A Stranger in a Strange Land - Thursday

Thursday night I packed up a few last minute things and grabbed Ryan and we walked to the tube station to meet Jessi at her work about 40 minutes away. She had already brought our one humongous super heavy suitcase with her to work so we left straight from there to St. Pancreas station which houses a tube station and Eurostar a highspeed train that travels between England and France. We went through customs and security and boarded our train which was very nice. Jessi had booked us a seat with a table and the train wasn't very busy so we were able to use all four seats around the table. Ryan was a bit cranky as it was getting late so we gave him lots of snacks, watched baby einstein videos on the laptop and played with the brand new dinosaurs and cars daddy had bought him earlier that day. The entire trip took about 3 hours which is short unless you have a cranky baby on board hehe. They had a fire in one of the tunnels earlier this year and that has slowed the trip down, I guess it used to be around 2 hours.

Once we arrived we immediately looked for the taxi stand and ooh'd and ahh'd at all of the signs in french. We both crossed our fingers that everyone in france spoke perfect english and got in the line for a taxi. While in line I noticed a huge man of african descent standing by the line next to a cardboard box that I presumed was his bed. He had clothing that was ripped showing most of his legs and sandles that didn't cover his grotesque feet which looked like they had been frostbitten 100 times. He picked at his ratsnest of hair and mumbled to himself. This was the first of the very poor and invalid that I was to see during my trip.

With a bit of luck and Jessi's carefully prepared map and address sheet we were able to tell the french taxi driver where our hotel was. He seemed to have a bit of a problem with the exact location and yelled at someone on his cell phone in loud thickly accented french for the first quarter of our journey. On the way to our hotel I was looking out the window when I saw a HUGE building that stretched what seemed like a mile. It was a marvel on the outside with amazing stonework. I asked the driver if that was the Louvre. He responded "Oui Monsieur!" Would you like to see?" He then whipped our taxi across 3 lanes of traffic and squeezed into the middle of the Louvre complex. I can't describe how big this museum is so I've added this aerial view i found on the web. It is truely magnificient and we were lucky to get to tour it and see the Mona Lisa but i get ahead of myself!

As we neared our hotel we could see the Eiffel Tower which as we found out has a light show that goes on for 10 minutes on the hour every hour at night. I wanted to get a video of this but wasn't able to so here is one i found on youtube that shows exactly what we saw. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYH2IDQcjTU

We arrived at our hotel and were pleasantly suprised at a really nice clean albeit small room with a very friendly staff. We got an amazing deal on http://www.lastminute.com/ and it was literally less than half the normal price. Exhausted we passed out on our bed with Ryan in between us around midnight and slept through till almost 9 in the morning on Friday.

Ring around the Rosie

I've been trying to get this to post for awhile now. Hopefully it will work this time!

4 Crazy Dayz

A quick post just to let everyone know we are back after 4 crazy dayz in Paris. We left Thursday night late and didn't get settled into our hotel in Paris until around midnight. We visited or at least saw most of the major sites and took around 300 pictures. We got up this morning at 3:15 am and after a 3 hour train ride back to London, Jessi went to work and Ryan and I just got home at around 10am. We are all a bit weary and we have lots of stories to tell.

Until then!

Rob

Paris, not just our bathroom decoration anymore!

This weekend we are taking the train to Paris France. We leave on Thursday night and we come back monday morning. We are staying at the Best Western next to the Eiffel Tower. Hopefully we will see some awesome sights and spend a day at Disney. Expect to see pictures galore when we get back.

Rob

Windsor Castle!

So Ryan has been pretty disappointed. Not with London in general but with the fact that he has not been allowed his audience with the Queen. After some searching the internet we realized that she moves her residence to Windsor Castle in the summer. They open up the staterooms in buckingham palace and she leaves to her sprawling estate in Windsor.

Windsor Castle is the real deal. It is EXACTLY what you think about when you think of castles. Big fortified walls, slots to shoot arrows through, sits on the top of a big hill so you can see enemies from far away, humongous fire-breathing dragons guarding the gates. Ok maybe the dragons aren't that big but they have very nasty teeth!

We took the train from Paddington station (where our favorite london bear arrived from the darkest jungles of peru and was named after the station) and after a quick stop in Slough to pick up a 6 minute train to Windsor we arrived.

The town was a bit touristy but still had some nice authentic pubs and lots of shops.

Once we got there we had a bit of fun annoying some guys in funny hats.

We didn't see the queen of course but the castle is amazing and beautiful from the outside. It was overshadowed inside only by the amazing luxury and glamour of Buckingham Palace. Overall it was a must see and we loved it.

We made our way back into town for lunch and decided on a real pub lunch at "The Horse and Groom".

Jessi had a nice cold Guiness and I tried an old comfort food favorite of the locals. Bangers N Mash. It was a delicious combination of sausages and mashed potatoes with gravy and sauteed onions. Ryan loved it (the sausage not so much the Guiness hehe). 2 thumbs up!

Of course you can't finish off a perfect day like this without some icecream whilest you wait

for the train!

Kicked to the Curb

We had a first yesterday! It was a nasty, rainy, typical day in London and we were getting a bit stircrazy so we had decided to go on a visit to the local British Army Museum which we had heard had a nice soft-play area for kids. That is one of the wonderful things about the museums around here, so many of them have play areas so the kids can blow off some steam in between "boring" exhibits. We had a bit of a time getting to the museum but once we found it we had a great time and Ryan got to play for an hour in a really nice play area with toys and things to climb on and slides and such. The highlight of the trip for me was learning about the Revolutionary war from the side of the Redcoats. It turns out that Washington was extremely popular in the colonies and their were a lot of support for the colonials on this side of the atlantic.

So we do a little shopping in an area close by and we are headed back on the bus home when a guy in a wheelchair gets on the bus. We move out of the handicap area which is reserved for wheelchairs and strollers, and make room for the guy. When the bus driver notices we aren't in the handicap area anymore he gets out and tells me I need to fold up my overloaded stroller or get off the bus now.

We were dumped on the pavement in the middle of London where we had to sleep outside in the rain in a park with nothing to keep us warm but one pair of dry socks between the three of us.

Ok we were pretty close to our stop and we just walked home. But the point is they kicked us to the curb! And he wasn't nice about it. Get off and get another bus he yelled.

Soooo sometimes the family goes out of the friendly in this town I guess.

20 more days and we're home!

Puddle Jumping

Isn't it great being a kid!