Just when you get used to a city…

…it’s time to leave.  I love, love, love Paris, but I know – all good things come to an end.  Awww. 

We still had a lot we waned to see so we started our last day in Paris bright and early.  The night we went to see the Eiffel tower, they closed early and we were unable to go up.  So we decided to go first thing in the morning to make sure we had time.  I was so super scared going up those dang elevators, OMG; I thought I was going to die for some reason.  Being up the on the platforms are cool but there is something I don’t like about those elevators!!   I am glad I went up though.  It was incredible.  

 

Eiffel Tower in the day

After our 2nd visit to the tower, we went over to the Pere Lachaise cemetery with one goal:  Find Jim Morrison’s grave and take a picture for our sister.  The cemetery was like nothing I’d ever seen.  There weren’t just headstones on the graves, instead there were either large pieces of art or giant memorials shaped like houses and tombs.  It was beautiful…and suprisingly not creepy at all (which I’m sure is in thanks to the shock value of the Catacombs).  

One of the many rows of graves in the cemetery

Random Cross

For you Dierra:

 

Hard to shoot as the grave is behind another…

It wasn’t nearly as flashy than many of the other graves – which makes sense because as it turns out, he did have a memorial with a sculpture of his head that ended up getting stolen by a fan.  They replaced it with the simple stone in hopes that it wouldn’t happen again.  Who does that?  That probably isn’t the best karma producer but some people are crazy I guess.  There was an entertaining group of fans at the gravesite singing and yelling; one climbed over the security gate to put that beer bottle on top.  I wish he would have moved the annoying blue flower instead though.  :)

After the cemetery we made our way over to the Notre Dame Cathedral.  We were so dead tired from all the walking but forced ourselves to go and we were both ecstatic that we made that decision.  They were having a mass when we were there which was great because we could see how it looks lit with candles. The spiritual energy was great, too…Dalin and I were raised in the Catholic Church so we both appreciated the section that we were able to witness.  

Front View of Notre-Dame

From the doorway.

Inside while we were paparazzi-ing their mass

That evening we went to a great restaurant on an Avenue called George V –  a street lined with couture shops and restaurants right off the Champs-Elysees.  It was soooo yummy.  After dinner we saw the Crazy Horse cabaret show which was so cute!  It was very tasteful, funny, and very well-produced.  All the women were so beautiful – and natural too, which I really appreciated.  

I was so sad to leave Paris but very excited to move on to our next stop, Switzerland!!!  

Here’s Captain America carrying our 50lb bags

I can’t wait to go back!!  I don’t know when that will be but I hope not too long.  

Au Revior Paris!  We love you…

Romantic much?

Our second to last day in Paris was spent running around from monuments to museums – I felt like my feet were going to fall off but it couldn’t have been more worth it.  We went to a cute little street called Rue Cler in the morning with markets and cafes and in the afternoon we hit up the Catacombs (from my last post), the Army Museum, Napoleon’s Tomb, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower.  It was SUCH a long day and I was TIRED but it’s pretty easy to take your mind of that when you are staring up at the Eiffel Tower in the arms of your new hubby.  :)

I’d write more but I’m getting in trouble, I’m supposed to be getting ready right now.  hehe  Here are a few pics though:

L’Arc de Triomphe – It’s GIGANTIC in person, and so beautiful

View of the Champs-Elysees from atop the Arc

The base of Le Tour Eiffel – Surreal

J’aime Paris….

The Catacombs

Millions of dead bodies…moved underground because they were diseased with the plague….of course Dalin wanted to go there.

It was a beautiful, cool sunny day but we went underground to look at this:

Hallway leading underground

Totally not kidding – those were right in front of my face.

 

I tried to refrain from picking up the bones and rearranging them to get a good shot – so gross!

I never in my life thought I’d be down there with those millions of dead people.  It was great though!  You know how I love all those intense biological shows on TV…this was the ultimate version of that.    I’m a wierdo, I know…

Versailles

So….I have found that after Dalin waits for me to get ready in the morning, he gets really restless if I ask for more time to blog.  BUT, I made a deal with him that if he’s not going to let me blog, then he has to write it for us while I get ready.  It’s works out because it gives him something to do when I get ready (The TV is in French so that can’t occupy him) and we don’t miss days of blogging.    YAYY hahaa

We are way behind but we’ll be catching up now that we’re in Switzerland and we have time to relax.  Here is a slimmed-down cliffs notes version of our day in Versailles…I posted a few pics here but my favorites of Versailles are in the last.

I really didn’t know what to expect of Versailles. I had heard everyone say it was really big and beautiful, I knew that many important things had transpired here, Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette, Treaty of Versailles…etc.  I think at one point we were thinking of skipping it…WHAT A MISTAKE THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN. It is hard for me to even describe the scale of this place. When we arrived in Versailles it was a short walk (about a block or so) to the gates of the Palace. I felt like we were going to Disneyland. It was crazy, kind of like we had just walked into the gates from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Willy Wonka was going to come out on a red carpet.

We started the tour with the Chapel. King Louis had this Chapel built for he and his entourage to attend mass everyday. This is the only area of the palace that is an homage to someone (God) other than Louis himself.  It is a grand room, bigger than most churches, with gold everywhere and massive columns. From there we went through many rooms of the palace: the drawing room, the war room, the King and Queens chambers, the Hall of Mirrors (my favorite room)….tons of rooms.

Chapel

It is said that they created whole industries just to furnish the Palace, and it cost nearly half the GNP of France to build the Palace of Versailles. It was awesome.

One of the many fountains in the gardens

We took a break after we toured the palace before we came back to tour the gardens and the whole lunch experience was crazy. We had to walk what seemed like forever to get to this restaurant Chrystal had read about. We finally got there and realized that they didn’t open for like 2 more hours!!! AAAAAHHHGGGG! All the restaurants are pretty much closed from 2pm -7pm. We were not aware of this….they are open for drinks…but not food. Needless to say we have become very used to stopping and drinking beers and wine or eating baguettes. They have a lot of small meals here.

We finally did end up eating steaks and yep…you guessed it FRENCH FRIES!!!! Ah man…I am so over eating French fries…hahaha! Hopefully we will find some better restaurants soon.  By the time we got back home it was late and we considered going out to a club, but decided to catch up on some sleep instead.

We have so much more to update you on so we’ll write soon.  We love you all – Chrystal & Dalin.

If anyone is considering going there, definitely do it!!  It’s really amazing, you’ll love it.

teaser teaser!

We have so much to share about our day yesterday in Versailles but we’ve got a ton to do today so I’ll be back tonight to update.

Until then, here are just a few pics from the palace…

Outside the Palace

Famous Hall of Mirrors

Gardens

I love sparkles

More to come soon…xoxo

le louvre

We’re back from the show and since I took that nap, I’m wide awake.  The show was surreal.  I wanted to cry a million times because I know Dalin has been dreaming of visiting the French music scene for years – the fact that we were there and experiencing it was overwhelming.  The energy was so intense…and happy.  I love all the little Europeans with their tight jeans and 80s Ray-Bans jumping around to their favorite music.  Dalin looks like He-Man compared to everyone, it cracks me up.   At one point in the night, one of the DJs played a new song that Dalin played in his set the other night so I recognized it, it was such a breathtaking moment for me to see him in his element like that.  His smile so true.  :)

…back to the point.  I have some Louve pictures for you. It was really hard to get good shots in Le Louvre with all the tourists and oil based paints but here you go anyway:

Me outside the Louvre with a dirty lens…ughhh….see the spots?

Dalin cheesin it up for ya

Louvre sign at the entrance

Another below-pyramid shot

Does this really need a caption?

A bit overrated in my opinion but…I do appreciate it

That’s my girl…Venus de Milo

Okay…this is just a portion of the famous Coronation of Napolean where he is crowning his wife but I wanted to highlight the fact that all of her friends have on the same dress.  Is this where bridesmaids originated from?  I just might be a genius.  Beta Iota (my favorite bride-friends)…what do you think?  I took this for you, you know who you are!!

Michelangelo’s “Slaves” – I loved these two sculptures.  

I could go on and on but those are my favorites.  I hope you like ‘em.  

Today was such a great day, I love YOU, I LOVE traveling. And I LOVE my husband. 

a note from “the man”

After a full day of walking through the Louvre and getting lost in Paris – I was ready for a nap.  Here’s a recap of our morning & day from the love of my life…with some pics that I took.

Bonjour Peeps!!

I just wanted to send you guys a little note from Paris! We toured some of the Louvre today…well the important parts anyway that friggin’ place is MASSIVE. We saw the Mona Lisa, The Venus de Milo and TONS of paintings and sculptures. We were there for about 4 hours and we still have about half of the Museum left!

Underneath the Pyramid in the main entrance of the Louvre

We also toured a Church that was built in the mid 1400′s…totally awe inspiring. It was called Saint-Eustache. We were sitting in some chairs to rest for a second in the church and staring up at the massive barrel vaulted ceilings and I couldn’t help but think of all the history that has transpired in this church. It is amazing. 

I am excited about tonight. We are going out to a really popular French club called Le Bataclan. There are some really good French Electro groups playing there that I want to see…it should be really fun. The whole French house music scene has always been my favorite and pretty much what started me djing in the first place. The place looks like a French version of the House of Blues! The crazy thing is that it doesn’t even open until 11pm! Chrystal is taking a nap right now so she won’t be tired later tonight when we go to the show.

Paris is so cool….I kind of compare it to New York but without all the trash and thugs. I actually feel pretty safe here. We have gone ALL over the place and my danger radar hasn’t been activated once. I think it is because I am so used to being in Mexico where everyone is trying to steal from you all the time. I will say that the Metro (subway) is much cleaner and safer then when I was in New York or Chicago. I think I have saved Chrystal’s life about four times from cars running her over though…you have to watch the cars and motorcycles here. They come within about seriously 3 feet of running you over at all times. Kind of crazy.

I will say this though…anywhere outside of the tourist areas are a major pain to get served food. They just let us sit there after they find out we are Americans…we actually left a restaurant last night in Le Marais district because they wouldn’t serve us. In another bar we ordered drinks and then told him we weren’t yet ready to order food and so he just brought us the bill….hahaaaa…so we left that place and ate food somewhere else. It was really funny because where we ended up eating the menu was in French only so we kind of knew what we were eating but mostly were guessing off the few words we could translate…so I had lamb chops with gratin potatoes…which I thought was going to be “cheese” potatoes….and Chrystal got a steak with the same potatoes, the funny thing is when they brought us our food it was a plate with the meat we had ordered and FRENCH FRIES….hahahahaa…that is it. We ate Steak/Lamb chops…with FRENCH FRIES!!! hahahaaa….I couldn’t stop lauging…our first romantic meal in FRANCE and we had FRENCH fries…too funny. Oh well. They have some AWESOME beers here in France or “Biers” I should say…I am trying a new beer at every place we stop to eat at…

Dalin sipping a French beer at a bar near our apartment

Well I will quit babbling now…we are going to dinner soon..there is a cool little Chinese food restaurant across the street from our apartment that we are eating dinner at. I hope it is not too expensive, because just about everything else here is WAAAAY expensive. Seriously we had a cheese and jambon (ham) grilled sandwich with a orange juice and an espresso…for $18 EUROS….crazy…I am sticking to the Boulangeries (bakeries) from now on. The bread and pastries are so good here.

We still have soo much to see and do here….I cannot wait to tour the Catacombs and Napoleons tomb…. SICK!!

Au revoir!

 

How cute is he?  Well we’re off to Le Bataclan for the show.  I have a lot more pics but cannot open Photoshop for some reason and resizing them is a bitch without it…I’ll post more soon though!

Bonjour!

We are in Paris!  Finally…

The last 24 hours have been insane.  We were up at 5am on Wednesday to go to Riverside to get my new lens (which is AMAZING!) and we drove to LA from there. There was NO traffic, it was eerie almost.  We had planned on parking our car at a park n’ shuttle but on the way we remembered our good friend Audrey nd her family live close by in El Segundo. We called to see what the probablility was that we could park on their street and taxi it.  It was a last minute shot in the dark but it’s a good thing we called, it ended up being such a good time!!  We had a few hours to kill so we had time to catch up with her mom who still loves to talk about her daughter’s wedding (and of course I do!).  She took us for and take a drive around her precious little town and dropped us off at the airport where there was literally NO wait at security.

It reminded me of Meet the Fockers where everything goes so perfectly in the morning but awful once they reached their destination.  It scared me!

I was playing with my new lens while we waited to board an got this shot of a tired traveler::

It’s been 19 hours since our plane left LAX and we finally just made it to our apartment in Paris.  OMG.  19 hours.  There were “electrical problems” on our connecting flight so that caused a huge delay.  And whoever says its a good idea to take the metro into the city from Charles de Gaulle is a LIAR.  Don’t ever do it.  It was insane – people everywhere running and pushing – get on here, off here, walk upstairs, downstairs (with luggage BTW – way to go hubby)…at one point we got stuck in the turnstyle because they don’t make them large enough for a piece of luggage to fit through.  There were hundreds (at least it felt like hundreds) of running people building up behind us.  For a second there, I think I saw the Incredible Hulk come out when he couldn’t get the luggage unstuck.  It was crazy.  It took us an hour to make it to our stop.  

Next time, we’re taking a taxi.  :)

I think I’m tired but not really, I think I’m hungry but not really.  I’m just so excited to be here I don’t even know how my body feels.  I probably need a nap but I don’t care.  I took a few pics of our cute little pad for you too see:

Sleeping Area

Kitchen

You likey?  I think it’s adorable!!  Well it’s time to hit the town but I just wanted to say hi and let our moms know we made it.  We’re off to explore the city “sans baggage” this time!  

Ciao! (It’s pretty much a language melting pot here)

aaaand away they go!

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.

- St. Augustine

It’s honeymoon time!  YES!  Our flight leaves this afternoon out of LAX and we arrive in Paris around 3pm-ish on Thursday (it will still be Wednesday in the USA – we are time travelers).  I couldn’t be more excited!  There will be time for me to blog (train rides, airports, while my husband plays games on his PSP and such) so I hope to keep you updated at least a bit while we are gone.   

I haven’t been on a 2 week vacation since 2003 when my mom took me to Europe for my college graduation.  It feels so good to be going back.  I love the culture and the people, the lack of plastic surgery (truly!), and the FOOD!!   I am thrilled to share it with my new husband.  We have so much to see and just the right amount of time.  

What I do not miss though is the day-before-you-leave-for-vacation stress.  Geez.  It kicked my ass today.  I feel even worse for my man who had to go to urgent care, found out his property that he’s trying to sell is being tampered with AND had his car break down today.  Oh well – what are you gonna do…?  Ignore it until we come back.  Sounds like a plan to me!  I am sad I will be missing my mom’s Friendship Festival and the San Diego Chargers Monday Night Football Game at Home (haven’t missed one of those bad boys in years!), but I guess I can sacrifice that to a glass of wine atop the moonlit Eiffel Tower with my hunk of a man husband.  Hmmm.  Yeah.  That sounds fantastic actually.

The other exciting piece of news that I have is that I’m going to be getting an early birthday present from him in the morning, something I have been wanting for quite some time:

The Nikon 18-200mm – A kick-ass lens to go with my kick-ass camera.

I am going to be all hooked up by the time we get to Europe but don’t expect any earth-shattering images quite yet.  I am an uber-beginner.  We’ll see what I can pull off though!!  At least I’ll have a few things to take pictures of.  (hahaa)  Our first stop is Paris for 5 days, then Lausanne (Switzerland) for 3, then Madrid for 5 more, and an overnight connection (rallytime!) in Rome.  We’ll be back on Oct 1st to tell everyone how badly we’d like to move there.  (Wouldn’t that be amazing??)

Ok – it’s WELL past our bedtime.  I will miss you tons and tons family and friends.  Au Revoir!

Peace & Love…