Europe Trip-Paris Part 1

After taking the train through the chunnel to Paris and getting off at Disneyland Paris, we took another train 45 minutes into the city (a regional train-RER)  The hotel was close to the Madeline church and 3-4 block walk from the RER.  Most everyone speaks English, which is a good thing because although I can read French, my pronounciation is terrible.  We dropped our bags off andhad a quick rest before checking out the St. Madeline church on the next block and enjoying some of a choral concert (they have them often there and free).  Beyond the church was the Champs de Llese and we walked up to the Arc de Triumph with great views of Paris since few buildings are very tall. The Eiffel tower is beyond the Arc & the Louvre in the opposite direction from our hotel.

St. Madeline church:

 

Walking up Champs  to Arc du Triumph:

 

 

 

Past the Oblisk:

 

 

Stairs to top of the Arc:

 

View of military memorial from above:

 

 

View of the hill-we just didn't have time to go! St. Pierre & Sacre Coeur.

View of the Eiffel Tower:

 

 

We then got Crepes on our way back to the hotel.

First we checked out the Louvre.  It's huge, has tons of religious art and a few famous pieces but honestly I enjoyed Musee Orsay much more.  Still-we were in Paris, so we checked it out.  France was much more generous with allowing photographs in the sights than England was.

Dining room in Napolean III apartment section-Louvre was the main Royal Palace before becoming a Museum

Many people complain that the Mona Lisa is smaller than they expected.  I think she's a "normal" sized painting.  However, she's pretty much the only painting in a huge room and it may make her look much smaller. Esp when you get a huge room full of people pushing to get close to see it and take a picture with her (the French allow photos in museums, but are not too big on lines or order-or maybe it's the large number of tourists-either way, the museum coordinators weren't pushing for any order of a line to be adhered to. The English would have had you all in a very orderly queue, I'm sure!

 

Venus De Milo

 

 

That's me... taking a selfie in front of the first statue of a selfie

 

 

 

After the Louvre:
We just happened to walk across the bridge with all the locks and keys Pont de l’Archevêché where there are so many locks the bridge is actually starting to sink.  Last month the police posted stickers trying to encourage tourists to take Selfies instead of attaching more locks to the bridge.  While we were there, a wedding couple was attaching their lock to the bridge.  One puts their lock on the bridge, then throws the key into the river to bring true, everlasting love.

 

We then went to the island in the Seine and visited the Concierge (where Marie Antoinette was held before her death) and Ste Chappelle (beautiful stained glass windows). 

 

This is the upper chapel where the royal family worshiped. Servants, etc. worshiped in a smaller, less ornate chapel underneath this one at ground level.

 

Each tall window tells a book of the bible, each scene a scene from the bible.

 

 

View from the outside:

 

 

 

 

 

Then we walked to Notre Dame. The crypt was closed and the line to go to the top of it was long and was "done" for the day. The line to go into the church was also long, but moved along quickly so we went inside.

 

 

Rose Window in Notre Dame-

 

 We also did take a quick peak in Harrod's department store.  If I knew what an amazing food area they had I'd have saved myself and eaten lunch there!  Next time, I guess!

 

 

June 2014

Yes, I'm a little out of order, but I AM updating the blog and hopefully, now that the kids are in school full time I plan to keep up once I'm caught up. Famous last words, right?

Anyways, back to June-I already posted V's graduation stuff, but the kids also took end of school year trips.  C's class went to Zooz, a small local zoo, park, etc.  V's class also met up at Zooz, but considering they are 3 & 4 years old the parents needed to bring them.  While we were there, V did her favorite thing (ok, 3rd favorite, but the splash pad and the Feed the Budgie Bird exhibits were both closed)  and did the kiddie course. H's class went to the Butterfly Conservatory-a huge atrium of plants and butterflies.

 

P and I got invited to his cousin's wedding, so we dressed up and went with his sisters and their spouses.

The garden bloomed-I plant mostly summer flowers (we have so many squirrels, I don't think the bulbs would make it) and a small patch of herbs/veggies.

V's hair finally got long enough to do double braids-we can do a single braid, but it still comes out pretty quickly.

The kids played with each other pretty well this summer and came up with creative ways to play together-like when H was huffing and puffing pushing this baby crib across the basement-finally he revealed his sister who only weighs 2 pounds less than himself was underneath!

European Vacation-England

We're pretty boring people.  We have beige walls, beige carpet.  We plan stuff.  Before our move, we were surrounded by boxes and my husband and I looked at each other and said, "after all this moving, we need a vacation-just the two of us."  So far our only vacations together have been:  Disneyworld honeymoon, a long weekend in Florida for Universal Studios checking out Harry Potter stuff (my inlaws went down at the same time), 3 days in San Diego and Vegas-both paid for and arranged by an accounting firm I worked for in WA to thank the employees for working so hard in tax season.

We moved a year ago and we have dreamed about a vacation-where we'd go, how much we'd spend, what we'd do.  We've looked online and closed the browser because there was too much going on or it cost too much.  When Paul took his June trip back to WA for work, he got bumped off his flight and got a voucher good for a future flight. We'd already booked our WA tickets for July/August, so we didn't have a use for it right away.  We looked over the last two weeks of June on the calendar (school gets out June 27th here) and realized we really didn't have anything going on and looked at plane tickets and looked at London and Paris-both places are pretty easy to get around with English and the little bit of High school French we knew.  The cheapest tickets we could find?  Leaving the next day, coming back in 10 days.  Could we really pull it off?  P called his parents and asked if they'd take the kids (they'd been encouraging us to take a trip, maybe not so soon, but they HAD said they would take care of the kids for us).  So we did it.  We called the airline and booked the tickets (couldn't do it online-too close to the time of take off). The voucher paid for a 1/4 of the cost. We also booked our first 3 days in London. The next day, we packed our bags, went to the mall for some pounds and Euros and guidebooks for London and Paris, which we read on the overnight flight over.

We arrived in London  to a few surprises:  the zipper on my backpack (large one for our luggage from my high school traveling days-we'd read that Europe is not exactly roller bag friendly) was broken and I couldn't get my straps out!  Finally P got it unstuck and we got it so that we could zip it up one way but not the other, which was fine.  Then we realized we had no idea where our hotel was and when we tried to sign into our e-mail in another country, our service figured we'd been hacked and wouldn't let us in.  We finally got our e-mail to work (it would have been prevented had I signed into my e-mail on the Surface we brought from the US-not only my regular e-mail but also my other one that my security code goes to-let this be a lesson to us-I don't normally use it to sign in for my e-mail).  We also figured out that though our hotel was not as close to the center of the city as we'd thought, but it was fine, it was close to a tube stop.  We gathered ourselves together, used the tube map from the guidebook and made our way to the hotel.  The room was teeny tiny!  The shower was about 2 feet square and the hallways about 2 feet wide.  Good thing we were pretty much only there to sleep!  We dropped off our bags.  We decide to have lunch at Café Below which is in the crypt of an old church near St. Paul's cathedral.  It was decent, but not the best food ever.  We then caught an afternoon tour of St. Paul's cathedral. Jet lag hit hard and we had to keep elbowing each other to stay awake.  We barely had enough time to make the hike up to the top of the cathedral before closing.

Many of the English places don't allow pictures inside (France was much more liberal about pictures). 


Leaving from the Paddington station, we went to the top of St. Peter's Cathedral to check out the view. 

We also walked along the Thames and found a blue police box for P, the Dr. Who fan as well as a red telephone box. We also walked beside Parliament and Big Ben and took some pictures.

Our first day lunch was in the crypt of a church. 

Reminders on the road helped those of us used to driving on the right side to know which way to look to check traffic before crossing:

The tube made travel around the city quite easy

 

The next morning we were up early so we went to the train station to ask about taking a train through the chunnel.  Apparently some sort of strike on the airlines meant that there were not a lot of train tickets left, but the agent suggested to us that we could take a train to Disneyland Paris and then take a regional train back into the city for a lot less money-just take a little more time.

 

We lined up to go into Westminster Abbey after having tea  and breakfast there at the Cellarium Café (located just next to the Abbey in the Dean's yard).

 

Westminster is where royals are coronated, wed & buried.

 

We also got our first peek at Big Ben and the Parliament building across the street.

 

 

 

We saw Buckingham palace from the outside (only allowed inside Aug & Sept when the queen is away) and walked through Herrod's which has an amazing food shop (if we'd known we'd have gotten stuff from there for a picnic).

 

 

We both admitted we were beat and went back to the hotel for a nap. Then we headed to the national museum which was open late that night. It had a very impressive collection, but we were a little disappointed most of the Di Vincis were off-limits due to an upcoming exhibit.  After walking and walking looking for a dinner spot, we finally gave up and ended up at Hard Rock Café which was still a long wait, but it was open and had food....

The next day we went to the Tower of London to  look around and see the crown jewels-well, sort of.  The crowns are there-the royals have been taking the jewels from one crown and putting them in the next over time, so there were pictures and they had the actual skeletons of the crowns available to look at as well as some replicas of the jewels so you could get an idea for their size and beauty.   Because it was a Saturday, we took the opportunity to go into the Parliament building and do the audio tour.  Very interesting to learn about the House of Lords, House of Commons, etc. Then we walked to the Tate Modern.  Some of Picasso's stuff was there, but mostly it was just TOO modern for our taste.  The café there was very good food for lunch. We had dinner at a local pub and headed back to the hotel to pack for our train to Paris the next day.

 

Took the train through the chunnel.  The train agent wasn't kidding that the train leads to Disneyland Paris. As in the front gates of it!  We had a nice breakfast and the ride was pretty smooth-maybe 2 hours or so.