Paris: a few highlights

We LOVED the Eiffel Tower...or should I say "Tour Eiffel." You can see one of the views we saw from the top. That night we ate at a lovely cafe where we sat over looking the lit up tour. We both ordered the French Onion Soup...and it was the perfect ending to a cold, rainy day.

 

The Rodin Sculpture Garden was absolutely stunning.  We found a nice Canadian couple to take our photo--one of the few we have of the both of us :).  Rodin is famous for his scutpler "the THinker" that if you've seen Night in the Museum II, you will most definitely remember as the statue that was showing off to the half naked lady statue.  Anyway, back to Paris...Christian was most enthrawled by the gardens, hedges, trees, and of course the statues too. I was grateful for a beautiful place to rest my feet, and the bathrooms were actually clean!

There were many fun places to eat and shop near the Pompidou--the modern art museum. It has all of the electrical and structural support on the outside so it makes for a pretty crazy building. We saw some magicians and street performers, too.  Very fun place.  (In the picture, you can see C1 enjoying his crepe just outside the building).

We had to have crepes--and Christian talked me into a savory one, and I'm glad he did.  Provolone and ham--delicious...although I could have done with half as much cheese :).  Polo Jeans guy did a marvelous job...so we went back to him a few days later to try a sweet crepe.

Sacre Coeur (meaning sacred heart FYI) was our favorite place in Paris--pictured in the Paris sneak peak post.  This white church was just amazing and actually felt like a good place to worship...in contrast to some of the other cathedrals' distracting dark feelings.  There was a great view of the city, and we got our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tour while there.

Over all, the Parisians were incredibly helpful, and spoke great English...as long as you asked them to.  The metro was easy (for C1, anyway), and minus the 2nd broken umbrella, hives, our convertor breaking, me losing my 3-day metro pass within 2 hours of purchasing it, and all the museums closed for "May Day" our last day there, Paris was full of art, color, creativity, great cheese, unforgettable gelato, hard-to-pronounce words, and everything I had hoped it would be!

Paris sneak peak

I can't spell anything in French, so I will do my homework and report more later.

Europe...and other things more pressing

What can be more pressing than reporting on a two-week, four-country adventure in Europe? Well, I'll tell you:

1) My mom turned 50 (happy birthday!)

2) My sister is getting married!

So, to honor chronology I'll start with Europe and keep you waiting (all 12 of you who read this blog) for an update on the my mom's 50th birthday party and my sister's exciting news!!

London

We stayed with Christian's cousin and her family (her some of her adorable children are pictured below).  They lived about an hour away from London city center, so we rode the train to the city each day--except Sunday, when they drove us around to see count

ryside and villages.

Favorite things about London (if I HAD to choose)

1. The accents, of course. (brilliant, rubbish, mind the gap, mummy) 

2. Seeing Oliver at the Theater on Dreary Lane (sorry, no muffin man there--just a fabulous

 show with tons of little boys singing and dancing).

3. Portobello Road--the antique store was my favorite--3 pieces of jewelry for 5 pounds! I wished I was more of a jewelry person at that point.

4. The Architecture--Big Ben and the Parliament House...or is it House of Parliament? Westminister Abbey, Buckingham Pallace, and the modern business buildings.

5. Feeding the birds at Busy Park (we didn't even have to use our toppins!)

6. Going to Harrods--where else can you find Prada and gelato in same store? We partook of only the latter of those two, mind you!

7. Seeing little towns/cities that look like Mary Poppins and/or Peter Pan should be flying across the sky (ok, so Mary Poppins more like floats...).

8.  The fish and chips--even though it really wasn't as tasty as I was hoping, we ate at a place called The Red Lion, and it of course has been around 100 years because EVERYTHING in Europe has been around at least that long.

9. Red Bus Tour (hop on hop off)--this kept us out of the rainy, rainy, rain, and still allowed us to see all of the major sights we were hoping to see. This was especially helpful after our umbrella broke.

10. Hyde Park--we walked the entire thing and saw everything from scandalous lovers to whistling old men (I wanted to take him home with me he was so adorable...or at least get a recording of his tune), and people of all ages rollerblading.  It was truly entertaining.

OK, stay tuned for much, much more...next up...Paris!