games, last-minute surprises and underdog victories, picking up and moving on when defeat hits.

Watching these past games in London brought to my memory the trip I took last year to visit London. The trip had nothing to do with the Olympics (I was just visiting a friend) and I was in a different part of the city, so the only evidence of the upcoming games that I saw was an Olympic count-down clock in Trafalgar Square.

But just like the Olympics, my personal experiences in London were full of stories. I might blog about it in more detail in the future—I could do an entire blog post alone on just the ancient Egypt exhibit at the British Museum, but for now I’ll just post one picture:

Part of an ancient Egyptian wall relief. Still pretty colors, after thousands of years!

There were plenty of little memorable moments that I could easily turn into a blog post, or even use as a prompt for a fictionalized story—like our mad dash through King’s Cross Station asking anybody we could where Platform 9 ¾ was, or my attempt at eating so-called B-B-Q chicken at an Italian restaurant that was run by Pakistanis.

I also made a quick detour by Norway on my way home from London. More stories could come from that short trip—like me accidently dropping a bottle of Pepsi at the grocery store and frantically wondering how to apologize in Norwegian when the thing exploded all over the aisle, or getting up at 3am to go catch the plane home and seeing that the sun had already risen.

So below I’m including a few more pictures of some of these random little moments. Each picture could be a story in itself, or I might use some of my adventures as prompts or fodder for future fiction stories. And if any of these pictures prompt an idea for a story in your mind, please go ahead and follow that prompting and write! Inspiration can be found anywhere!

London:

Anybody want a sewing machine? There’s got to be a story behind this one.

Old winding steps. Every foot that ever walked on these steps had a story to tell.

Bergen, Norway:

Another intriguing potential story–what’s up with all the doors opening into the air? Gotta watch that first step…

There be trolls in the forests of Norway!

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Has anyone else felt prompted or inspired by one little glimpse of something, or one picture or one incident? What stories do these pictures make you want to tell?