Susan's Return

After a small teaspoon of guilt, I managed to talk Susan into coming back to France to visit me for my birthday. This time instead of suffering in the Marriott on Champs-Elysees, she had the luxury of staying over at my apartment (note the sarcasm: she even refused to sleep on the air mattress, so she stayed on the couch). Despite some serious lack of sleep for both of us last week (there was one night that we were both up at 3am, so I suggested a glass of wine, which she laughed at but drank anyway), we were still able to have some fun.

On Sunday, since we couldn't shop, we went over to St. Chapelle (the church that shares the Ile-de-Paris with Notre Dame, but is often overlooked) and Musee d'Orsay. The building that is now a Museum was a train station until the late 1930s, then a movie set, a mailing center during WW II, and even a hotel. Once the hotel was closed in 1973, it became the Museum that it is today - it holds a large collection of famous impressionist paintings, such as Van Gogh's self portrait (you know, the one where his head is turned so that you can't see his gross ear) and Degas' ballerinas.

Susan and I headed out to London on Thursday. While the flying experience was not as smooth as I thought it would be (gee thanks EasyJet), we managed to get to the hotel (the Marriott next to the London Eye) before noon. We figured since we couldn't check into the hotel yet, we would take a ride on the Eye. Once we got down, we walked along the Jubiliee path that follows the Thames on the south side to the Tate Modern.

Here was the view from the hotel room:













On the walk back towards the hotel, we stopped at St. Paul's Cathedral and watched the tail-end of the evening mass. While the outside of St Paul's looks like many other cathedrals, the interior sets it apart - the mosaics and paintings on the inside make the church sparkle at all times of the day.

After quite a long day of travel and walking, we stopped at a recommended bar (Blackfriar Pub - very nice little bar on the north side of the Blackfriar Bridge) for a couple of pints and some fish and chips.

We woke up early on Friday morning and started the day by passing the Houses of Parliament and taking a tour of Westminster Abbey. With the price of admission, we also got the audio tour which made the tour much more interesting. Then we walked over to Buckingham Palace, expecting to catch the changing of the guards, but...

So we proceeded on to Trafalgar Square
--->

Then we figured it might be fun to see the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London. Little did we know that it's practically an amusement park for children of all ages. Let's just say we saw the jewels, browsed at some other sites then walked across the famous Tower Bridge (though not to be confused with the London Bridge, which is the next one upriver and much less interesting). We finished the day at Oxford Circle to do some shopping, which we found was absolutely swarming with people on a Friday evening.

When we got back to Paris on Saturday night we went out to a great bar called Caveau des Oubliettes, which translates to "vault of the forgotten." It was once a real dungeon! The band (and company) was great!

Whew, well I guess we did do a lot in one week... I guess that explains why I stayed in all week and went to bed early every night :-)