I Love Broadway!

So this past weekend, Andy and I got to watch the Lion King broadway show with our friends, the Whettens, Voights, and Massens. I saw Lion King for the first time a few years ago when I went to New York for a hair show. I really enjoyed the production so when I learned that it was going to be playing in Minneapolis, I was really excited! I love getting a group of friends together to have fun so I asked our friends if they wanted to go and they did. We all had a great time and it was fun to be able to hang out with everyone. It seems like we haven't had a big group together for awhile...everyone has been really busy this year! Anyway, if you ever get a chance to see the Lion King broadway show, it is definitely worth it!

General Conference

I thoroughly enjoyed watching conference on Sunday. The talks were excellent and I'm definitely looking forward to being able to read them again...especially read the talks from the session on Saturday. I was only able to catch part of the Saturday morning session. Anyway, as I was listening to conference, I reflected back to the times when I was younger...when I was younger, I was not good at listening to conference and didn't fully understand the importance of it. In fact, Julia and I would pretend to sleep walk out of the room and go play for a bit. We were silly to think that our parents would actually think we were sleep walking. :)

Anyway, it was nice to be able to relax at home and feel the spirit and to not worry about things that are going on in our daily lives.

Europe Pictures

I finally got the chance to post some pictures from our trip. :) I hope you enjoy them. We took a ton of pictures! If you want to see all of them, you can check out Andy's blog (zerostudios.blogspot.com)

Random Paris pictures

Chateau De Versailles

Eiffel Tower, Musee D'Orsay, and Saint Chappelle

Notre Dame

The Louvre and the Arch of Triumph

Various pictures we took in London

Tower of London and Tower Bridge

Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

Regent's Park and Queen Mary's Garden

Buckingham Palace and Changing of the Guards

Back Home

We finally arrived back to the United States. We really enjoyed our trip but definitely glad that we're home. Here's a quick recap of my thoughts.

London - Loved it!! The weather was perfect and everyone speaks English.

Paris - Definitely quite the adventure since we didn't speak the language. Friendliness from the people were a hit and miss...also, bus transportation was not reliable. We learned that it's better to stay in a hotel near a metro station. However, we did learn a few things from our stay in the suburbs.... we learned that you don't necessarily need to pay to ride the buses and people didn't pay to get on the Metro. They would just jump over the stations. Also, if there was a gate, you could just yell to the Ticket guy to have him open it for you. These things came in very handy on the last day. We actually got all the way to the Airport without using our passes... :)

Overall, I LOVED our trip! It was fun and adventurous and I loved being with my husband. :) I would have loved Paris even more if it weren't for the weather...but you can't control that. At least the last 2 days were beautiful!

Paris Day 5

YIPPEE!! Finallly!! The weather has cooperated. It was absolutely beautiful! I love the sun!

We spent the whole day at the Chateau de Versailles. We explored the palace for about 2 hours then wondered around the gardens for the next few hours. I've seen these types of gardens in movies and I've always wanted to walk around in one. The best part was from 3:30 - 5 pm, the turned the fountains on and played classical music. It was amazing! I can't even imagine how spectacular it would have been to see it back in the day...especially since it was only for the king and his few guests.

I'm really glad we saved this for the last day because it was the perfect end to our trip! Then, we took the train back to Paris and we went to a nicer restaurant for dinner. We had some yummy food. Andy wanted to try something authentic so we ordered escargo for an appetizer. It was actually pretty good....then we ordered some dessert....I had the vanilla creme brulee. :)

Since it was so nice, we wondered over to the Eiffel Tower again. It was absolutely beautiful and it would light up for 10 minutes every hour. It was fun! Definintely the way to top off the trip. :)

Paris Day 4

Yippee!! We're in our new hotel..unfortunately, not as nice as Days Inn but good enough for us. :) After checking in, we went to the Musee d'Orsay. we wondered around for a few hours to look at the paintings. They were really cool. I especially enjoyed the Monets. :)

After that, we wondered around the mall to get a feel for the French fashion. The clothes there were really cool but also very expensive! There was hardly anything less than 100 euros and some basic blouses were even over 200 euros. (FYI - 1 euro costs 1.5 US dollars). We also stopped by the LV store to check out the purses. The cheapest thing there was just over 300 euros. I guess the LV bags are pretty cheap over there when you consider the cost of clothing. :)

Then we were off to our show. :) We went and watched the chinese acrobats in a production called the Journey to the West. It's a Chinese legned around the Buddhist monk journey to India to obtain Buddhist religious texts. It was pretty interesting. I'm glad Andy was there to help explain some things since I couldn't read the french explanation of what was going on. If it weren't for him, I'd be really lost.

Since the it wasn't raining, we went back to the top of the Arch to get a good night's view of Paris. I love seeing all the lights! Lights make everything prettier. :)

Paris Day 3

Last night, we looked into moving to a hotel closer to the city for the last 2 nights. By doing this, we could wonder Paris at night without worrying about catching the last bus to the hotel. After this morning, we figured this was an excellent choice. For some reason, the bus didn't come at the scheduled time and we waited for 2 hours...again, not fun because the weather still was gloomy and it was raining a little bit.

Anyway, after getting into the city, we went to Notre Dame. It was pretty interesting because the signs said no pictures allowed. But, when we got inside, everyone was taking pictures and the guards didn't do anything to stop them. After wondering around inside for a bit, we went outside to climb to the top. It was beautiful! The sky was still gray but at least the rain had stopped.

After that, we went to see Saint Chappell. The stained glass windows in this building was absolutely beautiful!! I haven't seen anything like it. The sun peaked through a bit so you could really see the beauty of the windows. Also, it was neat because the windows corresponded to books out of the bible. It was cool.

We then wondered over to the Army Museum and saw Napoleon's tomb. His tomb was pretty big! The armory that was saw was pretty neat too. After that, we wondered over to the Eiffel Tower.

Overall, it was a pretty relaxing day and I enjoyed seeing everything. However, we were starting to feel tired from all the walking we'd done the past few days. We're also looking forward to moving to a closer hotel the following day. It seems that the bus system is not too reliable.

Paris Day 2

Today was a lot of fun! We stopped at the main station to buy our Museum Pass and then we were off to the Louvre. This is were we saw the Mona Lisa....it was smaller then I thought but it was neat to see. My favorite part of the Louvre was seeing the two pyramids that touched at the point...Da Vinci Code!! That was cool. We also saw 2 Vermeer paintings...for book club, we read a book called "Girl with the Pearl Earrings," which is a Vermeer painting. The author basically created a story around the painting. It was pretty interesting and different from the book. Anyway, when we discussed the book, we learned a bit about Vermeer and that's why I thought it was cool to see some actual paintings of his.

Afterwards, we walked down the street to the Arch of Triumph. By this time, it started raining again and the wind was pretty cold so we didn't stay there too long. We were able to climb to the top of the Arch and got a really nice view of the city and took a few pics. Too bad it was cold and rainy.

Then, we took the metro over to Latin Quarters to eat dinner and to celebrate Andy's birthday. We ate at this really fun greek restaurant...at least I think it was a greek place. The food was really good and the best part was we each got to break plates when we were done. It was a great way to end the night. :)

Unfortunately, the adventure didn't end there. As we were headed back to our hotel, we again experienced troubles with the bus. For some reason, we missed our stop and it took us 30 minutes longer to get back to the hotel. The woes of traveling to a place where communication can be a problem..but it definitely makes it an adventure. :)

Paris Day 1

We left London around noon and arrived in Paris around 4 pm. Unfortunately, the weather was awful...it was gloomy and raining. Anyway, we bought our travel passes and hopped on the train to go to our hotel. We were located in an area called Alnay-Souis-Bois. When we arrived, we knew that Paris would be quite interesting. From the train station, it took us 2 hours to find our hotel...I guess it was located off a small road and people weren't too familiar with it. So, we ended up riding the bus out to the airport to change money and get directions. It was definitely a very frustrating time since we had to wait in the rain for the bus. But luckily, we got to the hotel safely. :)

The hotel we stayed at was Days Inn. I was really impressed with the room!! It had been remodeled a few years back so it was very modern and very nice. Plus, it was very close to the bus stop so it wasn't bad.

Anyway, after we dropped our stuff off, we went to a restaurant nearby for dinner. The people there were very friendly! Luckily, one of the workers there spoke English so we were able to communicate without a problem. It was also fun to observe the every day life of people in France. :)