It was a Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown! Part One

-It is not often that when you go somewhere for vacation, you end up more tired and needing another vacation when you return. That either means you had a great time, or it was an awfully chaotic trip. Ours was a great trip. The flight to London was very smooth, arriving exactly on time. The trip through customs was quick, and James was waiting to meet us. After quickly dropping off our luggage at James' rather small flat, we ventured out to see London.

This is the Tower of London, a mammoth castle in the heart of London where many royals held their court.

Here is a view of Tower Bridge from the Tower of London.

We spent the entire first day wandering around London with James as our tour guide. We saw many sights, including Big Ben, The London Eye, Parliament, St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and (of course) Buckingham Palace, which was the least impressive famous building we saw all week. At night, we went to Leicester (pronounced Lester) Square and Picadilly Circus. This is the uptown of London. Here we ate Chinese, which was tasty, and not English food, which is very bland. Earlier in the day we had eaten fish and chips, which we loved while on our honeymoon, but loathed in this culinary hell.

The next morning, with James sick in bed, Alli and I set out to tour the Tower of London. This was the most interesting part of our trip. We were able to see where kings slept, beheadings occurred, and all sorts of English history happened. Best of all we were able to learn about Medieval weaponry, where Alli and I were able to help launch a catapult loaded with water balloons, see below.

During this tour, we were able to see many of the crown jewels, which is ok to look, but makes you angry if you envision poor people paying taxes so royalty, born of the right parents, can have extremely expensive "helmets" to wear very sparingly, but never for an actual purpose. Upon leaving the tower, Alli and I wandered around the city looking for a certain building, the Gerkin. It looks like a big pickle, and Alli did not see the cultural worth in viewing this building up close.

After dinner, we headed back to our lodgings early so we could ready our selves for Paris and Brussels.

Monday night I did not sleep at all, for fear of missing our train, and chance, to go to Paris. We rode the Eurostar, through the Chunnel, and under the English Channel, to get to Paris. It took a little less than 2 hours, so the excitement was able to build the entire time. After leaving the Gard du Nord (North Gate train station), we decided we could use our senses in a huge, strange city, to find the Seinne, and eventually our hotel. After two hours, we decided to look at our map, and realized we were walking parallel to the river, but at that moment, luckily for Alli, we ran into a huge shopping center. But luckily for Nate, this shopping center had an overlook of the entire city of Paris. Here we gather our bearings, and our first view of the Eiffel tower!

We then found a way to the Louvre, which was closed, as it was a Tuesday, then went to check in. After finding out they did not have our room ready, we decided to head over to the Notre Dame. This was an amazing building, especially when considering it is around 900 years old. We toured the inside and then went up to the top, where we were able to see the famous bell from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The inside was extremely ornate, but I will not post the pictures on here, as it is necessary to see the pictures on a TV for accurate depth and color. But here are a few pictures of the outside.

It was very cold and windy outside, so after the Notre Dame, we went to check in to our hotel. The hotel was small, but in a very nice location. The elevator was so tiny, Alli and I barely fit side by side. In need of some sleep, we decided a nice nap would make the night a little more memorable.

Refreshed, we left the hotel and headed off to see the Eiffel Tower. We took a lovely walk along the Seinne, which after an hour brought us to the tower. Upon learning we could go up at night, we had a nice dinner right by the tower. French food, much better than English food, it has flavor and ingredients you don't mind eating. In fact, our favorite food was getting baguette sandwiches from vendors around the city. After dinner, we waited in line for an hour to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and it was easily worth it. Just look at the pictures below.

After the tour, we walked home along the other side of the river, it was a lovely day in a beautiful city full of light.

Note: Part two of our trip to be blogged later, this takes way too much time.