London

Our trip last week was not just to Paris, we went to London as well. We had 4 1/2 days in Paris and 1 day in London. The trip was fairly short but when you add in the travel days it felt pretty long. London was fairly exhausting. We left our hotel at 5:30am to get to the train station because we had to check in 45 min in advance. Checking in at the train station was like going to the airport. You have to get your tickets and go through customs and get your passport stamped. Which is definitely cool. I love all the stamps in my passport -- Ho Chi Minh City, Tokyo, Rome, Patras (Greece), Athens, Madrid, Paris and London. And that's just since January of '08. :-)

London was not what I hoped. In fact I didn't enjoy it as much as Paris. I found London loud and bustling and way too busy. Even in winter it was ridiculously full of tourists, which I hated. And everything was so expensive. The city was just that, a city. It was NYC with an accent and for twice the price. While Paris is filled with croissants and Vietnamese food, London is full of fried fish (fish and chips) and Indian curries. Maybe since I was wanting a romantic getaway, London just threw me for a loop since it was anything but romantic. Admittedly it was fun riding on the train to London - especially riding through the chunnel. Plus the train station was Harry Potter's train station which was also pretty cool, since I love Harry Potter. I also liked the British Museum - rosetta stone and mummies. The next time I go to England I think I will stick to the country side. I'm envisioning a tour of English castles. It will be like a Jane Austen novel come to life.

Makes me laugh

Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. One of their annual missions is the No Pants Subway Ride.

10 Things I Loved About Paris (not in any specific order)

1. Our street: We stayed on a quiet residential street in the 7th arrondisement a block away from the Champ de Mars park just south of the Eiffel Tower. You could see the Eiffel Tower from our street. There was a street lined with markets one block the other direction, Rue Cler. Rue Cler had everything. Butcher shop, bakery, flower market, cheese shop, fish market, cafes, restaurants, creperies, everything. We even had a metro station just around the corner, which made it super convenient to get anywhere in Paris.

2. Croissants: I loved getting up every morning and visiting our local bakery and buying croissants for breakfasts.

3. Parisians and their dogs: Parisians love their dogs. Everywhere women walking their dogs, sitting at cafes with them, carrying them. It was so cute.

4. Cafes: I love the street cafes and how people just sit and sip coffee and people watch.

5. The Metro: I love the convenience and efficiency of the Paris metro system. I love how cheap it is and how easy it is. It is the best in Europe.

6. Dinners in Paris: Multi course events that usually don't start until 8pm. Most restaurants didn't open for dinner until 7:30pm. We ate dinner every day around 8:30 or 9pm and then didn't get done until 11 or 11:30pm. My favorite dinners were at Chez Janou and Le Grand Colbert. Chez Janou was in a quiet back alley. Tiny and cramped. Young and hip. Loud and funky. Food was incredible and well worth the wait. Le Grand Colbert was exactly that...grand and the Paris of your dreams. Opulent and yet cozy. It was featured in Something's Gotta Give.

7. French baguettes: Long and crusty. I could eat them all day long.

8. The Eiffel Tower: Strangely there really is something incredibly romantic about it.

9. The language: Every thing sounds better in French. Je t'aime Paris.

10. Versailles: Okay, not technically in Paris. It's actually a 30 min. metro ride outside of Paris. But it's fabulous. The Palace, the gardens, the grand canal in the gardens, Marie Antoinette's house, Marie Antoinette's Hamlet (a little peasant village she created on the grounds) I love imagining what life would have been like.

Good Morning from Paris

It is 10am on a Friday and we have already had an exhausting two days. We left on Wednesday and flew into Chicago at 2. Our flight from Chicago left at 5:30pm and we were in Paris by 8:45am on Friday. We took the train/metro into Paris, found our hotel and dropped off our stuff and headed straight to the Louvre. Most people would probably need to rest at the hotel for a little bit, but not us. We needed to get stuff done.

Of course now we're tired, but need to head to off to the markets. We are staying the Rue Cler neighborhood in the 7th arrondisement two blocks from the Eiffel Tower. The markets are just one block over. Time to peruse for some food. Yum!

song in my head

1,2,3,4 from Lucid Online on Vimeo.

honeymoon shoes

Tomorrow we leave for Italy...at last. It was nice not leaving for the honeymoon right away and waiting a couple of weeks. Time to clean, time to pack, and it left something else to anticipate. Especially since all the wedding things seemed to go by so quickly. We still have wedding pics and videos to look forward to seeing when we get back. Yeah! I have been trying to buy all the various necessities we will need for our trip. I purchased two pairs of walking shoes, some luggage, and still need a good travel messenger bag.
For shoes I got a black pair of Privo's and a bronze pair of Josef Seibel's. Both are delightfully comfortable while being perfectly cute. They are both ballet style flats with lots of cushion. Who knew there were so many brands of walking shoes. Before my hunt for shoes I only knew of Merrils, but there is Privo, Josef Seibel, Ecco, Keen, Cole Haan, Borne, Clarks and many more. I will also pack flip flops and the gold ballet flats I purchased for the wedding to wear on a nice dinner out.

this time last week

This time last week I was at my mom's house with my bridesmaids getting ready for the tea ceremony. Now I'm in the midst of a messy apartment and just taking in the whole experience. The comment most often said to us this last week..."you two should be wedding planners." And we would be in a heartbeat. It was super fun and in all actuality not that hard. That's saying quite a bit considering our wedding was was a three day production. I don't know how people have cake and punch weddings...no offense, cause everyone's style is different. But a cake and punch wedding is over too soon and it simply doesn't have enough details to plan.