Roseyland

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Welcome to Italy day 4. This is the midpoint of our adventure, and today’s agenda includes the Galleria Borghese and a tour of the ancient roman ruins. We had 11:00 am reservations for the Galleria Borghese, so we were able to sleep in a little bit longer. The Galleria Borghese is an art gallery, inside a villa, inside a park. Now here is where I get confused, sometimes Villa Borghese refers to the park in which the Galleria Borghese is located, and sometimes Villa Borghese refers to the Villa, which contains the Galleria Borghese. Basically, Galleria Borghese is an art gallery, inside a large fancy house (or Villa), which is located in a big park, that is something like central park.

We arrived at the Villa Borghese a little early, so that we could check out the park part of Villa Borghese. This park was one of my favorite parts of Rome. It had lots of winding paths, and different fountains and statues hidden all over the place. There were lots of runners, and it felt very peaceful for being inside a big city. The fountain below is somewhere inside the Villa Borghese park.

We were in Rome during the World Cup, but by this time Italy had already been eliminated. It looked like a part of Villa Borghese had been set up as some type of World Cup watching party, but as you can see, the party was long over and the place was covered in trash. Looks like it was a good party though.

This is the Asclepius Temple. It’s a temple, on an island, in a lake, in the park. There were also ducks. It was very pretty.

These are the gardens behind Villa Borghese, and this time I mean the Villa that contains Galleria Borghese. I want to say something like, “Hey, check out that statues butt”, but I’m afraid you’ll get the wrong idea.

This is a water spout. They have these all over Rome, and people use them to fill up their water bottles and splash water on themselves. Which is nice, because the summer is hot in Rome. In case you are wondering, you can drink the water in western Europe. I always say that I’m going to stick to bottled water, because even though the tap water is perfectly clean, it’s still possible that your body will need an adjustment period. I always end up drinking tap water by the first day though, and so far I have suffered no ill effects.

This is the Galleria Borghese, in the Villa Borghese, that is the big house and not the park. I’m not a huge art fan, but this gallery is nice for a couple reason. First, they only let people in with a reservation. Every two hours, they let a set number of people in for two hours, so that the gallery isn’t packed with people. The other nice thing is that this is a smaller gallery. It’s basically a villa filled with art, and there aren’t many barriers between you and the art. You can get right up close to some amazing statues. One of these statues was Apollo and Daphne, in which Daphne is being chased by Apollo and is turning into a tree for one reason or another. In the statue, her legs are starting to become part of the tree, and there are these leaves sculpted out of marble that are just unbelievable. The leaves are so thin, but they are marble. It doesn’t seem possible. Click on the link for a picture. If you visit the Galleria Borghese, you might consider getting an audio guide. They have cards you can read in English, but I find it hard to read and look at art at the same time. Of course like almost all art museums, you aren’t allowed to take pictures inside. I used the same website to make reservations for the Galleria Borghese as I did for the Galleria Academia and the Galleria Uffizi in Florence, which you can find here.

After the Galleria Borghese, we had lunch at the galleria’s bar. You remember that bar in Italy means something like counter service restaurant, right? Then we headed to the ancient roman ruins area where we took another Context Travel tour of the Palatine Hill, Roman Forum, and Colosseum. The tour we took was the Roma Antica tour, and just like the Vatian tour, it was excellent. Usually, I’m not big on tours. I’d generally prefer to explore on my own, but when it comes to something like the Vatican or ancient Rome, you really kind of need someone to explain it all to you. And again, the small group format of the Context Travel tours is way better than the larger group tours, in my not so humble opinion.

We started our tour at the Palatine Hill. The Palatine hill is the most ancient part of Rome, and it is where the most well off ancient roman citizens, including a few emperors, lived. I would like to take this moment to point out that I do not guarantee the accuracy of any information in these blog post. This is just what I remember, it could totally be wrong. The picture below is of an aqueduct that provided water to the Palatine Hill. It’s thousands of years old.

Here is a picture of the colosseum as seen from the Palatine Hill. I love those trees, they are so ancient Rome.

Here is a picture of the ruins on the Palatine Hill with the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background. Yeah, awesome shot, I know. I learned a few things on this part of the tour that I’d like share with you at some point. How about now? First, the ancient Roman ruins were completely buried until the 1950’s. Initially treasure hunters started digging in the area for artifacts they could sell, and soon after that the government stepped in to protect the artifacts and excavate the ruins. Everything you see in these pictures had been completely buried until relatively recently. Second, you know all those white marble statues you expect to see in an ancient Roman palace? They were not white. They were carved out of marble, which was white, but then they painted them to have clothes and skin, etc… They were full color statues. Weird. The ancient Romans also had many modern conveniences, like running water and under floor heating. I’d love to tell you all about it, but you really need to go to Rome and take the tour yourself.

Now we are entering the Roman Forum area. This was the center of government for ancient Rome. Something like Washington D. C. The picture below is of an arch. Our guide told us that arches represented the open legs of a woman. Seriously. When soldiers would come back to rome after doing all sorts of bad things, they would walk through the arch to symbolize a rebirth and be forgiven for their transgressions. I will never look at the Gateway Arch the same way again.

This is an original road in the Roman Forum area. Actual ancient Romans walked on this road. I touched it, because other people were touching it, and it seemed like the thing to do.

Here is a good overall view of the Roman forum area. One thing to note, this area was in use for hundreds of years, and all of these buildings were built at different times. So you are looking at a hodgepodge of buildings from different times in this shot.

Another shot from inside the Roman Forum.

This is location where Caesar was cremated. There is a big story around Caesar’s death. It goes something like: Caesar was emperor, the people loved him, the senate did not, the senate had him assassinated, the people were outraged, and there was a big funeral where Caesar was cremated. You’ll have to take the tour if you want the full and accurate version. As you can see, people still leave flowers and notes for Caesar today.

After the Roman Forum, we headed to the Colosseum. You have probably seen the movie Gladiator, and you pretty much know what the Colosseum was. Gladiators used to fight here, and sometimes criminals were punished here. Also, the Colosseum was not buried for a couple thousand years like the other ruins we have seen so far.

This is a picture of the pathway you can walk on inside the Colosseum.

This is a cross inside the Colosseum. I don’t know why it’s there exactly, but I suspect that many Christians were sent to their death in the Colosseum, and the cross is probably a memorial to them.

Here is a good shot of the inside of the Colosseum. See the small section of floor that has been built at the opposite end? That is the level of the original floor of the Colosseum. What you see in the bottom now are the areas underneath the floor where they would keep various animals (lions, tigers, etc…). There were also numerous trap doors in the floor, and the animals could be sent to pop up from any one of them, for the Gladiators to fight. They could also flood the whole area for naval battles. I almost said navel battles, hee hee.

Hey look! It’s a cat in the Colosseum. He seemed to have somewhere very important to go, and was not interested in stopping for a picture.

After our tour we headed to the Spanish Steps for dinner. We wanted to eat at a restaurant called Hostaria Al, which is supposed to have this amazing shrimp risotto, but they were closed for vacation. Instead we ate at a restaurant called Da Giggi, which had a hillarious waiter named Kiko. You should go see him, he will make you order the lasagna, and it will be very good.

That is all for today. Only two days left. Tomorrow we travel to the small hilltop town of Orvieto. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Today is a big day, we are going to Florence. I’ve wanted to go to Florence since I took art history in college. I looked back over my college papers, and it turns out I even wrote a paper on the subject of David from Donatello to Bernini. I totally don’t remember writing this paper, but you can read it here. If by chance you are a college student, I have some free advice for you. You probably have to take some type of upper level elective outside of your major. Take art history. I know what you are thinking, history is boring and I’m not into art. Wrong. Art history is like history with pictures, which is way better than regular history. Anyways, we spent a lot of time talking about Florence in my art history class, and I’ve wanted to see it ever since, and now I have.

Okay, so this is day 3 in Italy. We got up, took the metro to the train station, and took the train to Florence. The train was very nice. If you are traveling between major cities in Europe, you often have two choices. You can take a direct train between the two cities or a regional train that makes a few stops between the cities. The direct train is more expensive, but it’s a faster and nicer train. I’d go with the direct route if I were you. I’d also splurge on first class, because it isn’t that much more money, and it’s less crowded. The train got us to Florence in about one and a half hours, and we headed straight to the Galleria Accademia. If you are going to Florence, especially in the summer, you will want to make reservations to see the Galleria Accademia and the Uffizi Gallery. If you don’t, you will either not see them, or spend all day waiting in line. I used this website to make reservations, but I’ve heard that hotels can make them for you too.

The Galleria Accademia is where you can see Michelangelo’s David. You are not supposed to take pictures inside this museum. I did not know this, so I took out my camera, and took a picture of David. Then I realized that nobody else was taking pictures, which seemed odd, and then I saw the “pictures are strictly forbidden” sign. Unlike the Sistine Chapel, people seemed to be obeying the rules here, so I did too. From that point on at least.

After seeing Michelangelo’s David, the plan was to check out the Duomo, which is the big cathedral right in the middle of Florence. The line was super long though, so we skipped ahead to lunch. This was the only time I think we made a bad dinning choice. It was really hot, so we kind of just picked the first place we saw, and the food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, and it ended up being one of our most expensive meals for so-so food. We should have realized this, because the place had tourist trap written all over it, but unfortunately the heat had impaired our judgement. The picture below is of the Duomo, we’ll go inside later.

After lunch, I climbed to the top of Giotto’s bell tower, which is the bell tower right next to the Duomo. I love climbing to the top of domes and bell towers in places like Florence. It’s fun, because you have this mini shared experience with a bunch of other tourist from all over the world. I like trying to guess where the other people are from, and then sometimes you’ll say something in english as you are passing somebody, and if they speak english, there is this moment where you realize each other speaks english, and yeah, I’m a dork. It’s also a lot of work climbing these towers, so you get a nice sense of accomplishment and some great views. Here is a picture of the steps in Giotto’s bell tower.

Here is a platform partway up the bell tower. It was nice that the bell tower had these, because it gave you a place to rest. Most of the domes don’t have a lot of places to rest on your way up.

Here is a grate where you can look all the way down the center of the bell tower. Nice shoes.

Here is a view of the Duomo’s dome from the top of Giotto’s bell tower with florence in the background.

This is the platform on top of the bell tower. I kind of felt like a gerbil being inside the little tunnel cage.

After I climbed down from the bell tower, we went to the Uffizi gallery where we had reservations, which like I said earlier, you need. The Uffizi gallery is a world famous art gallery, and it was pretty cool, but you can’t take pictures inside. I did take this picture of the Ponte Vecchio from the Uffizi gallery though. The Ponte Vecchio is a bridge over the Arno river in Florence. The bridge contains a number of gold shops, we’ll go there a little later.

After the Uffizi gallery, we headed back to the Duomo to see the inside. The line was shorter this time, and it actually rained a little. It felt good though, considering how hot it was. See that building with the gold doors? That is the Baptistery, which is basically a mini church in front of the Duomo where they used to baptize people, and maybe they still do, I don’t know. The gold doors are the Gates of Paradise by Ghilberti. The doors on the baptistery now are just a replica of the original doors, which are now in a museum. These doors are one of the things from my college art history class that I really wanted to see.

This picture is a little out of order. First we went into the main level of the Duomo. It was very pretty, but dark, and my pictures didn’t come out all that great. Also, being that this is a church, they want you to be quite, and every few minutes, this creepy deep recorded voice says “Silenzio” followed by “Silence”. It was scary. After we saw the main level, I went to climb the dome, because as we discussed, I like climbing stuff. I took the picture below of the inside of the Duomo on my way up the dome. Look at the people below, they are so tiny, somebody should feed them more.

Here are some of the steps on the way up the dome. See, how cool is that, just think how old these steps are and how many people have climbed them. Are there any domes I can climb in St. Louis? I miss it.

Here is a view from the top of the Dome. Notice the hills in the background. They are covered with houses. I would like one.

This is the platform on the top of the Dome. I took some time to sit up here, relax for a bit, and send some SMS messages, which cost 50 cents a piece from Italy by the way.

After the climbing down from the Dome, we headed to the the Ponte Vecchio. Hey look, it’s a picture of me on the Ponte Vecchio. People are always like, why don’t you ever take any pictures of yourself, and I still don’t really understand why I would want to, but here I am, standing on a bridge, in Italy. Like I said earlier, the Ponte Vecchio is filled with gold shops. If you aren’t interested in gold, like me, the bridge also has nice views over the river Arno.

After the Ponte Vecchio we had dinner in Piazza Vecchio and then headed to the train station to catch our train back to Rome. Here is a picture of the tracks in the Florence train station. Cool picture huh?

The train ride back to Rome was nice. We sat next to an american couple who had been in Italy for 10 days. It was interesting to hear their stories. Also, on the train we were given olive flavored crackers. I thought they were okay. A few people have asked me whether I liked Rome or Florence better, and of course this isn’t really an answerable question. Rome has so much to see and do, but it’s also a big big city with a definite rat race feel to it. Florence on the other hand is smaller, and is more laid back and relaxing. Florence was also nicer and cleaner. I would much rather live in Florence and I do wish I had a few more days to just hang out there. Tomorrow we visit the Galleria Borghese and take a tour of the ancient roman ruins. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Welcome to day number 2 of the Roseyland Italian adventure. You have of course read day 1 already, if not, use the link above and go read it. Do not read day 2 without reading day 1, just don’t. Today is our first full day in Rome and there is only one item on the agenda. Touring the Vatican. Before we left, my aunt and uncle (who had just been to Rome) convinced us that we had to take a Context Travel tour of the Vatican. I had always planned to take a tour of the Vatican, but I was planning on taking one of the larger group tours. The Context tours seemed a little expensive and overly academic to me. I’m so glad I changed my mind. Context tours have a maximum of 6 people on their tours, and your guide knows everything about the Vatican, and I mean everything. It’s like strolling through the Vatican with your good professor friend that loves to answer questions. The larger group tours would be okay, but they are groups of around 30 people, and that wouldn’t be so bad, but there are like 30 groups of 30 people all trying to shuffle their people from place to place while they recite their script. I’m probably being a little too hard on the larger group tours, but the Context tour really was excellent. If you spent all that money to go all the way to Rome, spend a little more on the Context tour, and no, I’m not getting compensated in any way to say this. In case you are wondering, we took the Arte Vaticana (with Reservation) tour.

We met our guide in a bar (think coffee bar) just outside the Vatican museums entrance. There were three other people on our tour, a husband, wife, and son from Massachusetts (I think). They were nice. The husband liked to take lots of pictures, like me. I wonder if he has a blog. Anyways, we entered the Vatican and our guide gave us a good overview of the Vatican and it’s history. The we walked out on this terrace that was absolutely beautiful. It overlooked the Vatican gardens and you could see the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background. You can’t tell from the picture, but that dome is huge, and by huge, I mean really really big.

Here is a picture from a courtyard inside the Vatican Museums. See that sphere in the middle? That sphere used to sit right between the World Trade Center towers. I don’t remember the story, but somehow it survived 9/11 and now it lives at the Vatican.

The Vatican museums are filled with priceless art. This statue is apparently very famous. Of course I don’t remember it’s name, but I believe it was an ancient greek statue had been lost for hundreds of years but was still well known among ancient Roman artist. Then it was unearthed and people flocked to see it. I probably butchered that story, but the point is, this statue is kind of a big deal. He should probably be wearing sunglasses.

Here is a hallway in the Vatican museums. Very beautiful building, lots of people.

Ohhhh. This is one of my favorite parts. This is a Vatican parking lot. This is where people who work at the Vatican park. See anything unusual? There is a big yellow Hummer in the parking lot. Who at the Vatican drives a Hummer?!? Doesn’t that break a vow or two? And don’t say, “I bet it’s the Pope’s!”. That joke is far to easy to be funny.

This is the School of Athens by Raphael. I had just finished reading Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King, which talked all about the painting of the Sistine Chapel and the rivalry between Michelangelo and Raphael. The book also talked about Raphael’s paintings in the Papal apartments, and they sounded very cool, but I didn’t think I’d get to see them, because I figured the Pope still lived there. Turns out he moved a while back, and you can go see them. Hurray! I actually liked this painting more that the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but that might just be because you can get closer to it.

Here is the famous Sistine chapel ceiling. The picture is a little blurry, because you aren’t supposed to take pictures and I had to be all sneaky. The whole thing is kind of ridiculous. There were a few hundred people in the Chapel, half of whom are taking picture after picture and then the guards in thick Italian accents say, “No Phoooto… No Veedeo…”. On top of that, supposedly the only reason you can’t take pictures of the ceiling is because the images are copyrighted by the Japanese company NHK who funded the restoration of the ceiling, and supposedly that copyright has run out, so you can take pictures of the ceiling. It’s just that nobody has told the guards.

This is the official staircase of the Vatican. It’s what heads of state use when they visit and it leads up to the Sistine chapel.

This is the inside of St. Peter’s basilica. This building is huge, it’s as long as two football fields and ridiculously beautiful.

This is the alter of St. Peter’s basilica which sits directly under it’s massive dome.

Here is picture from St. Peter’s square in front of St. Peter’s basilica. See the building in the background with all the windows? The three right most windows on the top row are where the Pope lives and works.

Another shot of St. Peter’s square, this time with St. Peter’s basilica in the background.

Our tour concluded in St. Peter’s square, and just to mention it one more time, it was awesome. I learned so much that I could probably pretend to be catholic now. Our guide mention a couple things on our tour that were not about the Vatican, but have stuck with me. First he talked about the difference between the cultures of northern and southern Europe. Basically he said that the germanic cultures (Germany, the Netherlands, The UK, etc…) tend to be very orderly and structured cultures. On the other hand, the romance language countries (France, Spain, Italy, etc…) tend to be more chaotic and less structured. I think I experienced this last year when I went from London to Paris. I really liked London and I felt very comfortable there almost instantly. Paris on the other hand was a shock to my system. While I loved Paris, it felt very out of control to me. At the time I chalked this up to not understanding the language, but now I think it’s a deeper cultural issue too. Supposedly the U.S. is more like the germanic countries. I’ll have to test this theory with a trip to Germany. Rome was chaotic like Paris, but the people were friendlier, so it didn’t shock me as much. Either that or I’m just more used to it now.

The other thing our guide said that has stuck with me is that the European cultures are at serious risk of going extinct. The birth rates in most European countries are around 1.8 births per woman. 2.1 births per woman is the rate needed to maintain a population. On top of that, immigrant cultures in Europe have much higher birth rates and could over take the native cultures in a generation or two. This worries me, because the European people are wonderful, and I don’t want them to disappear. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the immigrant cultures, without them, Europe would be in even worse shape. Still, I hope traditional Europe is around for many generations to come, or at least for the rest of my lifetime. I did some research, and birth rates in Europe are increasing, so it looks like the trend is slowly reversing. It seems like an easy problem to fix. I mean Rome is filled with attractive young European women, how hard can it be to get them all pregnant? If by chance you are a European woman reading this right now, stop, go get pregnant, then come back and read the rest. Thanks.

After our vatican tour, we ate lunch and then headed back to St. Peter’s basilica to climb the dome. Unfortunaly, we had to wait in the security line, but it’s much shorter in the afternoon. Here is a picture of part of the staircase heading to the top of the dome.

Here is a picture of St. Peter’s square from the top of the dome with Rome in the background.

Here is a picture of the back part of the Vatican. Visitors aren’t allowed to go there, it’s where they have secret Pope meetings.

Here is the platform on top of the dome and all the people taking pictures.

After the climbing down from the dome, we walked to the Torre Argentina cat sanctuary. There are lots of stray cat’s in Rome. Something about italians not believing in sterilizing their cats. The Torre Argentina sanctuary has a little section of ancient ruins where the cats can live, and the sanctuary gives them food, water, and shots. The people that work in the sanctuary are wonderful wonderful people. You should go to the link above and donate. The cat below is Earl’s italian cousin. While all the other cats were sleeping, he was running and jumping from ledge to ledge. It was actually really hard to get this picture.

Here are more cats among the ruins.

The cat sanctuary is pretty close to the Pantheon, so we headed there next to see the inside this time. The Pantheon is (I think) the only ancient Roman building that has survived all this time in pretty much it’s original condition. At some point it was converted into a catholic church. Here is the inside.

Remember that great restaurant in front of the Pantheon that I talked about last time. Here is a view from our table, that’s my glass of red wine. I don’t know why, but wine tasted so much better in Italy. Maybe it was the atmosphere, but it seems like they serve it at the perfect temperature, or decanted it, or something. It was good, I wish I knew why.

Day 2 is now concluded. Tomorrow we travel by train to Florence. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Hey look! Roseyland is back. I know, you’re excited, totally understandable. I just got back from a trip to Italy, and now, I’m going to tell you all about it. I loved the blog post I wrote about my trip to London & Paris last year. You can read them here. I shouldn’t admit this, but I go back and read those post every few months or so. It’s a great way to revisit the experience. Naturally, I now have to do the same thing for my Italy trip.

Where to start? How about food. Ahhh the Italian food. It’s nothing like the picture below. This picture was taken in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport. They have great BBQ in the Charlotte airport. See that thing that looks like a giant french fry? That’s a fried pickle, and it’s awesome. I went to Italy with my Aunt (from Nebraska) and my Mom (from South Carolina). I arranged it so that we could meet up in Charlotte and fly to Rome together. This was our last meal before boarding our 9 hour flight.

After a couple hours in the airport, we boarded US Airways Flight #720 from Charlotte to Rome. This was on an Airbus 330. The picture below is from my seat. During the flight I was constantly comparing the US Airways Airbus 330 to the American Airlines Boeing 777 that I flew on to London last year. At first I liked the 777 a lot better, because it was a bigger aircraft and felt roomier inside, but the 330 grew on me. It might be a tad smaller, but the 777 had 5 middle seats, which means some poor sap get’s stuck with two people between him and the aisle. That would suck. Also, US Airways has a better in flight entertainment system than American airlines. I say this because the movies are truly on demand in that you can start them whenever you want, on American, they just play in continuous loops, and you have to catch the movies when they start. That being said, US Airways didn’t have a situational display that would show you where the aircraft currently was and how fast you were flying. Although I think the TSA might have made all airlines get rid of those.

Despite my best efforts, I didn’t get any sleep during the flight. I did watch three movies though. When In Rome, Date Night, and something else that for the life of me I can’t remember. I’m sure it was really good though. By the way, the fountain in the movie When In Rome, it’s not a real fountain. You can’t find it in Rome, so don’t go looking for it, that would be a total waste of time.

Upon arrival we went through customs. The italian customs process is much less strenuous than the UK customs process. The UK will have you fill out a form and ask you a few questions, the Italians, they look at you and stamp your passport. Which is fine by me, because it’s a lot faster. Since there were three of us, I decided to rent a short term apartment for our stay. I was a little nervous about this, because I like the connivence and security of a hotel, but this apartment got good reviews on Flipkey.com and it was about the price of one hotel room. It all worked out well and the apartment people were nice enough to arrange a private driver for us from the airport for €50. Below is a picture of our apartment’s living room. There were also two bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and a terrace that you had to take this tiny spiral staircase to get to.

All in all our apartment was pretty nice, but you did have to go up these steps to get to it. Not only that, before these steps there are three more flights of steps and these two weird metal gates that had to be unlocked to get in or out. The locks were strange too, I don’t know how, but they functioned differently from american locks, and it stressed me out every time I had to deal with them.

After settling into our apartment, we headed out to see Rome and get oriented. Below is a picture of Piazza del Popolo This piazza was pretty close to our apartment and we ate lunch at a ristorante here. I had some type of risotto. It was good. After walking around for a bit, we realized that it was just too hot and we were too tired to keep going, so we heading back to the apartment for a short nap until it cooled off a little.

Later in the evening, we headed out again. Our first stop, the Spanish Steps as seen in the picture below. Lots of people here. See those guys with flowers, they are really annoying. If you are female, they insist that you take a flower (because you’re beautiful of course), then if you take one and nobody pays for it after a few seconds, they take it back. I believe these are mostly illegal immigrants. Every once in a while the police show up and they go running, but they come back just a few minutes later. It’s like this weird game they and the police play that nobody ever wins. Fortunately we didn’t have to deal with this kind of activity too much in Rome, I thought it was a lot worse in Paris last year.

This is the Fontana della Barcaccia that sits at the base of the Spanish steps. Supposedly the water streaming into the fountain is drinkable, and I did see people drink it. I was not that brave however.

After the Spanish Steps we walked to the Fontana di Trevi. Pictures don’t do this fountain justice. It’s beautiful, and huge, and I wanted to swim in it. This area was also packed with people trying to see the fountain. There is a video of this fountain on my Flickr page, you should check it out.

Next we headed towards the Pantheon and ate dinner somewhere along the way. The Pantheon was closed, but it still looks pretty impressive on the outside.

This is the piazza in front of the Pantheon. I think this might be my favorite place in Rome. See that ristorante on the right with the yellow table cloths and brown wicker chairs? That was our favorite restaurant in Rome. We ate there twice. The guide books will tell you to avoid the restaurants on the main piazzas, because they tend to be tourist traps, and they are probably right, but tourist trap or not, I loved this restaurant. The waitress was super friendly, there is a great view of the piazza and the people, with the Pantheon in the background. Music was always playing from somewhere, and the food was great. On a nice night, it’s just amazing. If you ever want to go sometime, I’ll buy dinner.

This is Piazza Navona. Somehow I thought this would be a bigger deal, because it looks like a big deal on the map. It was cool, but there were a lot of other piazzas I liked better. Like that one in front of the Pantheon I just talked about.

After a lot of walking, we got gelato at the famous Giolitti. It was very good. I had chocolate and carmel with whipped cream. Their chocolate chip (called stracciatella) is also very popular. A quick side note, at the bars and gelato places in Italy, you pay first at the cashier, who gives you a receipt, then you take the receipt to the bar where you order your food. So don’t just go up to the bar and order food, you’ll look like a silly tourist, but they’ll still be nice to you. Also, bar doesn’t mean bar, bar means counter service like restaurant where you can get coffee, pastries, sandwiches, etc…

That’s it, day 1 is over. Tomorrow we tour the Vatican, hopefully we’ll be over our jet lag by then. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.

I’m in Omaha today for Thanksgiving. This is my first test of blogging from my phone. Hopefully some pictures show up at the end of this post. One is of my favorite meal from one of my two favorite restuarants. It’s spaghetti with white clam and beer cheese sauce from Spaghetti Works. My other favorite restuarant is Sonny’s Real Pit BBQ, which is in the south, mostly Florida. I’d say this looks pretty good for a post from my phone. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

I always have trouble coming up with Christmas gift ideas for myself. What can I say? I have everything I need. Well, at least I thought I did, until I came across this Facebook fan page. This year for Christmas, I want high speed rail service between St. Louis and Chicago. By high speed, I mean 220 mph with a two hour trip time. No need to wrap it. You can find more information at the Midwest High Speed Rail Association page.

I’ve be a fan of all forms of rail transportation for a long time. I love big cities where you can take the subway/metro/L/tube anywhere. Few things would make me happier than being able to take the Metrolink to work. I also recently took a train from London to Paris. You might have read about it here. It was awesome. So much better than an airplane for regional travel.

A great annoyance of mine is that Chicago is so close, yet so far away. It’s a 5 hour drive, which is just a little too long, plus traffic and parking in Chicago is hell. Chicago is only a 1 hour flight, but you have to leave for the airport 2 hours ahead of time, then fly in a cramped airplane, then wait for your luggage, and then take a 45 minute taxi or L ride downtown. Door to door, traveling from St. Louis to Chicago by air takes about 4 hours. Boooooo!

A train to Chicago would be perfect. You would only have to leave for the train station 1 hour (at most) before the departure time, the trip would take 2 hours, and since your luggage stays with you and the train takes you right downtown, once you are there, you are there. A three hour trip. Okay, so I might have idealized the situation a little bit, but even if the train isn’t that fast, the experience of riding a train is so much better. You can get up and walk around, the food is better, the food selection is better, the view is better. Dude, the train is awesome.

Okay, so now you know what I want for Christmas. I don’t ask much of you, so please just get me what I want this year, okay? Also, I’ll be needing a gift idea from you. I’m not psychic you know.

Click here to read all of my London & Paris trip posts in proper order.

Okay, so I told you that the trip was over, but it’s not quite over, I mean we are still in France. We took a taxi to the Charles De Gaulle airport 4 hours before our flight. I thought that this would be way too much time, but I had no idea what the airport would be like, and I figured better safe than sorry. Turns out 4 hours was just about right. Here is the American Airlines check-in area, and this is just for the New York and Chicago flights. It took over an hour to get through the check-in line and about 45 minutes to get through security after that. Not the most fun I have ever had. I’ve never seen an airport as chaotic as Charles De Gaulle. I went through LaGuardia at Thanksgiving once, and it was crazy, but not this crazy.

Here is a view of the gate area after we got through security. I took this from an elevated cafe area where I had one last Pain au Chocolate before leaving France. I don’t think I have mentioned pain au chocolates yet. They are basically a croissant with dark chocolate baked in. I was a big fan, they were chocolaty, but not overly sweet. Pain au Chocolate is pronounced (Pahn-ah-shoc-ah-lot), it’s very fun to say.

The flight was long, we left Paris around noon and arrived in Chicago at about 2:30pm (which was really like 9:30pm). There isn’t much to say about the flight except that 777s are way more fun than 767s. If at all possible, you want to travel on a plane with personal video screens. In Chicago, I only had 1 and half hours to get though customs, re-check my bag, and go through security again in the domestic terminal. That was just enough time. It took me one hour to get to my next gate, but I made it. When I finally arrived back at my condo, the cat celebrated my arrival by meowing at the top of his lungs for a good 30 minutes. I think he was a little pissed. I stayed home the next day, and he pretty much never left my side. Poor guy. Here are most of the touristy trinkets I bought on my trip. I bought French wine at Harrods in England (that makes sense), a mini London double decker bus, a mini Eiffel tower, and then I threw in my left over money, Oyster card, and Avenue Q program. I still have the money. I figure I can use it when I go back.

I have about a million things left that I want to say, but I can’t keep blogging about my 9 day trip forever. Instead, I’ll just cram everything that is left into this one post. First, a video of naked women on the streets of Paris. Someone in my Twitter stream posted a link to this video right after I got back. Perfect timing. I love this video because it really feels like paris to me, the architecture, the language, the naked women. Actually I didn’t see any naked women in Paris. I must have done something wrong. Regardless, I’m totally addicted to this song now. I have it on my iPhone and the iPod in my car. Check it out, there is no actual nudity in this video, but it might not be work safe. Try to watch it in HD if you can.

If you are like me, you want to know how much all of this cost. I’m a little worried that it is uncool to talk about money like this, but this is the information I always want and can never find, because nobody will just come out and say how much they spent. Lucky for you, we don’t have decency standards here at Roseyland. I was going to give a detailed line by line cost analysis, but it got to be too complicated with me paying for some things and my aunt others, and exchange rates, etc… The bottom line is that this trip cost about $4000 per person. Here are the cost of some of the items per person:

• Plane tickets - $1000
• Hotels - $1000 (per person)
• Train ticket from London to Paris - $175
• Windsor, Stonehenge, and Bath day trip - $130
• Normandy D-day day trip - $300

If you add up the numbers above, you are probably wondering what I spent the last $1400 on. Good question. We didn’t really do anything lavish or expensive. All I can say is that between food, taxis, metro rides, and entrance to various attractions, it all adds up. I took $400 in Euros and Pounds with me, and I easily spent most of it. I also used my credit card a lot. If I had it to do over again, I would probably use more cash and avoid the foreign transaction fees on my credit card. If you are a Bank of America customer, you can use your ATM card at Barclays ATMs in England and BNP Paribas in France without paying any fees. Of course you still have to hope that Bank of America gives you a decent exchange rate. Also, you can’t use American credit cards at self service kiosk in Europe, because American credit cards don’t use the chip and pin system that European credit cards use.

A question I have been asked a few times is, “Which did you like better? London or Paris?”. Ugh, this is pretty much impossible to answer. Paris felt a lot more chaotic to me. In my first few hours in city, I wasn’t sure that I was going to like it. Partly this was because of the pushy immigrants trying to sell me things and partly because I had grown attached to London. Paris definitely grew on me though, it’s an absolutely beautiful city. Paris feels more exotic than London, and having been to Paris makes me feel like I have truly been to Europe. That being said, I feel like London has a greater breadth of things to do. For example, I loved going to a show in London’s West End, which isn’t really they type of thing you can do in Paris. I want to say something like Paris has amazing things to see, and London has amazing things to do. Does that make sense? If I had to choose between London and Paris, I would reluctantly choose London. I feel guilty saying it, but mostly this is because I speak English, and speaking the language opens the door to a lot of experiences you might not be able to appreciate otherwise. I recommend seeing both cities though, and while you are at it, see the rest of Europe too.

I am an obsessive compulsive planner. I’d hate to go all the way to Europe and forget to see something important, so I had itineraries planned out with a number of different contingency plans. In the process of planning this trip, I came across a few good tools that I want to give a shout out to. The best tool by far is Tripadvisor.com, Tripadvisor has list of attractions, restaurants, and hotels, which are all rated and commented on by fellow travelers. Tripadvisor also has very active forums, where you can ask just about any question and get a useful answer. In addition, Tripadvisor owns FlipKey.com, which is a site that will help you find vacation rental apartments all over the world. If I ever go back to London or Paris, I will definitely look into renting one of these apartments. They usually have a minimum nights stay, but if you are staying long enough, they are comparable in cost to a hotel. If you are going with a group of people, an apartment can be significantly cheeper than a hotel, and a lot more comfortable/fun in my opinion. The nice thing about the FlipKey site is that the apartments are reviewed and many are professionally managed, so you feel like you know what you are getting into.

I’m not a big fan of travel books, but for this trip I purchased the Frommer’s London and Paris Day by Day books. I really liked these books because they contained sample iteneraies you can follow to get the most out of a small number of days in a city. I didn’t use any of these itineraries directly, but I found them helpful for making my own itineraries. These books also helped me prioritize different attractions and they gave me an idea of how much time I could expect to spend at them. One last thing, at Barnes & Nobel or Boarders, they sell these laminated Streetwise maps of different cities around the world. They fold up nicely, and it is really nice to have a map before you arrive, so that you are ready to go when you do.

I tried to learn a little French before this trip, and I even got a 6 month subscription to Rosetta Stone. For the most part, I like the Rosetta Stone method of teaching, and I was able to read French okay while I was in Paris. After I got back from my trip, I discovered Livemocha.com. Livemocha has free online classes for a bunch of languages, and I’ve actually been using them to keep working on my French. I think I like Livemocha better than Rosetta Stone, which is odd, because Livemocha is free. Livemocha also has a social networking aspect to it, and you can pay $12.95 for a travel crash course. I wish I had known about this before my trip, because a travel focused language course would have been a lot better for me than a general language course. Oh well, next time. If you are really serious about learning French, you might want to check out the Alliance Francaise which has a local St. Louis chapter. The Alliance Francaise offers a number of real life French courses, which are reasonably priced.

Okay, this is getting way to long, so here are my last bits of advice. I took over 1300 pictures, so make sure you have a big enough memory card. Also, have an extra camera battery to carry around with you. It would suck to have your camera battery run out half way through the day. Some people tried to talk me out of taking my computer on the trip, because some customs agents can get nosey or the computer could be stolen. I think this is silly though. Nobody ever even tried to look at my computer. I would make sure that you have a backup before you leave, and don’t have anything of a questionable nature on your computer (or camera, or cell phone, etc…). You might even want to encrypt your hard drive incase your computer is stolen. Also, make sure you have enough power adaptors before you leave, they have funny plugs in foreign countries, and of course make sure that you can plug your various electronics into a 220V socket.

I loved traveling to Europe, and I hope to go again soon. If I could go anywhere next, I would go to Italy. I even have the guide book already. Who wants to come with me?

You can see more pictures and a few videos from my trip here.

Click here to read all of my London & Paris trip posts in proper order.

Today is our last day in Paris, and the last day of the trip. Our only officially planned activity on this day was a wine tasting lunch, so we took it a little easy and tried to fit in some odds and ends. The wine tasting was at noon near the Louvre, so my plan was to start near the Musee de l’Armee to see Napolean’s tomb, and then walk by the Place de la Concorde through the Jardin des Tuileries to the wine tasting lunch. Here is a picture of Invalides which contains the Musee de l’Armee (museum of France’s armed forces) and Napoleon’s tomb. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to get to Napoleon’s tomb, so we just walked around courtyard in the building and moved on.   

On the way to the Place de la Concorde, I got this picture of the Eiffel tower. I love the way the Eiffel tower just pops up everywhere in Paris, it almost looks more impressive from a distance than up close.

While we were walking, we came across this marching band. Bastille Day was only few days away, so I am assuming that they had something to do with the Bastille Day festivities.

This is the Pont Alexandre III. The building in the background is the Grand Palais, which is a big glass roofed exhibition hall. We looked inside, but it appeared to be empty.

Here is the Place de la Concorde with the Luxor Oblisk. The Oblisk is originally from Egypt, and it is older than the city of Paris itself. I am assuming that the stands with the French flag canopy were built for Bastille Day. I wonder if this is where Sarkozy views the Bastille Day parade.

Here is the Fontaine des Mers in the Place de la Concorde.

Here is the Jardin des Tuileries, which is a garden/park that connects the Place de la Concorde and the Louvre. I believe it is also the site of a former palace, or something like that.

I liked this ferris wheel next to the Jardin des Tuileries. It’s not the London Eye, but it fits in well with the surroundings.

Our wine tasting lunch was in a wine cellar below a building across from the Louvre. This is the courtyard in that building. I thought it was cool, so I took it’s picture. I wish I had a picture of the steps down to the cellar. They were stone and twisty. It felt like we were going into a medieval dungeon.

Here is a picture of the wine cellar where we had our wine tasting lunch. In case you are wondering, we did the O Chateau wine and cheese tasting lunch. We tasted 5 wines (1 bubbly, 2 white, and 2 red) and we were also served a variety cheeses, meats, and bread. The sommelier told us a lot about the wine and the different wine producing regions of France. I don’t remember much of what he said, because well, there was a plate of cheese in front of me. One of the coolest parts of this tasting was that the other people in our group were from all over the world, but the tasting was in English, so they all spoke english. It was cool to be around such a geographically diverse group of people and be able to understand what they were saying. The wine itself was pretty good. I was hoping for life changingly great, but that might have been setting the bar a little too high. I almost hate to admit it, but to date the best glass of wine I have ever had was at Les Chefs de France in Epcot. The tasting did reaffirm that I like a good Bordeaux, so you know… if you are thinking of getting me a present.

After the wine tasting lunch, we headed to the Musee d’Orsay. This is another art museum like the Louvre, but with slightly newer (but not modern) art and it is not as huge as the Louvre. Here is a picture of the main hall in the Musee d’Orsay. I thought it was very impressive. Apparently, the building used to be a train station.

I like this polar bear. He would look good in my living room. I wonder how much he cost.

After the Musee d’Orsay, we had about 90 minutes left until the museums closed, so we hurried back to Invalides to see if we could find Napoleon’s tomb. It turns out that the entrance to Napoleon’s tomb is not inside the Musee de l’Armee, but it is inside this building, which we did not walk far enough to see earlier in the day.

I think this is Napoleon’s tomb, but I’m not sure. You see, there is another smaller tomb off to the side with Napoleon’s name on it, but this looks more like Napoleon’s tomb to me, so who knows. Maybe you do, if so, please leave a comment.

This alter was inside the building with Napoleon’s tomb. Very ornate.

After Napoleon’s tomb, we had some time to kill. I wanted to see the Eiffel tower with it’s lights on, which wouldn’t happen for another 4 hours, so we headed to the Champs-Elysees to have dinner and do some window shopping. Here is another shot of the Eiffel tower and the Seine river. You really need to see this in person, pictures just don’t do it justice.

Here is the Arc de Triomphe from the Champs-Elysees. Notice the Cartier store on the right.

There were a lot of automobile company stores on the Champs-Elysees. I don’t think they sold actual cars, but you could go inside and look at the different car models, which was cool. This is the Renault store.

Finally, we made it to the Parc du Champs de Mars to watch the lighting of the Eiffel tower. They turn the lights on at sunset, and in the summer, the sunset is very late in Paris. This night, the sunset was at 9:53 PM, and it didn’t really get dark until about 10:30. I think this is because most of continental Europe is on the same time zone, which puts France significantly to the west in it’s time zone. Longitudinally, France should really be in the same time zone as the United Kingdom. I like it light later though, so I’m not complaining. Now back to the lighting of the Eiffel tower, I swear I had seen pictures on TV of the Eiffel tower at night where it is covered in these sparkly camera flash like lights. I expected these lights to come on at sunset, but they did not, the tower just became illuminated with regular old interior lighting. I was confused, because a lot of people had gathered to watch the tower, and when the lights came on, they didn’t react, they just sat there like nothing had happened. I thought that maybe the sparkly lights would come on soon, but minutes went by and nothing happened. I wasn’t willing to wait forever, so at 10:00 PM, we got up to leave, and then boom! The sparkly lights came on. Apparently the sparkly lights only run for 5 minutes every hour after dark. Something about being green. Here is a video I took with my camera of the sparkly lights and the scene of people gathered to watch in the Parc du Champs de Mars.

And with that, the London & Paris adventure is pretty much over. I’ll leave you with this parting shot of the illuminated Eiffel tower on a summer evening in Paris.

This is the last real vacation post, but I still have one post left about my trip. I have some bits and pieces to throw in, and I want to answer a few questions like, which is better? London or Paris? and even more fun, how much did all of this cost? You can see more pictures and a few videos from my trip here.

Click here to read all of my London & Paris trip posts in proper order.

Today is going to be a long day, but we are focused on a single subject rather than trying to jam in as many different things as possible. Today we are traveling by train to Caen to go on a D-day tour. When I was planning this trip and I decided to take the day trip to Windsor, Bath, and Stonehenge in England (see day 3), I also started looking for day trips in France. My first thought was to take a trip to some type of winery, but I quickly stubbled across a bunch of D-day tours, and that seemed a lot more interesting. Unfortunately, most of these tours were bus tours, and Normandy is about 3 and a half hours from Paris by bus. The idea of being stuck on a bus with 50 other random people in a foreign country didn’t really appeal to me. Just when I was about to give up on the idea, I found these trips on LinkParis.com. On the Link Paris trips, you take a train to Caen. The train only takes 2 hours to get to Caen and it is way more comfortable than a bus. Plus the Link Paris trips are small group tours (like 8 people) rather than the 50 people on the bus tours.

Here is a picture of the Gare St. Lazare in Paris. This is the station where we caught our train to Caen. Of everything we did on our trip, this was the scariest part for me. There was very little English in this station. All of the overhead announcements were in French and only French. Fortunately finding the train was pretty easy. It helped to follow the random scattering of Americans trying to pronounce Caen. In case you are wondering, Caen is pronounced like “caa-uhn” but all one syllable. It’s more like a grunt than a word.

We arrived in Caen and met our tour guide. At first I thought she was British, because it kind of sounded like she had a British accent. Then she explained that she studied English for 8 years in England. Poor girl, the British taught her to talk funny Actually I enjoyed her accent a lot, maybe a little too much. Moving on… I think there were 8 people on our tour. A college student and his Mom from California, two women from Canada, a married couple from Michigan (I think), and of course my Aunt and I. The college student was traveling to Barcelona soon to tour Spain for 19 days. Note to self, in my next life, take advantage of the travel opportunities in college, they don’t happen later in life. After we all met up in the Caen train station, we got in the minivan and headed to the Caen Memorial Museum. The video on the museum’s web page gives a good overview of the tour we were on, and it is narrated by our tour guide, so you can hear her accent for yourself. Here is a picture of the museum’s lobby. I love that plane.

We were given a guided tour of the museum, which gave a good overview of the whole D-day operation. One of the exhibits in the museum contained letters written home by soldiers who fought in D-day. There were letters from American, Brittish, French, and German soldiers, which was cool, but I could only read the French and German letters because they were translated into English. They just assumed that if you spoke English, you would be able to read the 60 year old handwritten letter in English. Not so much. After the museum we saw a movie with real footage from D-day and had lunch in the museum’s restuarant. I had steak and frites, but it did not come with a sauce like the steak and frites at Le Relais de Venise would have. After lunch we had time to walk around the gardens behind the museum. There were American, English, and Canadian gardens. Below is a picture of the American garden. In case you didn’t know already, on the allies side during D-day, there were mainly American, British, and Canadian troops.

Here is the front of the Caen Memorial Museum. All those flags probably mean something, but I don’t know what that thing is.

This is a picture from the Longues-sur-mer battery of the remains of the Arromanches artificial harbor. This is where the British built an artificial harbor to move equipment into France. The structures you see in the water are the remains of this harbor.

Here is a gun at Longues-sur-mer that could be used to fire on the Omaha or Gold beaches.

Here is a gun bunker that was damaged. I wish I could say that this was damaged in battle, but I think our guide said that this damage happened after D-day. Apparently the allies stored ammunition in this bunker, and one day it um… amunized.

The next stop on the tour was the American cemetery overlooking Omaha beach. Omaha beach was also called Bloody Omaha. Around 1500 americans lost their life fighting on D-day, many of them on Omaha beach. Here is the view of Omaha beach from the American cemetery.

Here is a picture of the American flag over the American cemetery. This cemetery contains the graves of 9,387 American servicemen (and a few women). The American cemetery is considered American soil, although I’m not sure what that means. I think it means the United States owns the land and does not pay taxes on it. However, I’m pretty sure that if you commit a crime here, the French police will still arrest you, but I could be wrong. You probably want to ask something like, wasn’t being in this cemetery an overwhelming emotional experience? To which I must respond that if you think I’m going to share my emotions on this blog, you really don’t know me In all seriousness, we were only there for 45 minutes, and it was so visually stunning that I rushed around to make sure I got every possible picture. In other words, I didn’t really have time to process it all. I will say that it was very surreal to have such a distinctly American experience in France, and of course it was beyond humbling to think of the sacrifices made in this place by these men (and women).

This is a picture of an unknown soldier, and it might be my favorite picture from the entire trip. I hate to ruin the moment, but in this cemetery, the Christian soldiers get cross gravestones and the Jewish soldiers get star of david gravestones. Which makes sense, but the unknown soldiers all get crosses. Isn’t that a bit presumptuous? What if they are Jewish? or atheist? Okay, in war there probably aren’t many atheist, but you get my point. Oh!!!! that reminds me. As I was walking out of this cemetery, I heard a little girl ask her Dad something like, “Why does God let people fight wars and kill each other?” All I could think was, good luck with that dude. He had a pretty good answer though, something about free will and choices.

Here is another picture of the gravestones. I love the way you can see the Atlantic ocean in the background.

The cemetery is fairly big, and I felt sorry for the guy who was in the very back corner. I mean hardly anybody comes by to visit him, so I decided to take his picture and make him famous on my blog. Daniel J. Knapp, welcome to Roseyland!

Here is the reflecting pool and memorial area of the cemetery.

After the cemetery, we were taken to Omaha beach, which shockingly is no where near the city of Omaha. I tried to imagine what it would be like to see thousands of soldiers running on this beach with gunfire and motor blast everywhere, but it was hard. I mean it pretty much looks like any other beach, but colder.

Here is a picture of our tour guide (the woman). I have to admit, I had a little crush on her. First she had the whole French/British accent thing going on, but she was also a total history nerd and she obviously loved her job and meeting all the people who take the tour. It was also cool to be around a French person who wasn’t from Paris. I don’t know why, but she seemed different than a Parisian. Which I’m sure she was, but you wouldn’t think that as an american it would be noticeable. Of course this is probably all in my head, but it’s my story and I’m sticking to it

Here is the site of the first American cemetery on Omaha beach, which has since been moved to the American cemetery that we just saw.

This is la Pointe du Hoc, the sight of an army ranger assault on D-day. The army rangers had to scale these cliffs, while being shot at by the Germans, to reach the top and disable a few heavily fortified guns. It turns out the guns had been moved, but the rangers successfully took Pointe du Hoc none the less. This site is also considered american soil, but again, I’m not sure exactly what that means.   

This is the ground at Pointe du Hoc. It has been left pretty much the same since D-day. All of these craters are from allied bombing attempts to destroy the guns. Kind of makes you wish you could give them a few laser or GPS guided bombs, doesn’t it?

Here are are some of the German fortifications at Pointe du Hoc, which are all heavily damaged. While I was climbing around one of the bunkers, I came across a group of German tourist, which was kind of weird. I wonder what it’s like to be German and see something like this. I felt like they didn’t want me there, but that’s probably just my imagination.

After Pointe du Hoc, we were taken back to the Caen train station. We had some time, so my Aunt and I decided to eat at a local restaurant. This was a mini adventure in itself, because the waiter spoke virtually no English and the menu was of course only in French. I ordered the cheeseburger and my Aunt ordered fish and chips, which were the only things on the menu we could read. Before our entrees, the waiter brought us these. We started to eat it, but it didn’t taste right to me, and I became convinced that it was some type of condiment, and that we would look dumb if we ate it. So we stopped. It turned out we were supposed to eat it, and it is some form of beet juice. I don’t like beets. This was the only food I came across during our trip that I didn’t like.

I think this was my favorite day of the trip. Not only was the tour great and the D-day history amazing, but it was also great to see the French countryside. I definitely feel like I’ve experienced more of France by getting out of Paris for a day. Only one more full day left. Thank god, my feet hurt. Tomorrow we will try to see everything we haven’t yet seen in Paris. You can see more pictures and a few videos from my trip here.

Click here to read all of my London & Paris trip posts in proper order.

Welcome to day 6. You are probably a little tired of all this by now, but we still have a lot to see, so suck it up and let’s go. This is our first full day in Paris. I tried to learn a little French before going to Paris, and in the process, I started following a few Parisian Tweeters. One of the people I followed was @ParisHeather who runs the Secrets of Paris blog. Heather is an american travel writer who has lived in France for the past 11 years or so, and she also gives small group tours of Paris. On a whim, I signed us up for one of Heather’s walking tours. She gave us a quick tour of Ile de la Cite, which contains Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, and the Conciergerie. Then we took the Batobus up and down the Seine, while Heather pointed out various landmarks, gave us tips, and told us stories about living in France/Paris. The tour ended with a walk through the St. Germain des Pres district and the Latin Quarter. I thought the tour was well worth the money. Beyond the tour itself, it was also nice to talk to an american who really knows Paris and could answer all of our silly tourist questions.

A quick side track. While searching for Parisian tweeters, I also found the Katia and Kyliemac blog/podcast. Katia and Kyliemac are an Australian and a Michigander (as in person from Michigan) who live in Paris. They have a podcast about their lives as expats and also shorter podcasts with tourist tips and quirky French phrases. If you are going to Paris, I strongly reccomend checking out the Katia and Kyliemac podcast. Their podcast is also good if you want to live vicariously though people whose lives are far more interesting than yours

Okay, enough talking, here is Notre Dame.

This is the inside of Notre Dame. Most of the churches we saw on our trip had rules against taking pictures inside, and Notre Dame was no different except that everyone ignored this rule. So I did too. Besides, I don’t speak French, how am I supposed to know what a picture of a camera inside a circle with a line through it means?

Here is Notre Dame from the side.

This is the Batobus that we took with Heather up and down the Seine. It’s a fun way to get around, and a cheap way to take a Seine river cruise. They even pretend to give onboard announcements in English.

This is a street in the St. Germain des Pres district. The streets here are narrow with lots of cafes and markets. We had excellent gelato and crepes in this area. One of Heather’s best pieces of advice was to try a banana and Nutella crepe. Nutella is a chocolate hazelnut spread and it goes great with bananas. I had never heard of Nutella before, but it’s actually really easy to find in american grocery stores. It’s by the peanut butter. You can also try a Nutella banana crepe at the City Coffeehouse & Creperie in Clayton. As far as I could tell, the Clayton version taste as good as the French version, but it feels weird to eat a crepe on a plate. Crepes should really be street food.

Here is a video of the inside of Sainte Chapelle. I always forget that my camera can take these videos. It’s not the greatest quality, but it is a nice way to show more than you can in a single picture. Anyways, Sainte Chapelle is a chapel with amazing stained glass windows and it is located inside the Palais de Justice. The Palais de Justice contains the the head courts of France or something like that.

We spent the afternoon at the Louvre. Which of course is the world famous art museum. I’m not a huge art fan, but I love the Louvre simply because the building is amazing. In my opinion, even if you don’t like art, you must see the Louvre if you are in Paris. Here is a picture of the area outside the Louvre, notice the glass pyramid in the background.

Here is Mary Magdalene’s tomb inside the Louvre.

Here is a hall inside the Louvre. This space was amazing.

Here is the Mona Lisa. There were only about 1000 people trying to take her picture.

Another hall in the Louvre. See the sculpture through the entryway in the distance. It’s famous. I don’t remember what it is, but lot’s of people were taking its picture. Here is a closer look from my flickr set.

I think my favorite art in the Louvre was the Egyptian art. If you know me, you shouldn’t be surprised that I liked this cat.

Here is a sphinx. This is a good example of what I think is so great about the Louvre. They don’t just throw a bunch of art into a big building, they make sure that the space complements the art inside it. It’s hard to describe, but you really should see it someday.

Here is the entrance to the Louvre under the big glass pyramid.

This was my favorite room inside the Louvre. It’s a courtyard covered by a glass roof with sculptures everywhere. The picture doesn’t do it justice, but it was amazing.

Here is the famous Louvre glass pyramid up close.

Another picture of the area outside the Louvre.

After the Louvre, we headed towards the Eiffel Tower. Here is a picture of the Pont Neuf and the Ile de la Cite in the Seine. I wish you could stick your head inside this picture and look around. The scenery is tres impressive.

Here is the Eiffel Tower as seen from across the Seine on the Palais de Chaillot. I would have loved to go up the Eiffel Tower, but in the summer the lines are hours long. I wasn’t willing to waste that much time. Next time I will go to Paris in the off season. From here we walked down underneath the Eiffel Tower to the park on the other side. There are a lot of those immigrants selling miniature Eiffel Towers in this area, especially on the bridge across the Seine. When we were crossing the bridge, the Police came by to do a sweep, and they all went running. It was crazy, like 100 people went running in all different directions, and they were fast. I didn’t see the police even try to catch them though, it’s like they just wanted to scare them or something.

Here is a view of the Eiffel Tower from the Parc du Champ de Mars. People like to have picnics here and they gather in this park before sunset to see the Eiffel Tower’s lights turn on.

Only two days left. Tomorrow might be my favorite day of the trip. We take the train to Caen in Normandy and tour various D-day related sights. You will love it. You can see more pictures and a few videos from my trip here.