Paris Day 3

Today we started off at La Porte de Vannes, a local flea market - it's hard to find a bargain in a Paris flea market and trust me, we looked. We then headed over to Cite Universitaire to see Le Corbusier's Pavillon Suisse. This is a dormitory that he built in the 1930's. Luckily for us, it opened 2 minutes after we got there - by chance. We spent about half an hour looking around and then got back on the subway towards town. Then we went over to Maison La Roche, Le Corbusier's former home. It was interesting to see the design of a renowned architect, designing for himself as the client. After that, we walked over to the Eiffel Tower to have lunch - 18 Euros for 2 hot dogs, 2 cokes and 1 order of "french" fries. We've come to find out that most people can speak enough english for us to not have to speak any broken french - at least in the tourist hot spots (AKA - pits of despair). We just give a slaughtered french phrase (from a book) and then a dumb look and then they give us a dirty look and some half broken english... By 5 o'clock we were done. So we headed back to our apartment, stopping only for a bottle of champagne, a baguette and a delicious dessert.... Our days are getting shorter and shorter it seems, but the feet sure don't feel like it. Au revoir.

Paris Day 2

Today was a day of mostly shopping... we went to 2 H&M's (H&M will be our downfall/demise) and a really cool vintage store called Kiliwatch. All of the employees there spoke really good english and were very helpful - helpful in getting our money out of our wallets. We wandered aimlessly today in Marais (district). This is where the Pompidou Centre is and a few other things, but we haven't really stuck to our game plan yet. So, many of the things we want to see are being added to our already full list of things to do for the other days.

The pictures are of St. Eustache, Forum de Halles, some fountain, some building, some space ship looking building, the Opera house, a lotus flower in the garden in front of our apartment and Becky practicing for her new job to pay off the credit card (hence the pole). We are tired obviously and the champagne is now open...

Parents, my arms have been too full of clothes to take any pics while we have been shopping. But just you wait, we have yet to venture to the Champs Elysees, where I will not be able to afford any of the beautiful couture clothing. So be sure that there will be plenty of pictures, with my tear drops - Becky.

Parents, Becky doesn't take pictures of clothes she likes, she takes out her credit card - Davey.

Paris, Oui Oui

Yesterday was our first day in Paris; and we have our own apartment. And we have internet I might add; which will be so hopefull since we don't speak french - except that all internet sights default to french from here; even google, mapquest, this blog, etc. It takes awhile to figure out which buttons to push sometimes. Anyhow, we arrived around noon and stumbled our way, with all our suitcases to our apartment. Some lady who didn't speak english helped us because she noticed the dumbfounded look on our faces (and we were actually standing right across the street from it, unbenounced to us). We dropped off our bags and started to wander around and look for food. We grabbed a baugette with ham, cheese and butter on it and were on our way. We had a small agenda for today: to look for the Le Corbusier Foundation, Maison de Ver, the French Institute for Architecture and the Luxembourg Gardens... we found the Luxembourg Gardens and struck out on the rest. Now that we are connected to the internet, hopefully we can get better directions. We wandered into many shops and looked at clothes and shoes as well. We grabbed some pizza, chocolate cake and ice cream and headed home. My pizza sucked and we didn't realize that our fridge was turned off and our ice cream melted :(

but hey, it was our first day of striking out on this trip so far. Not bad.

Today we are getting serious...

London Day 8

Today was our last day in London and we needed to do laundry and get packed to leave bright and early for Paris. So we kept it short... We went down to the Design Museum in Butler's Warf. On the way we stopped to watch some pigeons take a shower in a fountain. It was quite fascinating. Then on to the museum...They had a Zaha Hadid exhibit and a Graphic Design exhibit as well. Becky was sooooo excited... The Zaha Hadid paintings were really cool, as well as her models. We were there for about 2 hours and then we headed back to get our stuff together. We had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning to get the train...

London Day 7

London Day 7 - Today we started off at a cafe in Chelsea. We both had tea and a crossoint. Then we made our way over to the British Museum. The Great Court in the second picture is by Norman Foster. This museum has been in existence for around 300 years and has always been free (nice). We felt like the name of the museum should have been the Museum of Raping and Pillaging. It was full of artifacts from all over the ancient world - Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Americas, Assyria, etc. The artifacts were amazing, don't get me wrong, it's just sad that they were cut out of the old monuments and removed from the countries where they belong - statues from the Acropolis, the Rosetta Stone, gates from Ur, sarcophogus from Egypt, etc. Notice the picture of the man on the vase, look at what he is balancing the bucket on... We spent several hours there and then went to look for a light snack/late lunch. We split a felafel at a little cafe and then walked through Smithfield looking for a residential building by Rick Mathers, but we had no luck. We forgot to bring the address with us... we then made our way back to West Kensington, where our hostel is, and wandered around there for about an hour. We grabbed some Indian Food and headed back to our room. Tomorrow is our last day in London before we head to Paris...

London Day 6

It was a little cold and windy today with grey skies in the morning (typical London weather). We started off at the Millenium Pedestrian Bridge (Norman Foster) over the Thames and ending at the Tate Modern Museum. The Tate Modern was free!! We wandered around in there for a couple of hours. Unfortunatley, the Dali exhibit ended the day before. But we were still able to see art by many influential artists of the 20th century: Mondrian, Pollack, Picasso, Monet, Warhol, Ernst, etc, etc, etc... There were still alot of people there, even though it was a Monday. In the picture of the downtown skyline, you can notice the many cranes in the city. There is ALOT of construction going on here. Hmmm, maybe they need architects really bad... We then wandered down the Waterfront, past Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (reconstruction), and grabbed a sandwich from a sandwich shop. Then we trekked down to the Southwark Cathedral. This was a place of worship for over a thousand years. Some of the walls are this old, while others are as new as a hundred years old. Either way, it was a beautiful example of a Gothic cathedral; and it was free and they let me take pictures inside. bonus. After that, we went down to London City Hall (Norman Foster). We went inside, but we could only go up to the second floor. On the 9th floor is "London's Living Room", which I believe is a cool little hangout spot that looks out over the river towards downtown. Of course, it is closed on weekdays. We thought it would be closed on weekends because it is a Gov't office. Not a bonus. Our feet were KILLING us by then so we decided to go to the other H&M in Oxford Circus. Somehow we made it out of there with only spending $50. We were quite proud of ourselves. We wandered into a few other stores on the way and then got some Thai food to take back to the Hostel. The exchange rate sucks and makes everything twice as expensive as it should be. Can we fire George Bush over this? Please.