Photo in our Airbnb kitchen before heading out in Paris! We decided to stay in an Airbnb in Paris rather than a hotel because there were 4 adults on our trip and we wanted to stay together and have some hangout space for down time. Hotel rooms in Paris almost never sleep more than 3 … Continue reading Paris 2024 Olympics – Airbnb, Neighborhood, and Getting Around
I thought it might be helpful to frame all the rest of the blog entries about the Paris Olympics with our overall itinerary for the trip. You’ll see it was really packed and didn’t leave a lot of downtime, but we still managed to hang out at our apartment quite a bit watching other Olympics … Continue reading Paris 2024 Olympics Itinerary
When I originally started thinking about visiting Paris, I had spring in mind. Seeing the sights with mild temperatures, beautiful blooming gardens, and before the crowds of summer vacation sounded perfect. When I started looking at my vacation days from work however, the two weeks surrounding Christmas and New Year's Day jumped out as the … Continue reading Paris in December
For the last full day of our vacation, we booked a day trip to London with Golden Tours. The tour included roundtrip transportation on the Eurostar train and a fully guided tour of London. The description said we would visit St. Paul's Cathedral and the Tower of London, witness the changing of the guard at … Continue reading First Trip to Europe, Day 11 – London
Our last full day in Paris fell on New Year's Day. Knowing it was a holiday and the Parisians aren't exactly our idea of early risers, we planned to be up and ready by 10am. All four of us were moving pretty slowly that morning, so I figure we headed downstairs closer to 10:30 or … Continue reading First Trip to Europe, Day 10 – New Year’s Day and Musee d’Orsay
Josh and I got up a little early to finish packing and then went to Monoprix in Place Kleber to buy some drinks. We stopped in at the same pastry shop as the day before for pain au chocolate before returning to the hotel to check out. The hotel desk called a taxi for us, … Continue reading First Trip to Europe, Day 9 – Strasbourg to Paris, Quick Trip to Versailles, New Year’s Eve
We wanted to see the astronomical clock presentation at mid-day, which requires being in line before 11:30am. We didn't want to leave the hotel too early, as nothing really opens very early anywhere in France. Once we were all dressed and ready, we walked around near the hotel looking for a bakery for breakfast. There … Continue reading First Trip to Europe, Part 8 – Strasbourg
Words don't do justice to Strasbourg, so this post is going to be very image heavy! We got up and finished packing our bags and checked out of the hotel pretty early that morning. We had to navigate the metro (lots of up and down stairs) with all our luggage to Gare de l'est in … Continue reading First Trip to Europe, Day 7 – Paris to Strasbourg
I took a break, but I'm back to writing about our trip! Day 6 was a Sunday and our all-day trip to Bruges, Belgium. We went to bed early the night before, and my alarm went off sometime around 5am that morning. We had to be downstairs before 6:30am for our tour guide to pick … Continue reading First Trip to Europe, Day 6 – Bruges, Belgium
Day five was supposed to be our second day for museums, but after a lot of walking the day before and 4 pairs of sore, tired feet, we opted to try a hop-on-hop-off bus tour instead of hoofing it around town. We used the hotel's computer to purchase our one day pass for Foxity's buses. … Continue reading Day 5 – Hop-On-Hop-Off Bus and Musee des Arts et Metiers
I'd Rather Be Sailing 