Europe Day 3 (June 6, 2015) and we're off to Paris!

Today started at 4am. That hurt a little. We took the Eurostar high speed train to Paris, arrived 11:15am. After sending our luggage off to the hotel in a van, we got on the Paris Metro and went to the Louvre. The Louvre is HUGE. I saw the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and the Venus de Milo... got separated from our gang, but no big deal, i knew where and when we were meeting up and I managed to make it there.

Another hop on the Metro and we were at Notre Dame. As an architecture junkie and big fan of gothic cathedrals, this was awesome for me. There was also a cool bookstore right there called Shakespeare and Company that we had time to run into, it was really neat.

After our very Paris dinner experience, we went to Montmartre, a church on a hill where you get the most spectacular view of the whole city. There were shops and outdoor vendors near there where I bought my first souvenir of the trip, a painting by a local artist. (Whose name I will someday add to the blog, whenever i find the business card he gave me.)

That evening some of us went to see the show at the Moulin Rouge. Wha an iconic experience. I had the cancan stuck in my head for a week. And now, it's stuck in my head again... sigh.

Marc at the train station in London. Looking pretty awesome for 4:30am!

Kirsten at the Louvre.

Mona Lisa

Winged Victory

 I'm not exactly sure what this is, but I love it. It was in the Egyptian exhibit, the display said "utensils."

 

Venus De Milo

Notre Dame

 It's day 3 and Eric has already established his harem. Well done Son!

LOVED the bookstore!

Dinner... this place was so cool.

 Karen and Jaxon

 Escargot in Paris. of course!

Montmartre

we had to take this trammy thing. it was a big hill.

The View

My artist!

My art

Inside (we weren't supposed to take pictures)

 Jaxon, Eric and the back of Cameron's head.

 Me and Marc

Karen, Jayna and Francis

Europe Trip Day 2 (June 5, 2015)

First I must say that London is a sunny warm city. At least when I'm there.

This was an awesome day for me because my friend Christienne Ruth was joining us. (see? sunny and warm)

Chris in in the Air Force and stationed in the UK.

So, the day started with a city tour, Chris joined us at Buckingham Palace where we saw the changing of the guards and we saw them practicing a parade for the Queen's birthday.

After leaving Buckingham Palace, we got some free time downtown... saw Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square and Picadilly Circus. Had some food and drink in a real London pub, then walked over the London Eye which offered a spectacular view of the city.

After dinner Chris had to get back to base. We both had our London Underground mishaps that night. After we finally managed to stop hugging, I took off after our group before I lost track of them... only I was following someone else. I ended up in the wilds of the London Underground naked and afraid. Okay, not naked, and only a little afraid... Marc finally found me and I was reunited with the group. On day 2 of the trip, in a group of 49, most of whom were teenagers, I was dubbed the problem child. Can't believe it took that long.

Chris also had some challenges and got on the train in the wrong direction and it took awhile to figure out. She made it back to base with a few minutes to spare before her carriage turned back into a pumpkin.

That evening we went on the Jack the Ripper tour of London. It was very interesting and our guide was fantastic. Fred Strangebone of Curious Characters. Stayed in character the whole time. We saw other people on other tours, but everyone was jealous of US because our guide was awesome.

The British Houses of Parliament

Harrod's

Burberry... I was hoping the Beckhams might pop in but no such luck.

Buckingham Palace

Jaxson. 

The London Eye

Big Ben

That's Chris, sitting at the red table. She'd already been up in the London Eye.

L-R:  Benny, Eric, Jaxson, Cody, Karen.

Inside the Eye

Eric. 

Fairly certain this is Trafalgar Square

a real London Pub

Chris in Piccadilly Circus

This guy wouldn't get out of the way of whatever I was pretending to try to take a picture of.

Marc is a sweet tart.

Westminster Abbey

Good thing he can levitate or he'd trip over that robe.

The Underground. We did not depart as friends.

Fred Strangebone.

Traipsing through the streets of London.

More traipsing.

I hated this building when it first went up. But now it's not as bad. I call it the egg. I don't know what other people call it.

Marc's first European selfie!

Day 1, June 4, 2015 - Arriving in London

The tour company calls June 3 Day 1, but come on, i left DC late in the afternoon and all i did was fly. That's not day 1, that's getting to day 1. But okay, I'll put up a picture anyway, since it was my first time seeing New York City from the air. I had no idea how huge it was.

the flight was an overnight one, I did not sleep at all. It wasn't that bad, I had plenty of entertainment along.

June 4 is the real Day 1. So we're making our descent toward Heathrow and I manage to get these two amazing shots:

Okay, so that's Windsor castle.

I land and wait to go through customs until Karen & her gang from Belle Glade arrive. Little did I know how huge Heathrow is... I was very fortunate that they came in at the same terminal. I would have been waiting awhile had they not.

It took some time to get everyone together at the airport. Our group had 5 kids and 6 adults and our big group was a busload, 49 of us total (including our driver and tour guide John). we had 2 groups from New Orleans area schools and one from Utah. As we would come to find out, we could not have handpicked a better group. The kids got along great, the adults were cool... 

The Utah kids ended up delayed until the next day, but the rest of us went to the hotel and dropped off our stuff, John marched us to the rail station and we went into the city. Did A LOT of walking around and after dinner most of us went to see Wicked at the King's Cross Apollo Victoria Theater. 

Cody, Jaxson, Kirsten, Eric & Benny, aka "Florida" as in "FLORIDA'S HERE" whenever we regrouped.

Our first dinner... the rest of Florida... the backs of those heads belong to Jayna, Frances and Angee, across the table is Marc & Karen.

I don't look tired at all... right?

My Amazing Journey

I'm going to try to get this done in a timely manner... late in the summer of 2014, after seeing my sister Karen's photo album from her trip to Europe with my nephew (also known as her son) Matthew, I decided I was going on that trip when Eric (my nephew, also known as her son) went. I had not yet committed until my boss was kind enough to officially grant me the time off when i finally got up the nerve to ask. That was November. It seemed like it took forever at first, but then all of a sudden it was May and my trip wasn't very far off.

I'm writing this from my travel diary, and posting some of my pictures so as to share my experience. I decided to keep a diary since i can't remember anything from one minute to the next, and since i made that decision, I figured I'd put my to do, to buy, to pack lists in the diary... and a few weeks before I left, I also recorded some of my thoughts, most of which went like this:  "HOLY COW, only (fill in the blank) days until i leave for Europe, EEK!"

I will try to keep this all concise. TRY being the operative word. Since it is late, for now, i will just post this one picture. My anal-retentive self had to be prepared, JUST IN CASE... (a friend commented, "are you planning to go to jail or something?")