More Paris Pictures!

Paris

Hi Everyone!

So we got back from Paris yesterday and it was amazing! The only bad thing was getting to the airport. We took a bus to the airport at midnight on Wednesday. The bus ride took about an hour and then we got on another bus to take us to the airport. We got to the airport at 2 AM and out flight didn't leave until 8:55AM. So we went and tried to sleep. I didn't sleep at all, but Casey had no problem sleeping until about 4 AM when all of these high schoolers arrived to go on their senior trip. They were so noisy and neither of us could sleep. But we got on the plane and landed safely. We arrived at hour hotel and found it to be not what we were looking for. The bed was super hard and uncomfortable and the place wasn't very clean. Casey went and talked to the guy and tried to get out money back. But he could only get 1 days worth of money back which is a really big bummer. So we pretty much spent all of Thursday tired and looking for new hotel. We went to an Internet cafe and finally found a pretty good deal on a 3 star hotel. We kind of cheated the system because we booked a room that was only meant for 1 person but the hotel didn't care that we both were staying. The hotel room was really really small but it was nice. Much better than the other one. Oh yeah the first hotel was like a 20 minute walk from the metro station so that sucked a lot. But the new hotel was right across the street from a metro station. I'm glad that we got a new hotel because Paris was a very tiring trip and the 20 minute walk back to the old hotel would have been horrible after a long day. So our first day was bla we didn't get to see anything or do anything. So on Friday we went crazy and went to the Louvre for 5 hours!!! Everything we saw so soo amazing. The Mona Lisa was ok..we didn't think that it was anything special. We really liked all of the Egyptian stuff. It was so cool to see real tombs and know that the things we were seeing were like 5,000 years old! We ate our first crepes on Saturday too. They were soooo yummy. I had one with sugar and Casey had one with nutella and banana. Also on the topic of food. There was this really yummy bakery right across the street from out hotel. The croissants were so flaky and buttery and I had 2 for breakfast every morning and Casey had a chocolate baguette. On Saturday we did so much. We went to see the great arch which was HUGE and there was this really weird thumb sculpture next to it. And then we went to Notre Dame which was AWESOME! We paid a little money and got to walk all they way up to the top. It was 422 stairs! After we got down both of our legs were shaking. The stairs were so narrow and steep it was crazy. But the view was so beautiful. And the gargoyles were awesome. And we also got to see the great bell. Its not in use anymore but it was still neat to see. We also went and saw the Eiffel Tower during the day. Its so cool and you cant help but stare at it. I mean its just metal but its so awesome. Then we went and had a nice dinner in town and came back to the Tower at night. It was so beautiful. And every hour there was this amazing light show. To me it looked like a million little fairies flying around.(I know that sounds lame but it really did look like that!) On Sunday we went to this cool Church I don't remember the name but Casey can fill everyone in on things that I'm missing. And then after that we went to the flea market. It was soooo huge and cool. I wish we could have stayed longer and looked around more but we had to catch out plane. So that was Paris, it has been my favorite place so far. I hope everyone likes the pictures!

Apologies

Alright,

So to everyone who's been checking up on us, I'm sorry I have been lax about posting, especially with regards to my experiences/thoughts on London (which was great). I have been pretty busy with work because we are apprently on some sort of a deadline. Today was possibly one of the crappiest days of my life, at least on a physical sensory scale. I left the flat at 7:30 in the morn and returned after 9 at night. What was in between involved freezing rain, being out in said freezing rain, and being covered with tar. Luckily we got the job done and that part of the project is finished. But, on to what I am blogging about: we leave for Paris tomorrow night. We are both very excited and I am a little apprehensive as well since we know zero French and it is a wierd language to begin with. Also, I only have a hand full of things I am planning on seeing but that may be good since those things are all like really big things. We are staying at a budget hotel outside the city called Hotel Fasthome- I'll let you know how it is. The circumstances of our getting to Paris has been a little bit of a learning experience for me. I booked our flights out of Glasgow becuase it was much cheaper and the buses between Edinburgh and Glasgow are inexpensive. But because of how early our flight is (is 8:55 really that early?) and a host of other problems, we are leaving on a bus at midnight the night before, getting to Glasgow and crashing somewhere until our flight leaves. We will of course keep everyone posted on how Paris was, but if communication is a little thin over the next 4 days, this is why. I hope everyone is well and those of you who I haven't talked to in a while should hopefully be getting a call soon.

Casey

London baby!

Hi everyone!
We just got back from London yesterday and it was so amazing! The first day that we got there we got in about 11 and we were all pretty hungry. So we went out and got some take away Chines food. We all got the same thing ( chicken chow mein) and it was pretty good and it was super cheap. We went to bed and then at about 3 am I started to feel really sick. I tried to sleep it off but I kind of knew that something was pretty wrong. So I got up to go to the bathroom. Now there are a few things you need to know before I tell the rest of the story. First of all the hostel we stayed in had like 1 million doors that you have to open and they are all really heavy. And to get into our room we had to have a card to open the door. There are 3 doors you have to open to get to the bathroom and the bathroom lock was hard to open once you had locked it behind you. So now for the rest of the story. I stumbled into the bathroom and it is just a pain single room with a toilet and a sink. While I was walking to the bathroom I started to see spots and I was getting really hot and sweaty. I sat in the bathroom for a while and I though I was going to be sick. By this time I was pretty out of it. I had the sink on cold water so I could put my hand in it to cool me down. And I was barley staying awake and I was seeing tons of spots. I finally decided to get up and go wake Casey. I stood up and then next thing I knew I passed out. Now I don't know how long I was out for so that is kind of scary. But when I woke up the whole left side of my face was hurting really bad. I got up which was bad because I was pretty wobbly and I was still seeing spots. I knew that if I yelled no one would hear me through all the doors. So I knew I had to get up myself. I got up and I was so weak I couldn't open the lock on the door. After fumbling around for a while I got out and into our room. I woke Casey up and I really scared him. He wasn't expecting me there and he grabbed me and freaked out. I was so pale and all I could say to him was take me to the hospital I passed out and hit my head. My stomach was still really hurting. We took a cab to the hospital and waited for a while but everything checked out fine. I didn't have a concussion or anything like that. But my eyebrow looked like it had a raisin under it. And now I have a black eye. Oh well. The cool part was that I didn't have to pay for any medical bill. Other than that stuff London was amazing. We did 2 walking tours and they were on a tip only basis which was cool. We also got our pictures taken at platform 9 and 3/4 for all of you Harry Potter fans! Our hostel was actually pretty nice. There were 12 beds in one room but it was all pretty clean. The showers were super annoying though. You would push the on button and then the water would come out first cold and then scalding but only for 15 seconds at a time. So you had to push the button over and over again. Also we saw Wicked the musical. It was awesome! The songs were great and the people had really really nice voices. Casey had an Ok time and mostly complained about how much the tickets cost but all in all we had a great time. On the way back we met a guy on the train named Nathan. He is 18 and he is from Edinburgh. He is a boxer and has won the Edinburgh championship twice. Over here people graduate from high school when they are 16 so he is in a trade school right now to become an electrician. He was really nice and he told us tons of crazy stories about NED's (non educated delinquents) He told us about crazy pub fights and just crazy fights hes been in. We also rode the biggest Farris wheel in the world!!! The London Eye. It was also really expensive but I am glad we rode it. The day we went had amazing weather so we had a really really nice view of everything. The lame thing about the London Eye is that is cost like 15 pounds a person and it makes 50,000 pounds an hour!!!! But yeah sorry about the skipping around of topics I'm just trying to remember everything. We also went to Fleet street from the movie Sweeny Todd the Daemon barber of Fleet Street. I'm sure I'm forgetting tons of cool stuff but hopefully Casey can fill the rest in. But don't worry everyone I am fine and getting sick was just a little bump in the road, and also a good story to tell.

A little update

Hey everyone, I just wanted to fill everyone in on what's been going down the past couple of days. Firstly, we are off to London leaving tomorrow night for 4 days. That means we may not be in contact, at least via phone as much. I'm sure we will have lots to post, but I don't know if we will have enough time/energy to post while we are there. This will be our first time staying in a hostel, so I'm excited to see how it goes. Thanks to Shannon for the help with finding websites and such. I will, at some point, put up the videos I've been promising so you can at least see what the flat really looks like. I know at this point it just sounds like an empty promise, but I will really try to get those up as soon as possible. As for what's been happening recently, We are getting settled into life here in Edinburgh sort of. There is always enough going on and always something that we still have to take care of so I personally don't feel totally settled. That might also be due to the trips we've been planning. Although the main focus is Scotland, we of course wanted to go elsewhere in Europe. This weekend is London and two weeks after that we will spend 4 days in Paris. We will also do other small trips and maybe a very long one at the end of our time in Europe. Word on the street at work is that I might get the last 5 days I'm here off, so that would be really cool. Work has been good for me, I work with people from all over the world and I have been learning lots of things from other languages. Natalie enjoys her job a lot and it is great that she is so close and can come home for lunch. The people she works for are very kind to us and it has been great getting to know them.

Alright, so there is the rambling update. I'll blame said rambling on the fact that it is quite late here.

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying their summer as much as we are enjoying ours (suckas!)

God bless,
CZ