Spring Break: London

So we woke up Wednesday morning and made it to the big train station Gare de Nord, to take the train to London. It was an easy trip but you do have to check in and wait to board in a separate area than the regular trains so it was a good thing we figured that out and cleared customs in plenty of time. The train ride is 2 hours which seemed like nothing at all.

When we exited the Tube station (prices are ridiculous if you aren't getting a day pass to ride the tube (subway)) in London we wandered a little to get our bearings and find our hotel. We stayed at the Park Lane Sheraton and it was in a great location right near Buckingham Palace. The free breakfast we got there was awesome.... you could choose anything from fruit, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc. etc. It was much better than the bread and croissants you could get with Jim's hotel status at the Westin. Anyways below you will find some pictures from our few days of sightseeing.... the only super eventful things that happened was the fire alarm going off in the middle of the night at the hotel one night... and our flight back to the States getting cancelled and having to run through the airport to catch a flight to Miami so we didn't have to stay an extra day! We didn't get to sit together for the 10 our trip home but at least I was able to make it into work the next day!

After we left our bags with the concierge we were quite hungry and didn't feel like going to far so we wandered literally next door to the Hard Rock Cafe. Did you know that the one in London is the original?? Once our room was ready we unpacked then wandered around the city a little bit and caught a sunset ride on the London Eye (A giant Ferris Wheel that holds like 25 people per car). You get a great view of the city and I would definitely suggest it though it is somewhat expensive. Museums and attractions in London definitely have higher prices than the ones in Paris which is too bad... but you only live once and who knows when we'll be back!  I was also bummed that we couldn't take any pictures inside Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's... good think we have the internet to look pictures up to remind us how gorgeous they are inside! :)  We spent each day exploring everywhere we could think of and the weather was absolutely gorgeous! It was not the typical dreary London weather!

Buckingham Palace 

Big Ben 

View of Big Ben from the London Eye

The London Eye 

Me in front of Buckingham Palace 

Westminster Abbey  (though St. Paul's was my favorite church, the dome inside was AMAZING)

Olympics Countdown in Trafalgar Square 

Jim's fish and chips & mushy peas 

The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum 

The National Portrait Gallery in London... we just randomly decided to go in here since it was free... best decision ever... I was happily surprised when we wandered into the rooms with the impressionist paintings :) 

Piccadilly Circus  

The Tower of London... they were refurbishing a lot of it (and the city in general for the Olympics) and I was disappointed that more of the Crown Jewels weren't on display like the last time I was there

Tower Bridge

We took the tube up to see Jim's favorite team's stadium :)  

We had our last lunch at Harrod's.... I love this place... you could get lost shopping in here for hours and the food was awesome. I had an amazing truffle Mac and Cheese. 

We ended our trip by seeing a show in the West End... Rock of Ages. Now there is a movie coming out this summer. It was a great show and Jim loved all of the 80s music. 

All in all we had an awesome 1st Anniversary/Spring Break trip. I'm not sure we'll ever be able to top it. I got to go to my 2 favorite European cities and being in England brought back so many memories from when I lived there over 20 years ago!! It is so crazy how quickly time flies! I hope that Jim and I can take many more trips like this in the future.

Spring Break (Paris part 2)

So I'm not too good at keeping up with this whole blogging thing but here are a few more pictures and stories from the first leg of our Spring Break trip in Paris....

We woke up well rested and ready to start the next 3.5 days in Paris... We woke up early each day to start our sightseeing and went to bed pretty early (lame I know but it was exhausting walking around all day). I think it is easy to hit up the night life when you are traveling with friends :)

Outside the Louvre with our class moose Marty... he has been on some seriously awesome trips these last 2 years :)

 We hit all the museums and big attractions (with the exception of Versailles) as early as possible in the morning to avoid the crowds and lines. This was especially beneficial for the Eiffel Tower because they only had 1 elevator going that day!

Winged Victory 

Mona Lisa... obviously 

Ecole Militaire/Les Invalides where Napoleon is buried 

Arc de Triomphe 

 I would definitely recommend walking up the stairs to the top of the Arc. It gives a unique view of the city and the Eiffel Tower. One my first visit to Paris in high school I didn't even know that was possible! 

View from the top of the Arc

Opera House lit up at night. 

 Side note on that night... we ate at this place called Patata Cafe if I remember correctly and all of their dishes were served on baked potatoes.... it was awesome and not very expensive at all... I'm thinking it may have been a chain?? It was definitely a great place for a quick little meal.

Notre Dame 

 We did not climb to the bell tower level since there were more stairs than the Arc de Triomphe and I wasn't feeling too well that morning.... I do wish we would have done it though because I love seeing Paris from different perspectives.

Sacre Coeur 

The only picture we have of ourselves taken by someone else

Musee D'Orsay... 

 The museum above is my favorite in Paris... probably in the world because of all of the Impressionist Art... when I was there 7 years ago with KC you could take pictures of the art but not anymore... luckily a few pictures were saved after my hard drive crashed senior year.

View of the Arc way zoomed in from the top of the Eiffel Tower

View of part of the city, along the Seine from the Eiffel Tower

The Palace of Versailles 

Hall of Mirrors 

Behind the Palace 

Some of the gardens 

Statue of Louis XIV

Other than the cold weather that I totally didn't pack well for... Paris was awesome. I could remember my way around really well, everyone was friendly, and the only random thing that I can remember happening is that random people kept asking my if I was Spanish... regardless of whether I was speaking English or French. I did pretty well responding/understanding when people spoke slowly but was at a loss when people assumed I was French after I initially greeted them. The trickiest thing for us on this trip was dining... deciding on places to eat (we don't like it when people are standing outside trying to wave you into their restaurants) and figuring out what to do when we went inside... do we seat ourselves, is a waiter going to come over, do we go order our food at the bar (that happened in London), etc. But all in all it was a stress free first leg of the journey and I'm glad that I got to show Jim around my favorite city! I hope to go back again someday or at the very least send our children. :)

Next up: London

Spring Break (Paris part 1)

So this is at least a month overdue and all of the fabulous things we did and saw aren't quite as fresh in my memory but I figured I would write a few funny stories and travel tips down from our spring break adventure. Jim and I decided to plan a pretty ambitious spring break/1 year anniversary trip to Paris and London almost right after we got back from Europe last summer. I'm not sure that we will ever have quite an adventurous anniversary again but it was wonderful.

Here is Part 1 of a Paris Recap....

We started our adventure by arriving around 6:30 am at Charles de Gaulle airport being packed into a bus like Sardines to take us from our plane to the terminal to collect our bags. Once we picked those up we headed to the train station and took a train to the city where we then transferred to the metro that took us to the Jardin de Tuileries station (the same station that KC and I used to get to and from our hotel 7 years earlier).

Here are KC and I on that spring break trip in March of 2005  

The trip downtown wasn't bad at all and our hotel was in an awesome location right across from the garden with views of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. We stayed at the Westin and I would highly recommend it if you have the money or in our case the hotel points. Some of the Starwood hotels around the world allow people to use a combination of hotel points and cash per night and that is what we did (there has to be some benefit of Jim traveling so much right??). The food at the hotel was awesome and the staff was really nice. Anyways Jim used some sort of upgrade thing he had from being such a frequent traveler and therefore this is the view we had from our hotel room....

Needless to say I don't think this would ever happen again so I soaked it up by staring out the window as much as possible especially when it sparkles at night every hour on the hour for 5 minutes... it is probably one of my favorite things to see in the whole world. 

Here it is at night from our room but it's not sparkling. 

So after wandering around for a little while after unpacking some stuff in our room we were exhausted!! We grabbed a bite to eat and decided that instead of taking an afternoon nap we would just turn in early and hopefully sleep through the night. I was pretty skeptical  because if we fell asleep at 4:30 and slept until the next morning it would be almost 15 hours... I decided that we might as well give it a try since I didn't sleep at all on the plane and and we'd been up and traveling for way more than 24 hours.... and guess what... it worked! We slept until about 11:00 were up for an hour then fell back asleep until about 7:30 the next morning and we were set for the rest of the trip! So we did miss out on an evening of wandering the city but we were so refreshed and ready for the rest of the jam packed sightseeing days that the rest of the week had in store!  Ok I will recap the rest of the trip with more pictures in my next post :)