Cousins take on Europe: London and Paris

Hi everyone! I can't believe Nat is letting me blog on his blog---so exciting! Instead of doing one huge blog, since I love pictures I'm going to do two. Here is the first one---

I don’t want this blog post to uncover Nat’s deepest darkest secrets but I must say, after spending 10 straight days with him, I have found him to be…kind of…sort of…a little bit of…normal. Of course, when he made me grab his forearm and say “truth and honor” in a British accent when I left Germany, I thought this hint of normalcy was merely the side effect of an exhausting trip. And by exhausting, I mean walking 30 miles a day in the blistering sun. In fact, I got so exhausted that I broke out into hives; something I’ve never done before! At first, I thought they were bug bites! But as my hives scab, my somewhat non-existent tan starts to fade, and I sit here in a blue sundress I bought in Paris, I begin to take my head out of the clouds (just for a moment) and realize exactly what I’ve just experienced…

Since Nat landed at 11pm at an airport that was an hour from our house, I picked him up in a cab since Donovan had to get up at 4am for work. The cab ride there was unenjoyable as I felt obligated to force conversation with the young Pakistani driver. But once we arrived at the airport, I saw Nat right away and we hopped into the cab and back to our house. We spent the next day in London. We saw the London Eye, Big Ben, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, London Bridge, Tower Bridge, Picadilly Circus, Covent Garden and the London Dungeon. Everything was pretty much as we expected except for London Bridge. We all know the song “London Bridge is falling down….falling down…falling down…” Well, as mean as this may sound…I don’t think it would be such tragedy. London Bridge is the most boring, normal bridge ever. TOWER BRIDGE, however, is awesome! We came to the conclusion that the guy who designed London Bridge had brilliant marketing skills and the guy who designed Tower Bridge thought that his design would speak for itself…but unfortunately…it didn’t. But that’s ok…because now we are going to try and spread the truth about Tower Bridge—it’s awesome! And London Bridge—it’s not!

I’m not sure how often the changing of the guard is but we got there approximately 30 seconds before it began. Impeccable timing!

London Dungeon is kind of like a Disney ride…you wait in line for 3 hours and then go on rides and live actors scare you. It was fun though! As we arrived back at our train station, in typical London fashion, it was raining. We got to sleep around midnight or so and three hours later, we were up! We had accomplished London in a day and were ready to take on Paris!

London Bridge (booooringggg):


Tower Bridge (awesome!):


RIP Princess Di:


Soldiers at Buckingham Palace:


Big Ben:


Buckingham Palace:


Cute little girl scouts at Buckingham Palace:


London Eye:


We arrived in Paris around 8:30am. Our first task was to buy tickets for the train to get into Paris central. Of course the machine that you buy tickets from only took change. And the change machine didn’t take anything bigger than a 10. After getting some random people to exchange our money, we put it all in the machine. The machine then told us “money time-out”…and it broke. After finding a worker and getting our tickets, we finally got on the train. Our first stop was Notre Dame Cathedral. Afterwards we just wandered around the streets, not seeing many people. Apparently, Paris is a pretty “late” city. We wandered around some more…and some more…saw the place where they have the Tour de France, some other monuments, some parks, got some snacks, and wandered around some more. We finally ended up at the Louvre Museum. We saw the Mona Lisa, among some other famous works of art…all pictured below.

After wandering through the museum in a haze we found ourselves sitting at a computer clicking through pages filled with French. We looked at each other and realized that we were using this French computer as an excuse to sit down. We then turned our heads to the right and saw a leather couch. So we sat…an hour later, I opened my eyes and realized I had just taken a nap in the Louvre. I looked over at Nat who was still sleeping. Before waking him up, I of course, took this picture...

Feeling refreshed we started to make our way to our hostel. Our hostel was beautiful. It was called Aloha Hostel and was painted in bright colors (pinks, greens, oranges…) and was very clean. We had two Italian roommates (a young couple). We ate dinner at the “Pasta Bar” a quaint little pasta restaurant where you eat outside. Of course accompanied by little chiwawa dogs. Cute little dogs were everywhere in Paris. I’m pretty sure Paris is the city of the cutest dogs. Every shop has a dog and every person is walking a dog. Nat said he never noticed dogs until I pointed them out. He said I had a 6^th dog sense…and well, yea I kinda do. I just love dogs and I can’t help it. Paris is also the city of pink toilet paper (I guess white isn’t good enough for the French). When we got back to the hostel, I hit my bed and was out cold. The next morning after breakfast we went to the Eiffel Tower. We climbed to the top and it was really really cool. Whoever said the Eiffel Tower was over-rated was over-rated themself. The Eiffel Tower is under-rated!

As in most touristy places, there are Indian guys who sell illegal souvenirs made in China which undercut the pricey gift shops by a lot! I bought a few Eiffel tower keychains from them and a lighter for Donovan. They carry around big silver metal rings and hang the keychains from them. A few minutes later, I heard what sounded like a stampede…and jingle bells at the same time. Sprinting past us was about 20 Indian guys with their keychain rings followed by police men on bikes. It was pretty hilarious.

We looked at our map and realized we had pretty much seen everything we wanted so we decided to find the “Bastille” monument. After we took a picture we sat down on a bench and realized…we needed a nap. We found some church, sat in a pew, and slept for an hour. It was great. Afterward we made our way to Nat’s friend’s apartment, a gorgeous place in the middle of Paris. She and her friend and her friend’s cousin were there and we all went to a restaurant to eat crepes. The “hole in the wall” place we went to had apparently the best crepes in Paris. We were not so impressed. But in any case, I somehow convinced Nat to actually take public transport (the train) back to the Eiffel Tower to see it at night and then walk to our hostel (not far from there) afterward. Mind you, the rest of the day that we weren’t looking at Bastille (approximately 5 minutes), taking a nap in a church (approximately an hour), or climbing the Eiffel Tower (approximately 2 hours), we were walking. I had blisters on my big toe, blisters on my pinky toe, blisters on both my heels…but no hives yet so I was in pretty good condition. Anyway, the Eiffel Tower at night was even more impressive! There is a video of the light show below…every hour it happens!

Bar in the Eiffel Tower:

Check out that bird!:



At the crepe restaurant:




View from Nat's friends' window:



Bob L'sponge:


French music festival:



Me on top of the Eiffel Tower:


Dogs everywhere!


My butt inprint from sleeping at the Louvre:



Nat napping at the Louvre:











A statue with a broken arm:


Yummy French deserts:


The refuge from the Tour de France (a week prior):


Notre Dame window:


Notre Dame Cathedral:



Video of the Eiffel Tower night light show:

We went back to our hostel, not sure of what time we were leaving for Rome the next morning. Turns out, our flight was scheduled for the next EVENING! We had an entire third day in Paris. But we had done everything! So the next day we took it easy, laid in the Eiffel Tower park, wandered around some more, found an air conditioned mall to wander in, took our bus to the airport and flew Ryan Air to Rome! Paris—could be done in 1 ½ days…we had to stretch it out to 3 days…but 1 ½ could have sufficed.

Our Roman adventures began pretty much the second we landed…the next post will reveal the scandals and experiences in Italia.