Tuesday 25/10/11

Alright, hadn't had the chance to mention it yet, but our hotel has been very nice. It is extremely small by most standards, but in Europe in general, space is valuable and very limited - this also applies to personal space. You pack into trains, you squeeze into tables, you walk in packs - it may sound intimidating, but you get used to it quickly.

The hotel provides breakfast every morning, which consists of cafe (coffee), cereal, fruits, yogurt, pastries, and bread. I have been basically eating the same thing each morning. This for some reason helps me deal with eating insane food and drinking wine and coffee all day long.

Tuesday morning we headed up to the neighborhood of Montmartre. The area is rich with history of artists and just plain partying. Picasso, Van Gogh, Renoir, and Lautrec all lived and worked in Montmartre.

This tour of the area was our first provided by someone aside from our Steve's guide: Toni. Genevieve, who is living in Paris working on her dissertation, provided us with many stories and the great views from the area.

The tour ended atop of a hill at the Sacre-Coeur Church. Another church yes. This one was different in that it was built with a special limestone the had a cleaning ability, so it amazingly looked very clean, even though it has never been washed.

Side note: Paris is very clean to our surprise. When you get in a big city you expect a level of nastiness, just based on the amount of people and pollution. We might just be here at the right time, but a ton of the buildings have been cleaned/restored over the last 10 years and she's looking really good.

We grabbed lunch in Montmartre and then started back towards the city to see: The Arc De Triomphe!

The Arc is in the middle of 12 converging streets, this monument was commissioned by Napoleon, who never got to see it finished before his death.

This was my first experience with some heights since we got here and it wasn't bad at all. The views make you feel like you're flying around the city. It's really fantastic.

Just as we had gotten down the Arc it began to rain. It was a pretty good downpour for about 30 minutes and has been our only significant amount of rain since we arrived.

Ave de Champs-Élysées is the most well known street in Paris. It leads from the Arc de Triompe and runs into the Louvre.

Along Champs-Élysées you'll find everything that you can possibly imagine when it comes to consuming. Think Michigan Avenue on steroids. One of the crazier parts of it was the car dealerships. They have all these walk on dealerships right along the mall front. Pretty cool.

After wandering around that street and trying to find a specific store, we quickly hurried back to our Hotel for a wine tasting.

We showed up towards the end but where able to try most all of the reds, which is what I came to do! The wine was great and we found out favorite was only 5 euros a bottle - we have not figured out how to get a boat load of it home at the same price?

The wine tasting was followed by a group dinner at Cafe Bousquet. Great place. The snails where awesome! Jessica most enjoyed that we where able to sit with two girls that had been very reserved and snobbish until this point. We had dinner with them and forced our friendship upon them. They excepted and have since been quite lovely.

The night ended at the wine shop, a couple barks at the moon, and a little bit of dancing. It was a great evening.

Monday in Paris

Jess is writing up Sunday as I'm typing this up now, so we can attempt to get back on track.

Paris in a nut shell is nuts! It's impossible not to immediately get transformed into a wonderful mood once you get out and traveling around .

The morning started out with an introduction to the city subway, which is no more intimidating than any other train system, just obviously in another language. Parisians are very quite an personal and the train is a perfect example of that. Even fully loaded, the train can be almost silent except the movement of the train on the rails.

Our walking tour started on a bridge that led us to the island of Ile de la Cite. This is where the city of Paris began, even in its earliest stage beginning with the Romans. This island is flanked on all sides by the River Seine (pronounced Sen - like ten with an 's' instead of a 't' as Jessie taught me.

Our 1st stop was at Sainte-Chapelle, which is the first of many chapel stops through the entire tour. The chapel was pretty incredible, with the highlight being a rose window (pictured below) that depicts the stories of Revelations.

Second stop was at the great Notre-Dame Cathedral. The front of the Cathedral had some very awesome sculpting and individually many stories...really too many to tell, so I'll focus on my favorite:

In the picture below, you can see the front of the cathedral and there is a row with around 28 (?) Kings. All of them have been restored, but during the French revolution, the people thought these to be Kings of France, when in fact they are Biblical kings. Regardless, it was a very non King friendly time, so the people went about beheading and destroying that row on the chapel.

Skip forward to our next destination, the Cluny Museum, and you will see a picture of these heads. These heads where just found in the 70's in a local garden. Apparently someone felt they were important enough to transport almost all but a few and bury them together. Quite amazingly they were found and now are all on display in the Cluny.

The Cluny itself was built and sits in the grounds of an old Roman bath house. It's crazy to think that these building are just erected on top of other structures, because the elevations have change so drastically over the centuries, that once was above ground - is now below.

The Cluny is wild in that: the Roman bath house is a pretty incredible room, all the artifacts are very much out and completely accessible (not to touch - but you could, if you want to get hollered at), and it apparently has some sort of gravitational pull for only the best mullets in the world! Also, if your really into the Middle Ages, it's one the best collections on the planet.

After the Cluny it went: nap, which lasted longer than planned, then followed by dinner at an Italian place on Rue Claire (very hip eating/shopping street), and then a stroll over to the Effil Tower in the rain.

Our plan was to go up in the Tower, but we where having such a pleasant time eating and drinking wine, we lost track of time.

Couple things leaned:
Sortie - means exit. Important on subways and at many of the tourist attractions.

Vin = wine. It's cheaper than Coca Cola here and way more delicious.

Merci - means thanks. You never realize how often you say thanks in a day until your using it in another language. Unless you don't say thanks and that just means your an ass.

Food - you can eat a whole ton of it when you walk around all day! In a place where food taste as good as it does here - this is a double bonus.

Alright, my wine glass is almost empty and it's about my nap time, so until the next post..

Sunday

Hey all, Jess here. We've been having such a great time seeing Paris that we've gotten behind on the blog, but we're going to try to get caught up today.

On Sunday we travelled from London to Paris. We ended up flying rather than taking the train b/c the price was better and the process was very smooth and easy. In Paris we got checked into our hotel, which is just a couple blocks from the Eiffel Tower, and met up with our tour group. We had an orientation, took a bus ride around the city, and had dinner together at a nearby cafe/brasserie.

We were very excited to get to Paris and right from the start the city was impressively beautiful. Our tour group seems cool and our guide, Toni (a British woman who has lived in France for many years), is awesome. We couldn't wait to see more!

Saturday

Really should have gotten this out before we left London, because Paris, which we arrived in on Sunday, has been a whirlwind thus far.

Saturday morning we hit up the Tate Modern Museum. They had some cool pieces, but the highlight was almost just the building. Everything was laid out in a fantastic way and they just seemed to keep building and building different structures onto the base. I believe it was a shipping building before its now existence as a museum.

Tate Modern was followed by afternoon tea at The Swan at the Globe. Jessie and me had a list of priorities for London and afternoon tea was very high on hers.

If you are unfamiliar, there is a tradition of grabbing afternoon tea around 2-3:00pm. It is well - tea, duh...along with finger sandwiches and mini deserts, that tide you over till dinner.

The Swan ended up being a great choice for us because it was just down the way from the Tate and they gave us an awesome seating area next to the window looking out over the Thames river walk. Being it was finger sandwiches, they weren't much to talk about, but the deserts where great and it really was just nice chilling and people watching in our last full day in the city.

The afternoon tea was followed by a trip back into Trafalger Square, where the NFL had set up an afternoon of events and speakers. By the time we made it down at 4:00, there wasn't much left to the event and we couldn't Coach Lovie anywhere! Marshal Faulk was in the house and is a pretty cool dude - but the event was pretty uneventful, minus the excitement of the Bears destroying the Bucs the next night - which we all now know happened.

Another item on the list was a play, but it got bumped because we where freakin exhausted! We settled for some quick Indian food, which was awesome and a trip to the movie theater.

The theater was quite an experience. Unlike any other "movie" theater we have at home, this one consisted of a bar, well multiple bars, a club with a live band, and possibly some sort o rave area which we never crossed.

We went and saw 'We Need To Talk About Kevin,' which I would never recommend to anyone currently raising children. The movie is about how a mother deals with life after her son commits a violent crime. Tilda Swinton is the mother and is really great in the movie. Impressively sad movie and extremely powerful.

Observation - European movie trailers consist of the entire movie. How do I know? We saw 'Drive' in Vegas and the trailer shown at the theater was every single important thing that happened in the movie wrapped up in 4 minutes. So technically we saw like 6 movies. Also, I don't think kids are allowed in the theater and everyone is quite and intent on watching the movie. I almost felt like leaving a tip afterwards because it was so nice to see a movie without wanting to kill someone in the theater for being an idiot.

The movie was followed by us packing up our stuff for the morning and then hitting the sack. We had a 11:30 flight to Paris and we didn't want to be late!

Friday

Still in the rears...yup, in the rears.

Friday morning we hooked up breakfast at the apartment before heading down to the Tower of London. I have a feeling we are going to miss the luxury of living like hipsters in Paris. The apartment has been an awesome spot to just chill and way larger and nicer than any place Jess lived in NYC - so we've been good.

The Tower of London is listed as a "must see" and it was that for sure. It's positioned on the side of the River Thames and has a great view of the Tower Bridge. The Beefeater guide was informational and the guy had a great British sense of humor (like Monty Python...not those horrible Brit shows you see on PBS at night). Inside the Tower is a vast history of well, basically a bunch of killings and family feuds. There is also the famed jewels...and they are pretty, pretty, shinny. The grounds are kept in amazing condition and when they start telling you about the history it's just amazing to think about how much happened within those walls.

After we finished at the Tower, we still had a boat tour left over from the bus tour the day before. Conveniently the boat picked up right outside the Tower and provided great views of the many bridges and history that litters surround the banks of the Thames. It also provided an up close view of the London Eye - which helped me make up my mind that I would not be getting on that thing. Damn.

The boat dropped us off right at Parliament, which was perfect because we had a walking tour that we had downloaded that started on Westminster bridge and ended in Trafalger square.

In the middle of our tour we stopes at the Winston Churchill War Room Museum. This is the exact place that Winston Churchill and his staff orchestrated the British army during WWII. This bunker was incredible in that after the Germans had move on to the Russians and the Brits could breath - there are places in the bunker that are frozen in time as if everyone just stood up, walked away, an tried to forget the 4 hellish years some of them had spent underground.

Few things learned - Winston Churchill didn't give a rats ass. Period. The guy drank champaign for breakfast, wine for lunch, and Whiskey for dinner. He wasn't a great leader outside of war time, but he was definitely in his element during.

After checking out the Prime Ministers digs, which are just down the way, we ended back in Trafalger Square - where the almighty Chicago Bears had landed! It was a glorious sight, but we decided to save the festivities for Saturday, when we where already planning to check it all out.

The rest of the night involved a couple of drinks at the hotel bar (on being a free Apple Martini and for me a glass of VSOP - Winston inspired) and then dinner in the Corner Room at the hotel.

There is a restaurant here with a Michelin star, but we where feeling more like a chilled out evening. Luckily this place was awesome. Highlights of the meal where a fantastic beet starter dish and then main courses of Imberico ham and salmon. Very surprised and delighted (that was direct quote from Jessie!).

One thing that goes without saying, and just doesn't apply to traveling with Jessie, is I would be completely lost without her. She's way better than any iPhone app and much prettier. Using the Tube and only taking the a single cab, we have been navigating this place like pros. My head gets so damn turned around looking and wandering, I've got a vague idea of where we have been or are most of the time. I still have very little idea as to why she is so patient with me, but I love her for it.

Hope this finds you all well. We leave for Paris in the morning, but I'll give you one more day of London before we get to that!

Thursday

Got a little behind, so I'll try to catch up.

We started our day off a little late because we needed the sleep.

We went down to Trafagler Square and hooked up a bus tour that took us around the city. It was a good way to see and learn the layout of things, although it got kind of cold towards the end. All the big sites - Tower of London, Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey...all that and a whole lot more.

After the bus tour, we hit up this small pub called the French House. It was an awesome little place that was packed with people, but we were able to find a table in the back corner.

Side note: British beer is pretty rubbish. Stick with the Guinness or Belgium beer. Brits for some reason like non-carbonated, strange tasting, weird cider...it just taste strange.

We had dinner at St. John. This place was awesome. It was featured on No Reservation and on David Chang's website, so I figured we should check it out. For starters we had calf brains on toast and Jerusalem artichokes. The brains where a bit much on there own, but in combination with the toast and capers - good. That pie pictured was the main course - it consisted of pheasant and trotters (pigs feet), with A nice piece of bone in the middle. It tasted insanely good. I feel bad for Jess, because her nose is not really allowing her to enjoy the food and wine the way she would like. It did serve a purpose when drinking a pint of Strong ale yesterday though.

I'm taking a bunch of pictures with my brothers camera, but still trying to remember to snap a few on my phone, where I've been doings these entries.

My apologies for the fragmented thoughts and writing, blame it on the phone. Hopefully I'll get caught up soon.

London.

The flight was long, but not entirely all that bad. We ended up keeping our exit elsie, which provided ample leg room, but ended up being pretty cold the entire flight. I'm not sure if it was worth the extra room being cold, but we got along.

Lesson 1: No upgrade at the check in desk. Asked and I did not receive. I saw the way those people fly...and I want that.

Got our "Oyster" card for the tube at the airport and started our 45 minute train ride to the hotel. We read that you should pick up the card before arriving, but found it was extremely easy to get at the airport.

Alright, enough of the boring details stuff. Got to our apartment and it is a pretty swanky set up. Full blown kitchen set up, washer/dryer, chill room, and milk. That's right - the bring you milk every day!

We hiked around our neighborhood quite a bit and found a market (which is basically what we would consider and outside mall). Had some lunch and got ourselves some beer. The food was alright...the beer was necessary.

After a nap and a trip to the grocery store, we now have food and beer.

After going back and forth on food options we ended up at Jamie Oliver's Barbecoa. The food was really great - we just ended up killing a bunch of apps and having some wine an beer. It ranged from beef tartar, ribs, raw oysters 3 ways, chips (fries) in duck fat, crispy pork cheek, and a crab dish. Definitely a bounce back from lunch...and the sea food is on point. The place is right across the street from St. Paul Cathedral, so we had a great view with dinner.

Jess is still a little stuffy, so I'm telling her how food everything does or doesn't taste.

Over all - we are slightly confused about what day it is, but very optimistic about this city. People seem rad an we've already been asked for directions from someone with an english accent, so we must not look that lost.