Our Iceland-UK-Olympics Vacation PART II

Here it is, finally. My Part II recap of our Iceland-UK-Olympic vacation. I blogged about our Olympic Games experience a week or so ago in a Vacation PART I. Now I'm going to try to cram in everything else we did on our trip in one post because I if I don't get this up all at once, I'll never get around to finishing it. [Like what I did for our Europe trip last summer :( ].

We did A LOT of sightseeing on our Iceland-UK trip. We tend to cram in as much as possible, which is good because we see a lot, but not so good because we sometimes don't have enough time at places we end up really liking. And we are constantly on the go from 7am until 10-11pm, which is exhausting. One of these days we'll go on a relaxing vacation and just stay in one place and do nothing. The kids won't know what hit 'em.

I apologize to those of you who follow me on twitter and or instagram as I include a lot of those photos you've seen already in this post. What can I say? I love using my iphone camera. It's so convenient, light and takes pretty decent pics. I took 472 photos with my iPhone and only 267 with my regular camera.

Iceland July 26-27, 2012 
When we learned that the airfare price was the same to the London with a stopover in Reykjavik no matter how long you stayed in Iceland, we knew we wanted to spend a couple of days in Iceland before making it all the way across the pond. Unfortunately, my husband made a mistake in our reservations that we didn't notice until weeks after, our two day jaunt in Iceland was reduced to barely 24 hours. Disappointing, but it is what it is and we enjoyed what little time we had there anyway. Good thing they get LOTS of daylight there.

Landing in Iceland
Sunset skies at 10:30pm

By the time we took the shuttle bus from the Keflavik airport to Reykjavik it was very late. Of course our stop was the last one. Of course. So now it's after midnight and we get to our room, which was an apartment right out of the coziest pages of an IKEA catalog. Seriously. So nice. We were famished, so headed out for some food. Pizza just because it was close to our apartment and the place was open at 1 am. Showers and then off to bed and it still wasn't fully dark outside. In the morning we walked around the city like tourists and then sadly headed back to the airport for our flight to London. The drive was nice, though, and we got some beautiful views of the Icelandic shores.

On the road from Reykijvak to the airport.

Iceland countryside

Iceland countryside

Such a unique and stunning landscape and overall a fascinating place. I can't wait to go back and explore the island. Hopefully in the winter so we can see the aurora borealis.

London July 27-28, 2012 
We arrived in London late Friday night, which was the night of the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics. We caught some of it on the television in our hotel room, went out to get some dinner, and then watched the rest when we got back. It was pretty neat hearing booms of the fireworks from our hotel while seeing it on television. It was a surefire reminder that we were really in London during the Olympic Games! Except the next morning we hopped a train for Scotland. But we'd be back to London in just a few days.

Scotland July 28-30, 2012
We arrived in Glasgow, Scotland after a very pleasant and scenic train ride. I spent half the time looking out the window at the pastures and towns and the other half of the time reading an ARC of Hearts of Darkness by Kira Brady. I was very happy. :)

Here's a photo of the British countryside between London and Glasgow. Look! We even saw Dementors!!!! Okay, okay, so it's grime on the train window. ; )

Countryside view from train
between London and Glasgow.

Our first evening in Glasgow we walked around the city for a bit and dined at an Italian restaurant called Pesto for dinner. If you are ever in Glasgow, you have to go there for dinner. It was excellent!

The next day we went on a fabulous day tour of the Scottish Highlands. We used Rabbie's personalized small group tours in Glasgow and highly recommend them. Our tour guide, John, was fantastic. He knew so much about the history and culture of Scotland from a thousand years ago until today. When he wasn't telling us about Scotland, he played a wide variety of Scottish music old and new. He also taught us everything he knew about Scottish whiskey. Which was a lot. Ha!

Loch Lomond, Scotland

Bagpiper playing at a rest stop
near Glencoe, Scotland

The Scottish Highlands are absolutely gorgeous and in no way do my photos do this land justice. The colors and textures and magnificence of the hills that go on and on and the little houses tucked into the valleys and the way the clouds just hover over the lands. Just so beautiful and serene. Between you and me, I felt like I was on the set of a Julie Garwood novel the whole time. :)

Glencoe, Scotland

Glencoe, Scotland

Later that day, we did our best to spot Nessie the Loch Ness Monster as we toured the shores of Loch Ness.

On a boat looking for the Loch Ness Monster!
Loch Ness, Scotland

Click on this one for more detail:

Castle Urquhart
Loch Ness, Scotland

I was sitting on the wrong side of the bus to capture a good shot, but here's what I got of the double rainbow we saw on the ride from Loch Ness back to Glasgow.

On plus side of the frequent rain showers in the UK?
So many rainbows! :)

Dinner in a Scottish pub that night. I had a traditional steak and ale pie. I wanted to be brave and have haggis but I just couldn't do it. Next time!

The following day we took a taxi to Celtic Park, home of the Celtic football club--my husband's favorite team. We kind of got there between a sold out tour and the next one, which would be a couple of hours later, so we opted not to do it. Instead we walked around the outside a bit and then bought my husband some clothing from the shop. He was pretty happy, which made us girls happy. :)

After that, we found our way back to the train station and hopped a train for Edinburgh for the day. By the time we arrived in Edinburgh it was probably after noon. Without a clear cut plan as to what to do, we meandered the streets of the Royal Mile--a landmark area of Edinburgh with a lot of history, culture, shopping and things to do. We knew we wanted to see Edinburgh castle, so we casually headed that way, enjoying the sights as we went along. We got taken in by a fun museum called Camera Obscura and ended up spending way more time there than we intended. So much so that by the time we walked to Edinburgh castle, the attendants literally closed the gate in our faces saying they were closed for the day an no one else could enter. I was stunned. I mean, it was totally our fault for not checking the time of the last entry and totally our fault for losing track of time, but ... but.. we were devastated. It still makes me really sad, and quite frankly mad at myself for letting this happen. So stupid! Argh! :( So now we have to go back to Scotland, too. Not a terrible thing, but with a whole big world to explore, I have to be honest with myself and think am I really going to go back there someday? I just don't know. Anyway, we wallowed our disappointment with an elaborate Thai dinner.

A view of Edinburgh, Scotland

The girls walking the Royal Mile
Edinburgh, Scotland

Edinburgh Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland

After dinner we walked the perimeter of the Edinburgh Castle and more of the city streets, where the girls bought some pretty sterling Celtic rings they liked at a street booth. We headed back to Glasgow that evening, checked out of our hotel and headed back to the train station where we hopped a sleeper train from Glasgow back to London. We had taken a sleeper train in Europe last summer in Germany from Berlin to Munich, which was not the most comfortable or enjoyable experience [I felt SO claustrophobic!] so I wasn't so keen on another sleeper train, BUT it was much better this time. The cabins were just a tiny bit bigger, but that little bit of extra space made a world of difference.

London July 31-August 6, 2012 
Back in London early this Tuesday morning we checked into our hotel in Putney Bridge and then headed back into London to meet up with our friends for some sight seeing. [Our close friends from home joined us for part of our stay in London. This is the same family whom we visited for our January getaway to Florida]. We met at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre where we toured the theater and then went through the museum, learning all kinds of fascinating things about Shakespeare, his plays and the theatre itself.

Click on photo to enlarge for more detail:

Inside Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
London, England

We grabbed lunch then headed towards Buckingham Palace. First we "shopped" in Harrods [omg! sO cRaZy!] and then took a tour of Buckingham Palace. As you can imagine, the palace is a pretty fascinating place. Ultra fancy. Everything seemed to be silk, velvet, marble, gilded, etc. A bit much for my tastes, so I guess it's a good thing I'm not royalty! Ha! :o)

Buckingham Palace, London, England

London Monument
London, England

We were super lucky to have scored tickets to a women's football match that night--Great Britain vs. Brazil, which my husband and 17 year old went to see while our 13 year old and I went out for a nice, quiet dinner. They had a fantastic time watching the football--it was quite an exciting game and the crowds were wild, of course because Team GB won 1-0!

The following day we met our friends at London Monument which is a stone tower that commemorates the great fire of 1666 and celebrates the rebuilding of London. You get a certificate of achievement for walking all the way up the 311 stone steps of the spire and back down again. It's true.

That afternoon, we were Olympic spectators for women's court volleyball. We had front row seats! How lucky is that? You can read more about the Olympic stuff and see pictures on my previous vacation post HERE.

After the volleyball, we went with our friends on a London sight seeing boat tour on the Thames. The guide on the boat was very funny and we learned a lot about the history of London, mostly about the buildings and bridges along the river. My favorite part was seeing Tower Bridge up close from the water with the Olympic Rings on display there. After dinner that evening, we went up the London Eye, which is the largest Ferris wheel type thing in the world. I have to admit, it was pretty cool. My favorite part was being able to see inside the stadium where Beach Volleyball was taking place from the top of the London Eye. This is the same area where you can see Big Ben, Parliament and Westminster Abbey.

Here's a picture of London Bridge. It's the one in the foreground. Yes. That very very very plain one. Is London Bridge. Surprised? I know I was. Tower Bridge is the fancy one most people associate with London. You learn something new everyday.

London Bridge in foreground
Tower Bridge in background

Tower Bridge 

The London Eye at night

The next day we took a whirlwind bus tour outside London with our friends to Bath, Stonehenge and Windsor Castle. Like I said, it was a whirlwind tour. Lots of time on the bus and too short a time at the sites. I don't think we had more than 2 hours at any of the stops. It was kind of crazy, but I'm still glad we got to see what we did. Honestly, you don't need more than an hour or two at Stonehenge, but it would have been nice to spend a whole day each in Bath and Windsor.

At the Roman Baths
Bath, England

The girls at the Great Bath
Roman Baths, Bath, England

Stonehenge, England

Walking up to Windsor Castle
Windsor, England

Moat gardens at Windsor Castle
Windsor, England

Changing of the guard
Windsor Castle, Windsor, England

After the tour, we had dinner at an Indian restaurant right near our friends' hotel. It was a buffet and I ate way too much. Buffets are dangerous.. especially when it comes to some of your favorite foods. Ugh. This was our friends' last night in London so we said our goodbyes and headed back to our hotel for some much needed rest. Sightseeing all day and night is tiring!

The next day we toured Westminster Abbey and Westminster Palace, which is where Parliament is held. I learned so much about the British government on the tour of the Parliament. Very interesting and educational. I hope the girls got something out of it, too. I felt a little ignorant learning all this in my 40s and not in my teens or 20s. Anyway, the building is quite stunning on the inside as well as on the outside. Speaking of the outside, did you know that Big Ben is not the official name of the clock tower? Big Ben is only the name of the bell inside the tower. The tower is actually called Westminster Tower but is going to be renamed Queen Elizabeth Tower in the not so distant future. 

Westminster Tower [aka Big Ben]
London Eye in the background

After Parliament, we walked up to Trafalgar Square where we grabbed dinner. When it started to get dark, we took the tube to Tower Bridge for some nighttime photo ops of the bridge and the Olympic Rings. What an exciting time to be visiting London!

Tower Bridge at night

The following morning we caught the end of the women's triathlon in Hyde Park, which you can read in my earlier Olympics post HERE. I was very excited about this, especially since I did my first sprint triathlon last summer. Obviously no where NEAR the level of this kind of event or this caliber athlete, but at least I know what it's like to do an event like this, even in it's most simplest and easiest forms.

After the triathlon, we ventured on with our sightseeing. First we went to London Tower, which was a very interesting place. So much history there, I really had no idea. It has been used as a prison, an artillery, and as a vault of sorts for the Crown Jewels, which we got to see! All I can say is WoW! So sparkly. Absolutely gorgeous. You look at those jewels and think, "Really? That's REAL?" It's so beautiful that I swear your mind starts to rationalize that nothing real can be that beautiful so it must be fake. Does that make sense? Maybe it's just me. lol.

A view from within Tower of London

From London Tower we went to Tower Bridge, which is practically a stone's throw from London Tower. We went INTO the bridge and walked across the enclosed walkway at the tippy top of the bridge. We learned about the construction and operation of the bridge. They also had displays here on the history of the Olympic games which was pretty neat. At this point in our vacation, I think we all started to lose some steam and found ourselves resting on benches any chance we could get.

Resting inside the pedestrian walkway
at the top of Tower Bridge

On our last full day in London, the girls slept in late [myself included!] while my husband went football stadium hopping. He's a big football fan and was excited to be able to go to all these stadiums that he sees on television all year long. :)

After he got back we had a late breakfast and then headed for a special little spot in London. Can you guess where based on this picture?

Abbey Road

Okay, even if you're not a Beatles fan, you probably recognized it anyway, right? Abbey Road studios where the Beatles recorded their albums. This was a pretty fun little excursion.

We then spent the afternoon in The British Museum which was phenomenal. You could spend days there and still not see everything, so we prioritized a few of their most popular items on exhibit and tried to fit it all in before closing time. The girls really petered out here so they plopped on a bench for a bit while Gabe and I zoomed around and tried to see the last few items on our list. We didn't quite get to it all, but did see most of the things on our list.

My guy inside the British Museum

Holding a Sumerian cuneiform
from 2700+ years ago! WOW! 

Hands on exhibit where we got to hold a piece of Sumerian cuneiform from 2700+ years ago! We also got to see the Rosetta Stone, sections of the Parthenon [a lot of controversy having this taken from Greece and placed in this British Museum.], the Lewis Chessman, a stunning collection of jade mosaic masks and sculptures from the Aztecs, and many other collections.

I knew we were all starting to fade because this was the first night we were back to our hotel before 7pm! I really wanted to eat dinner at this charming pub right around the corner from our hotel that we passed by every single day walking to the tube, but my youngest is a picky eater and didn't like anything on the menu and I was just too tired to be adamant about it, so we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. The food was good, but the pub would have been so much more British, you know?

The following day we packed up and headed to Heathrow for our flight home.

We had a brief stopover in Iceland again, but this time it was only an hour or so in the airport with extremely expensive food and souvenirs. We arrived in JFK airport in New York City at sundown and basically drove off into the sunset towards home in New Jersey. After being awake traveling for nearly 24 hours, it was pretty darned nice to sleep in my own bed. Even if jet lag did have me wide awake at 4 am for a few days straight. Yikes.

Arrived home to a beautiful Manhattan sunset

Home Sweet Home

First morning home, catching up on some emails...

Me and Peekaboo. 

I think she missed me. :)

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my vacation recap and look at my photos. :)

Our Iceland-UK-Olympics Vacation PART I

The 2012 London Olympic Games

I know I said I was going to tell you about our recent Iceland-UK vacation in one post, but I'm sitting here watching the 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony on TV right now and am feeling inspired to at least tell you about the Olympic games part of our trip!

Many years ago we decided that we wanted to visit England one day. Then when London was announced as the host to the 2012 Summer Olympics, we decided that's when we should go. So this vacation has been part of our plans for a long time. Over a year ago, we bid on tickets to several Olympic events and ended up with tickets only to women's court volleyball. Our entire trip was then planned around these tickets for Olympic volleyball on August 2, 2012.

We left the USA for Iceland on July 26, 2012, visited Reykjavik for a day, arrived in London late July 27, 2012, took a train to Scotland for several days, returned back to London where we spent the rest of our trip, save for one day when we left the city for a whirlwind tour of Bath, England, Stonehenge and Windsor Castle. I'll tell you all about the rest of our trip in another post. For now, here are some photos from the Olympic games we attended.

In the afternoon of Tuesday, July 31, 2012 we met a family from Canada who had extra tickets for women's football [soccer] that night so my husband and eldest daughter were very lucky to be able to go to that game. They saw Great Britain vs. Brazil! So fantastic to see these two teams play each other. Let me tell you that any Olympic game is just AWESOME to see in person. But when the host team is playing? The crowds go WILD! It's like nothing else. You can imagine what it's like to be there in person when you're watching the games on TV and you see and hear the spectators cheering, but when you're there it's SO much louder, more thrilling and you cannot help but feel so lucky and so happy to be a part of something so spectacular. Great Britain won that game, by the way. GBR vs BRA 1-0.

Earl's Court Venue for Court Volleyball
2012 Summer Olympics, London

Two days later, on the afternoon of August 2, 2012 we headed to Earl's Court for women's court volleyball. If you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, you probably saw most of these photos already. We had only picked up our tickets that morning in London, but when we got to the stadium we noticed that our seats were split up! Not good. I guess this happens often enough because we were directed to the ticket reconciliation counter to see if we could switch our seats. I was worried that we'd get worse seats, but no! They were even better! We were in the FIRST ROW! Yay! How's that for luck?

We saw two matches that afternoon. First was Turkey vs. Serbia, in which Turkey won in three sets. SRB vs TUR 0-3 and then Great Britain vs. Italy in which Italy won in three sets GBR vs ITA 0-3. We had a fantastic time. We were all smiles and kept on the edge of our seats watching these fantastic athletes compete against each other. Here are some photos from women's Olympic court volleyball:

Women's Volleyball
TUR vs SRB 3-0
2012 Summer Olympics, London 

Team GB Women's Volleyball
GBR vs. ITA 0-3
2012 Summer Olympics, London

The court sweepers for women's volleyball.
2012 Summer Olympics, London

Whenever we were in our hotel room we had the BBC coverage of the Olympics on the television. On Saturday morning, August 4, 2012 we caught the women's triathlon on television and I remembered that I made a note to myself WEEKS ago that I wanted to try to see some of this event! You know, since I became a triathlete myself last year and all. ;) So I did some super quick research on the triathlon course and where would be the best place for spectators without tickets to go for viewing this event. We booked out of our hotel, hopped on the Tube and raced over to Hyde Park where we were able to catch the last few laps of the running component of the triathlon. Even though it was really crowded and we had a limited view of the course, it was still SO thrilling or me to be able to catch part of this event in person. I was quite happy. Here are a few shots of the athletes in women's triathlon:

Women's Triathlon
2012 Summer Olympics
Hyde Park, London

Women's Triathlon
2012 Summer Olympics
Hyde Park, London

And that my friends, is how we were spectators in the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Truly an experience of a lifetime. And if I could do it again, I would. In a heartbeat.

A view of Beach Volleyball
as seen from the top of The London Eye

Now I want to go to Sochi in 2014. :)

Home from vacation!

Hello everyone! Hope you're all well. It's been a while, so I wanted to let you know I'm home from vacation and I can't wait to tell you all about it! I scheduled some posts to go up while I was away and had good intentions of finding some time [and WiFi!] to come online to reply to comments, but alas we were SO busy ALL day and then SO tired at night to do anything more than shower and flop into bed, so I wasn't able to keep up with the blog. Hope I didn't come across rude by letting your wonderful comments go unrecognized!

Me and my husband
with Urquhart Castle in the background
viewed from Loch Ness, Scotland

If you follow me on twitter or Instagram, I already bombarded you with pics and tweets about our trip. If you're not in one of those two crowds, don't worry. I plan on bombarding you, too! ; ) I'm writing a blog post in which I'll share some pictures and thoughts about our trip to Iceland, Scotland and England--including the Olympics!--over the next couple of days. Such a great vacation! I'm going to blog about our 12 day trip in one post because last year I attempted to post our wonderful vacation throughout Europe in several installments--one for each city we visited-- but I never finished them!!! I got as far as Paris and Amsterdam but never got around to telling you about Berlin, Munich and Geneva! That still really, really bugs me to this day that I never followed through with the rest of those Summer of 2011 vacation posts. Anyway, I need a few days to gather my photos and thoughts into a concise post, so please stay tuned!

In the meantime, I hit the grocery store at 7 am this morning since we had nothing but a bottle of ketchup and and a handful of moldy cherries in the fridge and now I'm knee deep in laundry waiting for twelve days of mail to arrive so I can catch up on bills and such. That will be a blast of reality, aye?

I also want to catch up with YOU, so tell me what's going on in your area of the world right now! I'd love to hear from you. 

Cheers! 


p.s. I'm extending the deadline to enter my Christmas in July FIVE giveaway until Sunday, August 12 at 11:59 am EST [just before noon], so if you haven't entered yet, please visit that post HERE!

In Amsterdam

August 8-9

On the morning of August 8th, we left Paris by train bound for Amsterdam. I spent the train ride reading, dozing and taking in the pleasant country-side scenery of the France, Belgium and the Netherlands. We arrived at Amsterdam Centraal several hours later and headed for our hotel.

While in Amsterdam, we stayed at the Boutique Hotel View, which I think was my favorite hotel of our trip. Excellent, personal hospitality.... Located in an old canal house on a quiet street with views of the canal, the hotel is a very short walking distance to shopping, dining and entertainment, as well as to numerous museums such as the Anne Frank House and Van Gogh Museums. Our room was surprisingly spacious and the decor is chic, stylish and comfortable. I'd stay there again. : )


By the time we checked in and freshened up, it was mid to late afternoon so we went out for an early dinner. We then walked around the shops and debated on buying long pants and jackets for me and the girls because we were so cold and hadn't packed enough warm clothing for our trip! It turns out Amsterdam [and France and Germany] had an unusually cold summer this year. We went back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit while my husband went online and purchased advance tickets to the Anne Frank House for the following morning. We went back out for dessert and when we were about a block from our hotel it started pouring! We had umbrellas, but were still pretty soaked by the time we found a little Italian restaurant for tiramisu and chocolate cake. It was the perfect night for some comforting desserts, that's for sure!

View of the canal from the Anne Frank House

The following morning we walked from our hotel to the Anne Frank House, which was one of my favorite places we visited on our trip. This was the house in which Anne Frank hid from the Nazis for over two years with her family and four others. I knew the basic facts of the Anne Frank story, but I learned so much more visiting the museum. Not only that, but learning more about the Anne Frank story in the exact house in which they hid made this educational experience so much more profound and emotional. This visit will stay with my for a very long time.

Unfortunately, photography is prohibited in the museum, so I don't have any photos of the inside of the Anne Frank House. I don't even have a good photo of the outside! There are plenty of great photos at the museum website, though.

For more information about Anne Frank and the Anne Frank House museum, visit http://www.annefrank.org. This website is phenomenal. It hosts an amazing amount of information and detail about the Anne Frank story and the German Invasion in general as well as information about the museum and other inspiring and interactive pages. If you're ever in Amsterdam, I highly recommend you visit the Anne Frank House and Museum. Stay at the Boutique Hotel View when you do.

We would have loved to have had more time to explore Amsterdam, but this was all we had time to do this time as we had reservations on a train for Berlin that afternoon--and we decided we had to take an hour to buy those warmer clothes which we definitely needed that afternoon and in the days to come in Germany. At least now I know what to do first the next time we visit Amsterdam--starting with taking time to walk or bike along the canals and visit the other museums including the Van Gogh Museum.

Some little things I liked about Amsterdam:
•The canals.
•Bicycles everywhere!
•There's a parking deck at Amsterdam Centraal [major train station] just for bicycles!
•There was a sweet dog living at the hotel who greeted us in the lobby as well as two sweet kittens in the back room. Daughters abducted one of the kittens to our room for about 10 minutes at one point. Lots of cooing and giggling going on. ; )

Coming up next... Berlin, Germany!

À Paris

August 4-7, 2011


Finally as promised, pictures from our recent vacation to Europe. I took several hundred photos in the three days we were in Paris, narrowed those down to 68 favorites and then narrowed those down to the following 22 photos. It was not an easy task!

I studied French from 7th grade through senior year in high school with a teacher who included a lot of information about the geography, history and culture of France, including the major landmarks in Paris. Needless to say, Paris has been romanticized for me since then as a place that I always dreamed of visiting. So to have finally visited Paris this past August was a lot like a dream come true for me. And to be there with my husband and daughters made the dream all the more sweeter.

Without further adieu... Paris!

Our hotel in Paris, The New Orient Hotel. Isn't it so charming?

On the first day we went to the Montmartre district where we walked around enjoying the architecture and scenery and then later that evening we took the metro to Centre Georges Pompidou which showcases high-tech architecture and is the home of a public library, a center for music research and the largest modern art museum in Europe.

This is a view of the Eiffel Tower from Montmartre:

Sacré-Coeur Basilica. One of the most famous basilicas in Paris:

Centre Georges Pompidou:

On day two in Paris, we went to the Louvre which is one of the world's most largest and the most visited art museum. The Louvre was established in 1793 and is also an historical monument. Honestly, the museum itself is an intricate and beautiful work of art and so immense.

Musée du Louvre . . .

Daughters in the courtyard of the Louvre. There is an entrance through the pyramid!

It's really big inside! Just look at the hallways and staircases: 

Mona Lisa:

The museum is so big, that sometimes you're the only one around:

And you can take the time to make all sorts of fun poses for the camera. ;)

You literally walk for miles inside the museum . . .

From left to right: eldest daughter (who took the photo), me and youngest daughter. The other two people are strangers.

. . . and benches are welcomed by the weary:

Venus de Milo:

The museum itself on exhibit. This is the base of a turret, part of the original construction of the Louvre.

The painting below is Projet d'aménagement de la Grande Galerie du Louvre [1796] by French artist Robert Hubert [1733-1808]. It is an imaginary painting of artists painting paintings of the paintings in the Louvre which can be found in the Louvre. Including this painting. :) Later, Hubert's ideas for lighting decor as seen in his paintings like this one were actually used by architects in renovations to the museum.

After returning to the hotel to recharge our batteries--both literally and metaphorically, we went back out later that evening to see the Eiffel Tower. My husband planned it at just the right time of day so that we would be able to see the Eiffel Tower in both the daylight and night. He also purchased tickets for us to go to the top of the tower several months in advance, so we didn't have to wait in any lines. It was fantastic!

La Tour Eiffel dans le journée:

La Tour Eiffel le soir:

On day three, we went to the major business district called La Défense where the architecture is modern and wherein many of the city's tallest buildings lie. The main attraction here was definitely the monument and building called La Grande Arche de la Défense. The building was completed in 1989 and completes the historic axis of Paris called Axe historique. The Axe historique is the line of monuments, buildings and thoroughfares that extend from the Lourve, through Tuileries, La Place de la Concorde to the Champs Elysées, the Arc de Triomphe, and finally to La Grande Arche. It's similar in concept to The Mall in Washington, D.C.

La Grande Arche:

We headed along the Axe historique to L'Arc de Triomphe. This monument is massive--way more so than I think I expected. Once again, my husband's foresight in purchasing a city museum pass upon our arrival in Paris and we avoided the lines and walked right in L'Arc de Triomphe and climbed the stairs to the top of the monument where the 360° views of the city were spectacular.

L'Arc de Triomphe:

Making our way along the Axe historique, we took the metro to La Place de La Concorde and had lunch in a nearby restaurant before walking through the Jardins des Tuileries, which is the public gardens between Place de la Concorde and the Lourve. It was established in 1564 as the garden of the Tuileries Palace and later became a public garden in 1667.

The Ferris Wheel in the Jardins des Tuileries. I'm pretty sure this is the famous ferris wheel known as La Grande Roue:

Children were racing sailboats in one of the ponds not too far from the Ferris wheel. These toys were old fashioned model boats made of wood, string and cloth sails. No motorized boats here. Children would push the boat out into the pond with a wooden stick, the sails would catch the wind and sail across the pond, children racing to the other side to give it a push again. You can see a child holding the stick used to push the boats in the upper right hand corner of the photo below. 

We traveled the entire length of the Axe historique and sat for a few moments on the lawn outside the Louvre.

Finally, we took the metro from the Louvre to Notre Dame, which is just a few stops away.

This was our last day in Paris. The following morning we packed our bags and boarded the train for the Netherlands.

The little things I loved about being in Paris:

• Pastries for breakfast.

• Café au lait.

• The metro. Once you have a map and figure out the color coding, it's SO easy to get around!

• Finally putting five years of high school French to use after 25 years. :)

Stay tuned for vacation stories and photos from Amsterdam!

Fin