I haven’t had time to blog in the last few months thanks to my full-time job, being more than full-time in graduate school, and my usual crazy fall travel schedule. One additional thing has been adding to my stress recently though–our move to Washington, DC. Thanks to the military, we finally realized our dream of…
When I originally started thinking about visiting Paris, I had spring in mind. Seeing the sights with mild temperatures, beautiful blooming gardens, and before the crowds of summer vacation sounded perfect. When I started looking at my vacation days from work however, the two weeks surrounding Christmas and New Year’s Day jumped out as the…
For the last full day of our vacation, we booked a day trip to London with Golden Tours. The tour included roundtrip transportation on the Eurostar train and a fully guided tour of London. The description said we would visit St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Tower of London, witness the changing of the guard at…
I know it has been ages (months) since my last entry about our trip to Europe. I haven’t forgotten and I assure you I’m still planning to finish the trip blog. My feelings about our day trip to London weren’t very positive, and I’ve had a hard time figuring out how to write about it.…
Our last full day in Paris fell on New Year’s Day. Knowing it was a holiday and the Parisians aren’t exactly our idea of early risers, we planned to be up and ready by 10am. All four of us were moving pretty slowly that morning, so I figure we headed downstairs closer to 10:30 or…
With a backlog of travel over the last two years to write about and several upcoming trips in 2018, I’m going to attempt to revive my blog with new posts and pictures from our travels. I will go back and write about our amazing first sailing trip last summer in Greece, but first, I’m going…
Josh and I got up a little early to finish packing and then went to Monoprix in Place Kleber to buy some drinks. We stopped in at the same pastry shop as the day before for pain au chocolate before returning to the hotel to check out. The hotel desk called a taxi for us,…
We wanted to see the astronomical clock presentation at mid-day, which requires being in line before 11:30am. We didn’t want to leave the hotel too early, as nothing really opens very early anywhere in France. Once we were all dressed and ready, we walked around near the hotel looking for a bakery for breakfast. There…
Words don’t do justice to Strasbourg, so this post is going to be very image heavy! We got up and finished packing our bags and checked out of the hotel pretty early that morning. We had to navigate the metro (lots of up and down stairs) with all our luggage to Gare de l’est in…
I took a break, but I’m back to writing about our trip! Day 6 was a Sunday and our all-day trip to Bruges, Belgium. We went to bed early the night before, and my alarm went off sometime around 5am that morning. We had to be downstairs before 6:30am for our tour guide to pick…
Today is my mom’s birthday! I won’t say how old she is because she probably wouldn’t like that. I’ll just say that I hope I age even half as well as she has! I’m so glad we got to visit Paris together. Happy Birthday, Mom! I love you!
Day five was supposed to be our second day for museums, but after a lot of walking the day before and 4 pairs of sore, tired feet, we opted to try a hop-on-hop-off bus tour instead of hoofing it around town. We used the hotel’s computer to purchase our one day pass for Foxity’s buses.…
We originally set aside two full days for museums in Paris–the Friday and Saturday after Christmas. Most Paris museums close on either Monday or Tuesday, so make sure you check the museum websites before you set your itinerary. Friday and Saturday are probably more crowded days all year long, but it’s what worked in our…
Our second full day in Paris was Christmas Day. I was a little apprehensive about this when we booked our trip. We went back and forth about renting an apartment or a hotel with a kitchen so we could cook and hang out at “home” on Christmas Day, but we decided to test our luck…
We started our first full day in Paris early by local standards, waking up well before the sun. I had no idea that the sun doesn’t rise in Paris until after 9am in the winter! Since mom and I take longer to get ready, we sent Josh and my dad to look for breakfast. They…
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