A4 Update - April 2016

Being back in America is no where near as fun as last April.  

Matt had the most exciting month. He spent a few days in Paris wooing a fancy schmancy customer, while having pastries near the Louvre.  He said it was a planning meeting. Riiiiight.

Our Spring Break trip to Orlando continued. The Florida sunshine was so nice.

Our living room furniture arrived!  We retired the IKEA chair & John Lewis couch upstairs to the office. We can finally unpack our other decorative pieces now that there's somewhere to put them. Matt's mom is visiting next month so I hope to tap her decorating prowess for ideas.  

Both kiddos had their birthday. Oldest Kiddo wanted to update her room, so she picked out a bedside table and new linens. She also got some new clothes and accessories. Youngest Kiddo is still easy to shop for.  He was thrilled with Lego and books. When did they get so big?

Summer is on it's way, and the neighbors keep telling us to just wait for the summer heat.  We say, BRING IT ON!

A4 Update - October 2015

We changed the clocks back an hour, and now the sun goes down at lunchtime.  You think I'm kidding?

*Holly & Oldest Kiddo took a day trip to Paris.  It might be one of Oldest Kiddo's favorite days of our whole time in Europe.  

*The kids went to various birthday parties.

*Matt & Holly went to a taping of the Graham Norton Show, which is one of our absolute favorites.  

*Matt was gone from London only 8 days during the month.  That's not too bad.  

*The kiddos had a half-term break.  We split our time between seeing the city and movies on the couch in pajamas.  
*Holly saw the incredible Ai Weiwei exhibit at the Royal Academy 

*The kids trick or treated.  Halloween isn't observed by all households, but from the noise on the street past bed time the older kids loved it.  

*Oldest Kiddo continues to love middle school (weird).  She attends different clubs each day after school, such as art, drama, and orchestra.  

*Youngest Kiddo is obsessed with building everything with Lego.  He likes the prepackaged sets, but he's having a blast with creating his own ideas.  

Day Trip To Paris - See All The Things! - Touring Tuesday

Oldest Kiddo had a day off from school on Friday, so we took a day trip to Paris.  That's what you do when your kids have a day off right?!  I'll never get over how easy it is to travel when your base is the UK.  Actually, I booked this trip way back in August when Eurostar had a ticket sale.  

So we took the 7:01AM Eurostar train from St. Pancras International station with an arrival into Gare du Nord station at 10AM Paris time.  Since this was our girl's first time to the City of Lights, we had to see it all.  I bought a day Metro pass so we could ride any train or bus we wanted to not waste a moment.    

The first order of the day was a quality pastry.  It's not really hard to find them in Paris, but I had one in particular that I craved from Du Pain Et Des Idées.  The l'escargot chocolat pistache was well worth the wait in line.  As I fought Oldest Kiddo for each bite I realize that I should have purchased two.  

After my carb fantasy was fulfilled, it was time to see the town!  We hopped on the Metro to the Arc de Triomph.  She loved seeing the humongous traffic circle and the carved funny faces on the warriors.

Next, it was time to fulfill Oldest Kiddo's life long dream - The Eiffel Tower!  Her face was priceless when the Metro crossed over the Seine and the Eiffel Tower came into view.  She could not believe that we were actually there.  We even took a chance while at the Eiffel Tower and used the automated public toilets.  It was a silly experience.

To keep things moving, we got on the bus to get across town near The Louvre.  Our first stop was a walk on the path along the edge of the Seine to the Île De La Cite to see Notre Dame Cathedral.  The line to reenact Quasimodo was beyond comical so we moved on. 

A walk back toward the Louvre took us to the colorful pillars at Palais Royal.  She had a great time hopping between them.  After the exercise we grabbed a quick sandwich and took a little walk through the neighborhood.  Along the way we saw some cool fountains and the Pompidou Centre.  

We then returned to the Louvre to see the must see items with a few thousand of our closest friends: Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory of Samothrace.  The Louvre was very helpful for our expedited touring by placing signs throughout the museum to guide us toward the biggies.  Mona Lisa's harem was a sight in itself.  Our feet started revolting against us at the end of our time at the museum, and we took respite in the Apple Store's free wifi at the mall attached to the museum.  

By this time we had to make a decision, take the slow way back to Gare du Nord or squeeze in one more thing.  

Squeeze in one more thing!!

Our last stop of the day was to see the gorgeous Galleries Lafayette department store.  The atrium is beyond gorgeous and worth any moment you can spend in there.  Oldest Kiddo noticed a sign for the outside terrace, and we could not pass that up.  The view was amazing, but the sun was not in my favor to take any worthwhile photos.  

Then it was time to hustle back to the train.  We stopped into a market near the station for some dinner provisions and settled into our seats for the journey home.  Oldest Kiddo could barely keep her eyes open on the Tube ride home, and I'm sure she fell asleep as her head was falling onto the pillow.  I say it was a successful Parisian rendezvous.  

Paris Times Deux - Touring Tuesday

Last fall I had the pleasure of going to Paris. 

Twice.

The two-hour Eurostar train ride from London's St. Pancras Station couldn't be easier.  If you book your ticket well in advance, you can get a round trip for £79 ($120).  Another bonus to the Eurostar is that when you disembark from the train at Gare du Nord Station, you are already in Paris and can get started with your touring immediately.  If you fly it can take well over an hour from Charles de Gaulle Airport to get into Paris via public transport.  No one has time for that on a short visit.

The first of my trips to Paris was with my mom.  She was planning to visit Paris with some of her friends, but unfortunately that trip fell through.  So Matt knew that she'd appreciate a short side trip when she came for a visit in September.  He booked us for one night at a hotel close by the Arc de Triomphe.  The goals of our trip consisted seeing as many iconic structures as our feet could handle and eat along the way.  We lucked out with gorgeous weather.  With our limited time we only went into the Musée d'Orsay, and I am so glad we did.  The museum is a beautiful old train station, and the art is gorgeous.  We liked the place so much we decided to have lunch in the cafe, and it was delicious.  

It may appear that a majority of our caloric intake was from sugar, but we did have four square meals while in Paris.  Breakfast in the hotel was standard European pastries, muesli, coffee, and fruit. One lunch was at a terrible cafe a few blocks off the Champs Élysées, but dinner completely made up for it.  We ate at a little place where we could see the chef cooking our meal and practically licked our plates. 

I can't share mom's trip to Paris without showing you this scary van.  Stay away children, stay away.

The second visit to Paris was with two mums (that's British for moms) from school.  This trip was planned for the first weekend in December.  It's not the most ideal time to go, but we were willing to take our chances with the weather.

The thing that was different about this trip........we went to Paris for the day.  

We left on the 6:30AM train and returned on the 10:30PM.  We did not tour any museums, but we sure saw a lot of beautiful spots.  Even though it was the first Friday in December, not all of the trees had dropped their leaves.

Notre Dame is a stunning building.  The bridges covered in locks are not as stunning.  I think the concept is a smidge overdone, but that's my opinion.  

The Christmas market was up and running along the Champs Élysées, and we made a pit stop for a glass of champagne.  It gave us enough buzz to keep walking to get to the  Eiffel Tower.  Once we made it to the spot in the photo above, our feet refused to move much further.  We hopped on the Metro in search of dinner.   

One of the moms talked to the French man sitting with us on the train to tell us where we should eat.  At first he thought she was joking, but when she wouldn't drop the subject he gave us a few places he liked.  It did not cross our minds that the places he recommended would not open until 8PM so that did not work for us to make our return train.  We stumbled across a restaurant that made us all happy, and our feet thanked us for the short respite.  

Our ride back to London was significantly quieter than our ride into Paris, but we made the most out of our few hours.    

Would I go back to Paris?  Oui.
Would I do a day trip again? Oui.

As if you needed another reason to why Europe is great.