CLICK HERE FOR BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND MYSPACE LAYOUTS »

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

German Invasion of PARIS!

I probably will get in trouble for that title, but it's so true.

My german came to Paris to pass a lovely weekend together and celebrate our second anniversary (April 7/8, I never remember).


He arrived late at night on a Thursday, and we didn't really get much time to do anything after we came back from the airport. But Friday we got up early and wandered around the streets of Paris as I was on a mission to convince Vince (haha) that he could love Paris like I do.

Our first stop was at the Pantheon. I think he was quite impressed with my knowledge of the old buildings, thanks to my prof Christophe. Originally a church dedicated to St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris , the building has seen many changes over the years. Construction started in 1744 when a church in that area was destroyed. King Louis XV decided to construct a grander one, suitable to honor St. Genevieve by the great architect Soufflot (thus the name of the road that leads to it Rue Soufflot)... After at least a century the Pantheon that is standing was finished. During the French Revolution the building itself lost a lot of its religious ties and became more of a monument to the French heroes of the war. Several famous writers, scientists and thinkers are entombed there including Marie and Pierre Curie, Voltaire, Emile Zola, and Victor Hugo.


After a nice hour or so walking through the Pantheon and its crypts, we carried on to the ile de la cite and one of my favorite parks in the city.



Right at the back of Notre Dame is a sweet little park that despite its location is never too busy. Vince and I paused a bit, but then I took him for a nice stroll along the Seine until I had to pick Raphy up for school. But before we got Raphy I was kind enough to introduce him to the most delicious chocolate cake that ever existed... wow I am a great girlfriend!

While I babysat the girls, Vince hung out with us and helped to make some delicious raclette. Steamed potatoes and sauteed mushrooms with melted cheese that you pour over it.

That night we went out to one of my favorite local bars, the Fifth Bar, and had some drinks and played some beer pong...


Although I don't remember all of the night, I do remember that we walked away from the table victorious, and that for some reason the bartenders gave us a striptease?



Saturday morning we woke up early and I took him on a nice walking tour of Paris and showed him all of the sights. Also as a nice anniversary present I bought him a delicious dark chocolate and banana crepe, I am a great girlfriend!



We ended up walking from Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower along the Seine so he got a pretty nice view into Paris.




Right before the Eiffel Tower we took a little detour and had a lovely little late lunch at a cute cafe.

Afterwards, a nice photo op outside of the Eiffel Tower being ridiculously romantic and such!

Then dinner at a sweet Belgian place right down the street from where I live. We shared so sumptuous escargot, and Vince got to have a nice big Belgian beer while I had a HUGE glass of wine (the size of my head). We both had excellent meals despite the baby crab in my mussels.





Overall the weekend was pretty incredible, it's nice to see your boyfriend, and especially nice to see your boyfriend and celebrate your anniversary! I do love Vince, but sometimes it's tough being far apart for so long, so that made this weekend together all the more special!

Amusing Luxembourgish Things

So after my last post where I completely obliterated everyone's "idea" of Luxembourg, I thought I would go for something happier...

The funny things that Autumn and I discovered in Luxembourg, the Grand Douchey of the North.

1) Miniature doors, too small for an average human probably only appropriate for midgets. The door below was attached to the Palace for all tiny Luxembourgish people who came to visit.



2) Luxembourgish taste in jewelry. Seriously a ring with some turf and a panda on it? The only person I could think of who would wear this is Bama, and it would look gigantic on a little Bama finger. That second picture is a necklace made out of little guinea pigs accompanied by a matching set of earrings... Guinea pig jewelry? What is the world coming to?



3) That's right Backstreet's Back, ALRIGHT! But they are playing in Luxembourg with only 4 band members. Last time I checked there were 5 right? Maybe one died or something...



4) False advertising in perhaps Europe's coldest country... These signs were EVERYWHERE as if Autumn and I needed reminding while we were freezing our butts off.

5) ALL ART HAS BEEN CONTEMPORARY... pretty witty sign, right? I got a kick out of this, as it was on the front of the Luxembourgish main Casino.

6) Ok, so this doesn't have anything to do with Luxembourg, but there is a place in France called Bitche... how cool would that be???


7) Luxembourg has combined two of the most awesomely awesome and flamboyant people together into the name of their main street... Siegfried and Roy, meet Rue Sigefroi.... Possibly the best moment in all of Luxembourg.


8) Yellow cow that was jailed off from public viewing but that Autumn and I managed to get a picture of. Luxembourg why you keeping the yellow cow all for yourself?


9) Another awesome job naming a road.


So Luxembourg definitely had some amusing moments....

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Oh Luxembourg, Oh Luxembourg, Who even goes there?

Let's just start this post off by saying that I am an awesome friend. Not only did I go up north to visit Autumn in her town of Nancy, BUT I also satisfied her life long (since 9th grade) dream of visiting the tiny country of Luxembourg, lucky her.

So we leave Nancy at some godforsaken hour that I hopefully never will again see in my life. It was one of those times when the whole world is shut down, including public transportation and you have to take a taxi...

Once we get on the train, Autumn and I immediately fall asleep. Lucky for the both of us, this is the first time we get to experience the joys of the "couchette", chairs that look like chairs but actually recline so much that you can basically lay in them. One word for them is AWESOME.




Upon arriving in Luxembourg, the weather looks bleak and cold and the first sign I see is "HOT CITY"... This is propaganda and lies, Luxembourg is not a HOT city, in fact it is the antithesis of HOT in that it is freezing freaking cold.


So we had officially arrived in Luxembourg, the grand Duchy of Europe. I chose to pronounce Duchy as Douchey whereas Autumn claims it is a Dukey... But in the end, Luxembourg I would say was definitely more of the first then the second.

The first view of the city was down into the valley with the Cliffs of Insanity! How amazingly awesome was that!




After a quick view of the Eternal Flame, which I swore to God was not called that, we moved on to view what can only be deemed, the flag garden. Completely separate from the rest of the park in the valley of Luxembourg, sits a garden not full of people or flowers but full of 8 flags that just wave in the wind. Autumn and I decided then and there, that we would sometime in our 8 hours in Luxembourg conquer the flag garden for Jon Little.





After wandering around what turned out to be the "heart" of Luxembourg, Autumn headed over to a building that we called a castle, but turned out to be a bank, sad news right. Note to self, when you go to a foreign place try and at least do a bit of research on it.

Sadly for us, we were in Luxembourg on a Sunday and apparently the people of Luxembourg don't like to work on Sundays as everything was closed. EVERYTHING was closed, so our sole choice was to walk around and look at things and listen to bells. Seriously, every second we were in Luxembourg a bell was ringing. I don't know if it's just a Sunday thing but that amount of bells is unnecessary, there are people in the world who don't have bells, Luxembourg should donate some of theirs.



The Bell Playing Notre Dame, Grand Cathedrale of Luxembourg


I believe this was Grand Duchess Caroline

After more wandering we eventually discovered the palace of the Grand Duchy, where the Grand Duke William lives... It's actually quite quaint and attached to the Parliament building which is very convenient and it's only guarded by one large gun handling man, whom Autumn told me to go past and ring the doorbell... such a dumb idea. That's when we were arrested and put in a Luxembourgish jail....

Yea I wish that was true because that would be a much better story.


So we continued on. At this point, Autumn and I discovered a small shop with what appeared to be postcards that was actually open. We went inside and as Autumn began to flip through some postcards a CRAZY Luxembourgish (it's a funny word, right?) slaps Autumn's hand away and hits her in the arm, THEN she starts screaming at us in Luxembourgish (not French their Other official language) and we run out fearing for our lives.

At this point the two of us are quite grumpy with Luxembourg. It's cold, nothings open and its people are violent. The only good thing I can say at this point is that it knows how to take care of dog poop unlike Paris.



Luckily the weather turned sunny and Luxembourg started to get better and better as it had secret passageways carved into the Cliffs of Insanity! So Autumn and I attempted to “trouve” (find) the entrance to the secret passageways, but alas we couldn’t get all the way down to the valley where the monks gardens were…




BUT then we found the Wenchel Walk (it’s sorta like a penguin’s walk), you bobble back and forth as you walk down the side of the Cliffs of Insanity not too bad. At one point the sky opened up and began to poop hard balls of hail on us… Luxembourg was so confusing, seriously hail?




The scenery as we walked down the Cliffs of Insanity was gorgeous.. It was like we were in the middle of a fairy tale... Pretty incredible!



Here is a view of the old city which at its heart has an abbey where the monks grow different fruits and veggies on the sides of the river in the center of the valley (we really made up facts about Luxembourg)




After another walk around what turned out to be an abbey, Autumn and I were starving and it was a PERFECT time to eat some delicious bread, crackers, brie and Mirabelle jam before stupid Luxembourg decided to have a hurricane or a tornado or something. Possibly the most delicious picnic that’s ever been had.



Afterwards Autumn and I were kind enough to share some of our bread with the ducks, there was one tramp of a suck who kept leading 2 boy ducks on, so we tried to give her more as she obviously was going to have a baby, that’s how big a slag she was…

Here comes deathstorm one, this one had killer hailstones the size of tennis balls...

After a delicious picnic in the Luxembourg sun, the clouds turned dark and Autumn and I knew suddenly that the weather was not happy. It’s like the sky changed like in Independence Day and then all of a sudden a shower of death hail fell from the sky. I swear if we hadn’t found that cave we would’ve been knocked out by some of those pieces of hail…



I tried to knock on a big scary door for shelter but as we noticed earlier the Luxembourgish aren’t very nice (probably because they live in Luxembourg)



At this point, Autumn and I were just a bit ennervĂ© (annoyed) by the Douchey of Luxembourg, BUT Luxembourg did have a chance to redeem itself, as it did lend itself perfectly to the recreation of the most awesomely awesome movie of our lives. Basically with the last 5 hours we spent in Luxembourg, Autumn and I remade the Princess Bride in a Series of Photographs… Possibly the only exciting-esque thing to happen. (See future blog entry)

After a difficult (and what we thought perilous) journey to the bottom of the valley, Autumn and I began the search for the illusive flag garden..






It took about an hour but we finally reached our destination and once there Autumn and I both realized the amazing thrill that comes with being in Luxembourg, come on who else do you know who has been to Luxembourg, yea no one. Not even Europeans. And now we know why.

This is the culmination of all 9th grade Autumn's hopes and dreams right here in this photo. Little did she know that she would need me to realize her dreams.



On the train out, in began to hail cats and dogs AGAIN for the THIRD time and we both said good riddance to Luxembourg.

On reflection the trip to Luxembourg was an excellent adventure, not because of the city itself but because of the time Autumn and I spent together. It seriously is one of those things you look back on, and laugh hysterically at…

Still I don’t think I will be heading back to Luxembourg for 20 years.

Not even for the backstreet boys