Europe 2012

After the play, we walked over to the Shard, whose exterior...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:57:00 +0200

     After the play, we walked over to the Shard, whose exterior was finished just yesterday (July 5). We thought the observation deck of the tallest skyscraper in Western Europe would be open, but it isn’t for a few more months. After that didn’t work out, we headed over to the London Eye to take a ride.
     I was really glad the London Eye was the final thing we did in Europe. Like our trip, we went in a full circle. It gave me time to look out over London as the sun was setting for the last time on our European Adventure and think about the entire trip, how incredible an experience it was, and how I will never forget all the things I learned, all the jokes that were formed, and the friendships that were strengthened.
     I know each of us want to thank all of our family for giving us the opportunity to go abroad, better learn how to take care of ourselves, experience different cultures, and learn through creating our own experience rather than reading about other’s. Thank you for all the advice and help you have given us through the planning process as well. Thank you to our family; we love you all and we’ll see you shortly.

Tony

I wasn’t so sure about it at first, but we were in...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:53:05 +0200

I wasn’t so sure about it at first, but we were in for a real treat. After getting some delicious pizza along the Thames and walking around, we headed over to The Globe. Nearly three weeks previously, we bought tickets to see Henry V performed at The Globe. Somehow, we walked in line and stood there to find that we were some of the first ones. We spent 5 pounds and bought standing space instead of seats, which was the best decision. As you can see from the pictures, I was literally in the front row. I was touching the stage for nearly the whole of the performance. Of course it was excellent; it was The Globe! The actors were phenomenal. Matthew was the most excited for the play; he even read the entire play throughout the trip. It was completely hilarious. “Once more into the breach” and so on was incredible. The Saint Crispin’s Day speech was perfect, and the play was one of the highlights of the trip. If you know you are going to London, book for a play at The Globe. You have to do it pretty far in advance, but it is worth it. Even if you think you don’t like Shakespeare, I doubt you’ve seen it performed so well. You can’t get the drama and the excitement from reading the text that you get from watching it performed. It was INCREDIBLE. The music, props, acting, etc. was the best I’ve ever scene <— pun.

Tony

Would you believe it? We made it to the train station,...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:48:33 +0200

Would you believe it? We made it to the train station, boarded the nonstop train to Lille, and found it to be nearly completely empty after the train station had told us they were completely out of seats and we somehow managed to scrape some. Paris’ transportation system is godawful. After taking the train to London from Lille, we found a familiar sight and welcomed the beautiful public transportation system of London. Oddly enough, we stayed another night at the W14, the first hostel we stayed out nearly three weeks previously when we first stayed in London. After dropping our stuff, we headed out to the Thames one last time.

Tony

Thoughts From Places: Paris

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:46:03 +0200

Thoughts From Places: Paris

Here we go (again). This time, we FINALLY made it to the...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:42:00 +0200

Here we go (again). This time, we FINALLY made it to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It took us three visits in about 3 days, but we made it to the top and experienced a beautiful view. You can see everything from up there. This is a must do if you are in Paris and able to. It was really, really cool. We passed on the 10 Euro champagne though. That was ridiculous. After this, we headed back to the hostel because we had to wake up at “poop o’clock in the morning” in order to catch that train.

Tony

P.S. They had really good Crêpes at the pictured stand.

After the train station, it began to rain and we decided...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:36:00 +0200

After the train station, it began to rain and we decided this would be an excellent time to get some famous hot chocolate at Angelina’s. We weren’t disappointed when we arrived. It was a really thick, really chocolatey hot chocolate that just made your whole body happy. It was expensive as hell, so we got in, got our chocolate, ordered some french fries, and left. If you’re looking for expensive food that is very good, find Angelina’s in Paris.

Tony

The Train Station Fiasco

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:33:00 +0200

The following day, we literally spent about 3 hours figuring out how we were going to get to London for our flight home. The Paris train station was terrible. Again, we needed those stupid reservations in order to leave, so that cost us each 89 Euro this time to just get from Lille to London. We took those seats because they were filling up fast even though we didn’t even have a way to get to Lille the following morning. After leaving Sean and line, Matthew and I headed across town to the intercity bus station to see if it were feasible to travel to Lille by bus. Luckily, Sean got through the hour and a half line and booked us tickets from Paris to Lille the next morning (train leaving at 6:46 a.m.). Celebrating, we headed for Angelina’s to get some hot chocolate.

Tony

The following morning, we decided to sleep in a bit and...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:25:00 +0200

The following morning, we decided to sleep in a bit and relax. We went to Sacré-Cœur, the old church atop the hill in Paris, and looked around. The church itself was very beautiful (they didn’t allow photos). Sean and Matthew didn’t want to climb to the top, but this time I decided I’d do it anyway. They waited in the front and listened to some musicians while I climbed the 300 steps to the top. I wasn’t disappointed by the view. It’s a very beautiful church and it was a good view to look out across Paris from. After that, I met them again and we went below the church to the crypt, where we found a number of artifacts from different people (we couldn’t read the writing on the paper attached to the bones). It was a very nice crypt and I enjoyed the church very much.

Tony

On our second trip to the Eiffel Tower, we found it too...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:20:00 +0200

On our second trip to the Eiffel Tower, we found it too late to go to the top, so we laid out in the field before the tower and watched it light up. It was a beautiful sight on the Fourth of July. However, nothing beats those summer fireworks out over the bayou back home; nope, not even the Eiffel Tower in all its grandeur.

Tony

Sean’s father had recommended a nice restaurant along...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:16:00 +0200

Sean’s father had recommended a nice restaurant along the river through Paris and we decided we’d actually sit down and enjoy a meal for once. Heading over there, we found it much more expensive than originally thought, but we kept with it. Sean, Matthew, Chris (our Houston friend), and I all walked in, obviously incredibly under-dressed, and were placed in the back of the restaurant probably so we weren’t seen as much. We hadn’t realized it was so nice until we saw prices. We stayed anyway and decided to splurge just once. We had saved money and figured it was alright. To start, we got some water, and decided it was France, so we ordered escargo. The concept of escargo sounds terrible to be honest, but it was actually really, really good. I’d definitely have it again. After that, I ordered a nice, large steak, and the waiter’s wine recommendation which blended perfectly. After dinner, we decided to have a 12 Euro glass of champagne for America (it was July 4) and finished up with dessert. Chris’s creme brule was excellent, but my chocolate mousse was to die for. The bill hit us hard, as you can see, but it was incredibly good and totally worth it. I highly recommend the restaurant. It is located on the west side of the the island with Notre Dame and is fairly well known.

Tony

After the Louvre, we met up with a couple of friends from...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:13:00 +0200

After the Louvre, we met up with a couple of friends from Houston who happened to be in Paris and spent time with them. We went to a shopping mall for a bit and looked around, and then headed to the Arc de Triomph, the arc that Napoleon had built. Arriving there, we found that it was crazy expensive to go to the top and bypassed that opportunity. Instead, we walked around the base and began to see soldiers and people congegate. Wondering what was happening, Matthew asked a military man wearing a hat with crossed French and American flags what was happening. Apparently France loves America, but not Americans, because they were throwing us a birthday parade. We waited around a while, watched the Fourth of July parade come by, and sang our national anthem loud and proud. After that, we decided it was time for dinner!

Tony

After the crypt, we headed over to the Louvre. Now, you...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:06:00 +0200

After the crypt, we headed over to the Louvre. Now, you could spend days just in the Louvre. We weren’t exactly prepared to do this and so we went in with the mindset to see a few things, and get out. We did exactly that and saw four things: The Winged Victory of Samothrace, Napoleon III’s Coronaton painting (which is the real one and apparently the Versailles one was a copy), the Mona Lisa, and Hammurabi’s Code. Nike of Samothrace was incredibly cool to see; it has always been one of my favorite sculptures. We had already seen Napoleon III’s painting and I explained it in the Versailles post. We only saw the Mona Lisa because you can’t go to the Louvre and not see it. It was more interesting to watch all the people push and shove to get close than it was to actually see it. Hammurabi’s Code took a while to find because they had closed off a few connecting hallways, but it was pretty cool when we saw it. The world’s first written law code is on a stone pillar about 8 feet tall; this is where the phrase “an eye for an eye” comes from. Again, ridiculously old and significant things excite me.
The Louvre was quick, easy, and painless. It isn’t our last trip into it and so we’ll see more when we have more time.

Tony

This morning seemed like an excellent morning to go see the...

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 04:59:00 +0200

This morning seemed like an excellent morning to go see the crypt under Paris! I guess Parisians have to be proud of their dead because they don’t have a strong base to be proud of the living (just kidding; besides the crazy driving, they were nice). We woke up early in order to be there an hour before it opened; we had gone the day before and the line was ridiculously long even 20 minutes before it opened. Arriving there at 9, we were within the first couple groups to enter and we enjoyed the experience. All the skulls and bones are real and are part of 6 million dead buried beneath Paris. It was fairly creepy to walk along the path with bones on either side with very little light. It was interesting though and I’d recommend visitors to Paris go down there if they aren’t scared and have a bit of time!

Tony

Next, we headed to Notre Dame since it was closed the day...

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 23:58:00 +0200

Next, we headed to Notre Dame since it was closed the day before. We headed inside, and, to be honest, I was unimpressed compared to Westminster Abbey and even Saint Paul’s. Notre Dame has beautiful stain glass and so on, but Westminster was PACKED with so much stuff that I found it so much more interesting. On the other hand, Sean liked Saint Paul’s the best out of the three because he liked the architecture best and he thought Westminster was too crowded. Notre Dame was a beautiful church, however. The most interesting thing in the church was a small chapel in which they had a plaque for every Pope the Catholic church has ever had, starting with Peter. Yes, even Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia a.k.a. the Renaissance age mobster) had a plaque! We didn’t really look for which Pope they put during the Schism because we figured they’d just put the one the actual College of Cardinals selected instead of whomever Avignon had in mind. We didn’t climb to the top because the line was horrendous, we didn’t want to wait, and 8 Euro seemed a little steep for climbing to the top when we’d get better views elsewhere.

Side bar: Notre Dame is 850 years old next year!

Tony

Outside Versailles, I saw this beautiful mustache’s...

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 23:52:00 +0200

Outside Versailles, I saw this beautiful mustache’s owner, this guy. I immediately turned to Sean and said we HAD to take a pretend photo of ourselves to get a picture of this man. Matthew said he would take the photo. He moved us back and forth in front of this bench (with absolutely nothing interesting to photograph) as he mentioned he wanted us to step back to get a better view of the beautiful stonework. He zoomed in, and snagged a beautiful photo. As you can tell, this man’s face shows he knows exactly what is going on in this situation. My God, what an absolutely beautifully ridiculous mustache.

Tony

We liked Napoleon III’s picture because we learned...

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 23:37:00 +0200

We liked Napoleon III’s picture because we learned about it in history class, he coronated himself on December 2 (Matthew and my mother’s birthday), and because the woman in the center, his mother, wasn’t actually there. Napoleon III wanted his mother there so badly that he had the painter put her there. We liked the King Louis XIV picture because his pants are hilarious and were somewhat of a joke in this year’s history class.
Basically, we got in and out of Versailles in a couple hours which was our goal. If I were to go back, I might spend a little more time, but not too much. Short, sweet, and enjoyable.

Tony

P.S. I also took a picture with the bust of Voltaire.

Versailles was very interesting for a few reasons; first,...

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 23:28:00 +0200

Versailles was very interesting for a few reasons; first, we toured the gardens which we thought was about the same size as the entire city of Brugge. It was incredible how large they were. We picked up some lunch in the garden, got some ice cream, and ventured to walk all the way around the lake. About a quarter of the way, we decided we didn’t want to spend our entire day in the garden, so we walked back, saw the orange grove, and then went to see the actual palace. The second reason the experience was interesting was because we met three separate nerdfighters at Versailles alone through my decision to wear my shirt promoting the small (500,000 people) worldwide group. If you watched the video about the tulips from Amsterdam that I linked to, that’s one of two brothers the group follows, watches, and interacts with to complete charity work, learn, and so on. One of the girls we met was an Australian named Sus; we walked around the inside of the palace with her since we were already instantly friends due to the online community.
I can see why France was put into financial ruin; this place was crazy. The hall of mirrors was beautiful (and ridiculously gaudy) of course, but our favorite parts were two paintings: first, the large painting of Napoleon III’s coronation, and second, the picture of King Louis XIV, who built Versailles.

Tony

This was our first attempt to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower....

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 23:15:00 +0200

This was our first attempt to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. At this point, the lifts weren’t running (figures), but that’s okay. We went to the second level and took a few pictures.

Tony

Arriving in Paris, we found the hostel after taking the...

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 23:08:00 +0200

     Arriving in Paris, we found the hostel after taking the underground (which was crap compared to London’s for a number of reasons), stored our stuff because it was too early to check in, and took our usual first day walk of the city. On the way, we passed Notre Dame, but it had closed by the time we had gotten there. However, we got beautiful photos of it at near sundown. We continued walking around and poked into a gift shop.
     Now, if you imagine Europe as a household, I’m going to have to say that Paris is the chimney of this household. Literally almost everyone smokes and it’s a phenomenon of great magnitude that the entire city isn’t asphyxiated. At any rate, I mentioned this simply because I found a cigarette souvenir in a gift shop, which sorta baffled me just because nowadays, I don’t think you’d see that at any regular souvenir shop in America. It was a pen, a laser pointer, and an LED light; yeah, I know the suspense of what it actually was is killing you. In another shop, Matthew pointed out this Russian license plate, which basically made our evening for one reason and one reason only: Novosibirsk. It has been a long standing joke between the three of us that we weren’t actually going to Europe; instead, we were going to Novosibirsk, a small town in Siberia. It’s in the middle of nowhere and we always joked that we were going there when people asked us our trip plan before we left.
     After that, we passed this statue of St. Michael (pictured below), my namesake, as we ate some cheap kebabs we bought at a stand. We continued walking all the way from Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower, a much longer distance than it looks. Once at the Eiffel Tower, we went up only to the second of three levels due to the fact that they were having technical problems. C’est la vie.

Tony

After leaving CERN, we headed back to Geneva and hit the...

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 22:59:00 +0200

After leaving CERN, we headed back to Geneva and hit the train station. Everything seemed to be fine; we hopped on a high speed train bound for Paris, and even found a booth we could sit down in. That is, until a woman and her two children claim they have a reservation for two of the seats. Not a problem, there’s other seats around. A man and a woman come up to me and claim they also have booked my side where I am sitting. After going in every single 2nd class train car and discovering not a single seat was open, I was forced to sit in the hall. Sean and Matthew came out to join me and we sat in the chairs between two different train cars. As the man who was checking tickets came by, we pulled out our usual Eurail pass and showed it to him. He said that was great, but where was our reservation? Apparently, while traveling to Paris, you have to have a reservation on the trains. He asked us to get out our credit cards and at first we thought we were being fined. Fortunately, we kindly asked him what was happening, and he explained we just had to pay the reservation fee (18.50 Euro a piece) now since we didn’t earlier. Again, not a problem… until none of our debit cards worked and we were all out of Euros having been in Switzerland and they use Francs. Luckily, the American Express saved the day and Sean and Matthew paid me back later in cash. I’m gonna go ahead and say that this is probably the worst travel experience yet.