Le Tour de France!
What a day today! Last night I pulled out the laptop to see what else Paris had to offer that we might be missing and, voila! I found an awesome “grass roots” bike tour company run by an American and a Kiwi who have lived in Paris for well over a decade now! I tried to book our place online, no luck. Called in the morning, no answer. Tried just one more time at 9am and success! They told us to head straight over for the 10am tour! We rushed out, hopped onto the metro, found our way to Notre Dame and suddenly we were on our own Tour de France! This tour was AWESOME! Bike About Paris is their name and they pride themselves on taking tourists to the places they wouldn’t normally see in Paris, the back-roads if you will. Our guide, Chris, was super...
Read MorePalace of Versailles
What to say about Versailles? Well, this place is HUGE. Huge doesn’t even describe it actually, it is gigantic plus enormous times huge to the 20th power! We had a great time exploring the palace, the gardens and the property which literally goes on for miles and miles. We arrived at PV around 10 am after a very easy train ride and left at nearly 5pm, aside from a 15 minute lunch and a 10 minute nap on the lawn near a pond we were on our feet, walking, that ENTIRE time, and we didn’t even cover half of the place! It was insane. The pictures are the best way to see the palace and the things we saw, trying to describe it all here just wouldn’t make sense. After we arrived back in Paris we headed to our hotel–oh, wait, side note! On the train...
Read MoreJust a tease…
We’ve had a great day. We headed out early to the Palace of Versailles and spent hours upon hours exploring there. Our evening consisted of dinner at a NEW restaurant! And Le Tour Eiffel! There are lots of great pictures and a few more details, but we’re tired, we’re on vacation, so we’re going to bed!!! Nite nite everyone!!! Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tumblr it Tweet about it Tell a friend
Read MoreParis – Day 2
Well, today we started the day by sleeping in. We were both exhausted from last night and didn’t leave the hotel room till 1pm. That’s noon for us though because we are still on London time . So, yeah, we got a late start, but we made up for it. First stop: an awesome street market right outside our hotel. We bought a baguette, grapes, tomatoes and apples before being yelled at by a cheese vendor. Nicole politely asked “par le’ vue engle” (or however you spell it) and was greeted with a harsh no, a shake of the head then 10 seconds of french that neither of us understood. Our guess is that it wasn’t nice. The positive, a women next to us offered to translate our needs. When we asked for a nice cheese with bread the women...
Read MoreBon Jour!
It wasn’t until tonight that I realized food in London was terrible. Heck, food in the US, Mexico, Canada and Australia is terrible for that matter! On a daily basis, you’d never know this. But once you sit down to your first truly French meal, it becomes all to clear that they know something here that the rest of the world doesn’t. Kevin and I just finished a truly amazing dinner…but I will get to that in a bit. We’re in Paris! We arrived this afternoon after only 2 hours and 15 minutes on the Eurostar train. That puppy moves! I never thought I’d say this, but I think I prefer airplanes to trains. I had never really ridden a train and I wasn’t fully prepared for what was to come. Our seats faced backwards which instantly...
Read MoreIn the Chunnel
We’re on the train to Paris. We made the 11:30 train by the skin of our teeth! It was a lot like boarding an airplane, we had to go through security, had our passports stamped, went to our train gate, and voila, here we are! Kevin was thinking and bought us a window seat, what he didn’t know to request, however, was a seat that is facing forward! We’re making the 2.5 hour journey to Paris backwards! As I write this we are traveling through the “chunnel” which is the underwater tunnel that connects England and France. I’m trying to keep my mind off of the fact that we are down here, however, this isn’t working much, especially since the train just slowed down a lot. I’m feeling claustrophobic and a bit like I am...
Read MoreLondon – Day 3 of 3 :(
Well, today is the end of our time in London. We may have a couple hours tomorrow morning to go see a few things we missed but that will depend on the train situation. I wanted to start this blog with something a bit different, sure, i’ll get into the daily stuff soon but first I wanted to say something about what London has taught us. So, without further adieu: 3 things I learned in London Bus + Subway + Walking is better transportation than a car at home Beer is cheaper than water I should wear more suites (everyone in London wears a suite) 3 things Nic learned in London Elevators are mean. Do they really need to try to take your limb off when you hold a door open? Even though cigarette packages say “Smoking Kills” on the front, everyone...
Read MoreOops!
Well, today we had our first little oops! It was bound to happen sooner or later. The plan was to wake up around 8, get ready, and head over to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard at 11am. Well, we woke up, rolled over to look at the clock, and it was 10:45am! Bloody Ell! We missed it! It was probably for the better because we were both EXHAUSTED and running on empty, and my (Nic) knee has been killing me so I had the morning to lay down and ice it. But, so disappointing, we missed out on this tradition! We’ll just have to make up for it by having an awesome rest of the day! Cheers! Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tumblr it Tweet about it Tell a friend
Read MoreLondon – Day 2
What a day today! We headed out the door around 9:30am and went straight to St. Paul’s Cathedral. How’d we get there? The Tube of course! That system ROCKS! We popped into a cafe near the cathedral on the way and got muffins and drinks. No, they did not make it on our “best muffins ever” list, however we’ve scoped out EAT. for tomorrow which is where yesterday’s muffins were purchased. Mmmm, can’t wait! The cathedral is breathtaking. It was built circa 600a.d. and it is absolutely mind blowing to think that people were capable of building such amazing structures without all of the technology we have today. Kevin made the great journey up into the dome. It was a 600-stair, one way, realllllly narrow, stairway up into the...
Read MoreLondon Day 1
So, we are back online for 24 hours; We’ve updated 3 posts including this one. Hopefully we can get a post in tomorrow too. We’ve uploaded pictures to flickr for our first day in London. Today started around 9am. Nicole and I ended up sleeping a bit later than expected but that turned out to be okay because we were both seriously exhausted from the flight and time change. We made it out of our room around 9 and headed to a Tube station to make our way to the London Tower. Of course, we took the long way to the Tube as I have zero sense of direction. We made our way down the Embankment road along the Thames and into a tube station that dropped us off at Tower Hill. Exiting the tube we quickly found the London Tower and an unexpected suprise (we...
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