recent activities

cousin Rachel came to visit.... we went to the Hard Rock Cafe (the original)


hard rock


toured the tower of london

toured westminster abbey (thanks to bryn for watching the kids all day so we could go!)

big ben by night

engine room of tower bridge (we also went across the top)

st. pauls

view from the top of st. pauls (we climbed A LOT of stairs)

took a walk along the south bank on a sunny january day

LES MISERABLES!!

us at Les Mis (we also saw Dirty Dancing, it wasn't great, but worth it because i LOVE the movie!)

trafalgar square at night.... we went to the national gallery and national portrait gallery, both were pretty amazing

the palace at night

PARIS

while my cousin rachel was here visiting we got to take a short 2 day trip to Paris!! we flew out early in the morning and came home late the next evening, so we could maximize our time. we were lucky to make our flight however.... we had to take the train to the airport and we missed the one we wanted by literally seconds, so we had to wait 20 min for the next one. i didn't think it would be a big deal since we didn't have any luggage to check and we had printed our boarding passes. WRONG! the line through security was FOREVER long, when we finally got through the board said 'final boarding call' for our flight which was a 15 min walk to the gate. so i RAN, and we made it, barely.

the first thing we did after we checked into our TINY hotel room (i really didn't care, it was cheap, and for one night.... it was clean and that's all that mattered!) was go on a river cruise down the Seine to get acquainted with the city.



here is our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, when we first got there it was so foggy we could only see about half of it.




after the river cruise our first stop was the musee d'orsey. beautiful museum, it was an old train station, so the inside was amazing!


after the orsay, we headed to the Louvre, this picture doesn't even do it justice, this is only part of one side of the 'U' shaped museum.... it was crazy big, i had no idea! we could have easily spent ALL our time here and not even seen a fraction of it.

anyone seen the da vinci code????

it seemed so weird to me that you were allowed to take pictures in this museum, so i didn't take many.... but here SHE is....

by the time we were done museum hopping, it was dark, and so beautiful!

the Eiffel Tower.... it is SO much prettier at night! :)

it was a lot bigger than i expected, and once we got to the second level, it was a lot higher than i expected.... (we would've gone to the top, but it was closed because of wind)

rach and i

the arc de triumph

do we look tired yet?? we were.... and we were so busy sight seeing that we hadn't eaten a thing ALL day! so we walked down Champs Elysees and grabbed some bread from a bakery (heaven) and headed back to the hotel.

the next morning we had a wonderful breakfast of crepes and croissants.... and ran into St. Michaels fountain

Notre Dame.... besides the Eiffel Tower this was probably my favorite!

the inside was amazingly beautiful!

this is a view of it from the other side

next we took a walk down Ru De Rivoli (and did some souvenir shopping) towards Concorde Square which is where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were guillotined!

also in Concorde Square was the Paris ferris wheel (no where near as cool as the london eye, sorry)

we found this bridge totally by accident.... it has thousands of locks all over it, symbolizing peoples love for one another and commitment to each other..... they all have initials and names on them, very cool. i wish i would've known, i could have added mine!

one of the last things we saw before we headed to the airport was the Opera (as in the building, we didn't actually go to an opera :)

we had another eventful experience getting home.... we took the wrong train towards the airport and had to get off and switch trains twice until we finally got on the right one, fortunately we had learned from previous mistakes and left in PLENTY of time..... only to have our flight home delayed by 2 hours. which isn't really a long time, but the trains back to central London do NOT run 24 hours a day! i think there was only one train coming after the one we got on to get back home.... again, we barely made it, but we made it!

we had an amazing trip, Paris was wonderful, and i had tons of fun with my cousin! thanks rach for coming to visit!!

3rd times the charm?

i have tried twice now to go see Les Miserables, and twice i have NOT seen it! the first time kaitlyn and i went to get tickets and they were sold out.... well, we could have either sat on opposite sides of the theater and not seen the top of the stage, or sit together and only see half the stage, so we didn't go. to avoid that problem my cousin and i booked tickets in advance and when we showed up today the show had been CANCELLED because of a power failure!! what the heck! we re-booked for tomorrow night.... my fingers are crossed, but i'm not getting my hopes up!

Christmas in Rome

this year we got to spend christmas in ROME!! jonathan was able to get a 4 day weekend, so we left on the evening of the 23rd, and returned on the 27th! we had the most amazing time!

it didn't start out so amazing however.... i will spare you all the details and emotions and just tell you that when i took the picture below it was nearly 11pm, we didn't have our luggage, jonathan wasn't with us, and these two were about 5 min from meltdown.

to keep a long story short, we went out the wrong exit and ended up on the wrong side of security without our bags, jonathan went to go find them (it took FOREVER)... they lost our stroller, and both kids fell asleep on me while i was standing up (holding adam and blake leaning on me trying not to fall off the cart).

we then took a cab to our hotel because the trains weren't running anymore---it was nearly 1:30 by this time. luckily we had the most amazing hotel room, and i was able to forget all my problems! :)

DAY 1 Christmas Eve-

we got a hop on/hop off bus tour for the 3 days we were there to use as our transportation. so the first day we just stayed on the whole time and saw the sights from the bus.



Santa Maria Maggiore


Palantine Hill- one of the most ancient parts of the city

national monument of Victor Emmanuel II- the first kind of a unified Italy (we walked through it a couple days later)

we saw a lot more that day, but it was raining, and we went back to lots of places.... so the pictures are below! for our christmas eve dinner we had pizza and pasta- SO yummy!

Day 2 Christmas Day-

we went to St. Peter's Square in Vatican City to hear the Pope give his Christmas message (in several languages!) it was an amazing sight, st. peters is beautiful, there were tons and tons of people, and the sun even peaked out!

the boys in front of St. Peters

Pope Benedict XVI (this is actually the second time we've seen him, he made a visit to London earlier this year!)

this was a common occurrence on the bus, i was determined to see Rome no matter how wet we got, the umbrella actually worked really well!

of course snacks were a must to keep the boys happy (all 3 of them)

here we are at the Spanish Steps

the Trevi Fountain- seriously amazing and beautiful!

our first Gelato.... in the rain.... at the Trevi Fountain

Christmas dinner was more pizza!

Day 3-

the sun finally came out and it was a gorgeous day!

THE COLOSSEUM!!!!

arch of constantine

my little gladiators

so so so happy!

more pizza... what can i say- 'when in rome!'

the Pantheon... again, amazing!

a little ticked that half of it had scaffolding, but still very cool!

more gelato... this kind was my favorite, it was mint

drinking fountain, we were having lots of fun with this.....

we had such a great time, Rome is such an amazing city. i took over 300 pictures, so it was REALLY hard to narrow it down (if you want to see more some of them are on Facebook), but we saw TONS more things... these were just a few of the highlights.