Paris...

It's so hard to believe that our trip was over a month ago! It feels like ages ago that we were away - coming back and working immediately is a harsh reality for sure.

Paris was our third destination on our trip. After our time in London, we took a gorgeous train ride and arrived in Paris at night. Overall, Paris was definitely the most difficult city to get along in. There's not as much English speaking going on there, and also the food was the most expensive. We used this opportunity to walk a lot, learn a little bit of French (I had a few basic phrases down, but it wasn't as helpful as I thought it would be), and cook a lot of our own food.

Of course, you have to do the tourist destinations. The Eiffel Tower was stunning. We walked up to the second floor (exhausting) and then took the elevator all the way up to the top. The views were too beautiful to even try to describe. It's quite breathtaking. You can see everything! We also spent a good six hours at the Louvre. There are too many masterpieces to really take in at once. Since we were only there for six days, we couldn't really split it into two days, but I think we made our time count. We saw around 80% of the museum, which is pretty impressive! We even took selfies with Mona Lisa. Notre Dame was amazing as well. The inside was so gorgeous, it actually brought tears to my eyes.

Our diet basically consisted of two things: wine and bread. Both are amazingly cheap compared to the rest of the food. We had a baguette for lunch and dinner. The bread is unlike anything here in America. It's incredibly fresh, crusty, and soft. It's also a very easy lunch to carry around. At night, we bought a lot of fresh produce and made our own sandwiches at our flat. We had a television there, so we watched a ton of World Cup games, French news, and music videos.

Paris was certainly the least enchanting of all the cities we visited. Surprisingly, it was pretty dirty and at times a little scary (and this is coming from two people living in Center City Philadelphia!). Overall, we weren't exactly sure where all the talk about romance and beauty was coming from. There are many parts of the city that aren't paved - it's just sand. We still had a wonderful time there and learned a lot, but it wasn't as majestic as we had assumed it would be.

Here are some pictures from Paris!

The Eiffel Tower in all her glory!

The view from the second level

Being a true Parisian (baguette & arc de triomphe)

The Louvre

Yummy macarons!

Delicious fresh bread, produce, and wine!

The infamous windmill of the Moulin Rouge

Our espressos

Notre Dame - absolutely stunning inside

There were actually a dozen bridges with locks on them!

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London...

I apologize for the large delay between posts. With working and job hunting, I've been fairly busy - even on my days off! I'm really enjoying using this blog to remember the trip and all of our favorite things!

London was hands-down our favorite city to travel in. Besides the fact that English-speaking countries made us feel at ease, London just felt very similar to a city in America. It was like the hustle and bustle of NYC but amped up to 11. 

We went to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum. It was amazing to culture ourselves. The V&A had some fabulous historic costume (which I was practically squealing over). We also saw some amazing historic artifacts like the Rosetta Stone!

Mostly, our trip's main concern was FOOD! We love trying new cuisines and eating all different varieties. While in London, we had Turkish, Thai, traditional British, and Indian food (as well as a ton of other street food). The highlights were having fish and chips, as well as having a true afternoon tea.

We did a lot of sight-seeing. We saw all of the lovely historic sites, like Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. We saw Platform 9 and 3/4 and lots of other train stations (J loves trains!). We spent one day at Greenwich, learning about the British Royal Naval Academy and checking out the Prime Meridian. We stood on 0 degrees! It was a lot of fun.

Through our entire trip, the World Cup was going on. We loved watching games at the pubs, or even inside of our little apartments (which we fortunately could do in Paris!). We saw amazing street art and graffiti, which I did an entire post on a few weeks ago. Overall, London was an amazing city and we are certainly going to visit there again someday.

Amazing sculpture at the Victoria & Albert Museum

Proper "chippy" 

Big Benji

High tea with amazing sweets

World Cup fever!

Standing on the Prime Meridian

J's amazing pie with the works at Pieminister

Looking for Harry!

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Madrid...

Hello! I thought I'd do a post or two on each city that we visited during our 16 day adventure.

Our first and last stop on the trip was Madrid. We did our first and last two days there. J had already been there for a work conference last year, so luckily he was familiar with many of the streets and popular areas. It was nice to start and end with something that we knew better, because the other two cities were very stressful at times.

We stayed in two different places, the first being a six-bed hostel. Neither of us had ever stayed in a hostel before, but it was a very cool experience and certainly not as scary as you would imagine! We had very interesting roommates from all over the world (and they all spoke at least some English) and they told us about their travels. It was great to get some insight into other cultures!

Our favorite parts of Madrid were definitely the weather and the food/drink. It was gorgeous and warm all four days there, with very low humidity and lots of sun. We got excellent tans! Also, the food is yummy and cheap. We drank a lot of beer and sangria. A lot of their food is fried or involves bread, which can be heavy at times, but they do smaller portions (tapas) so that you really don't consume as much as you would normally.

At the end of our trip, we stayed in a little apartment in a popular city square. We had two sets of french doors that opened up and you could look out and see all the restaurants and people running around. It was so beautiful. On our last full day abroad, we used our towels and laid out and got some color - it was so nice to simply ENJOY being in another country without having to be doing something constantly. We both really enjoyed our time in Madrid and basically accomplished everything we wanted to see while there!

Here are a few photos of the cool things we did in Madrid (with MANY more to come in the future!)

J's view at our hostel, RC San Miguel

Temple of Debod - rebuilt Egyptian ruins

Atocha train station

Paella! Really delicious and HUGE portions

The view from our french doors during our second stay! Stunning lights.

The famous Churros and Chocolate (coffee for me) from San Gines!

Chocolateria San Gines, serving chocolate and churros since 1894!

We ate a lot of croquetas in Spain. These were enormous and had many different fillings - cheese, seafood, ham, etc. YUM!

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