Paris, France

PARIS

Planning our trip to Paris took a few days, but once it was finally booked, it felt so good to know that we were going to be Paris in a week. :) We planned our trip with some amazing people we have met during our first week at Roehampton. They’re all from Hawaii! Americans…like us haha.

DAY 1

Our Eurostar train was at 5:30am so we all debated about how we wanted to get there. A few wanted to stay at St. Pancras station all night until we left, and a few others wanted to try and take a taxi. The taxi would be pretty expensive so we decided to just leave at 2:30am to take the night bus to the station and wait there until the train leaves. Now whether we wanted to sleep or not before we left was the question. Paul and I ended up falling asleep for an hour and then met up with the others at the bus stop to take the night bus. (too bad it’s not like the night bus in Harry Potter) ;)

When we got to the station we had to go through security, passport, etc and then we were on our way to Paris! The train is actually really nice. There is a snack station and everything. BUT it was too early in the morning to even care, so we both just feel asleep on the train until we arrived in Paris. It only took 2 ½ hours to get there though. When we arrived in Paris, all of us were so excited! We couldn’t believe that we were finally here!

After a few minutes of being in the train station we all experienced major culture shock. It took us about an hour to get day passes to use for transportation around Paris. Everywhere we went, they would slightly know what we were talking about and point us in different directions. When we got to a machine where you could apparently buy day passes was only in French, so we weren’t sure how to even get them on the machine. Then a French guy came up to us speaking in French and we had no idea what he was saying. It got a little frustrating. When we finally got our day passes we took a train and walked to our hostel. The hostel we stayed at was called “Aloha Hostel.” It was pretty nice…except you felt dirty after you took a shower and we had to buy sheets to lay over the beds and are blankets kind of smelled…BUT we were basically just there for sleeping and showering. We couldn’t check into our hostel until 4, but we were allowed to leave our luggage in a locked luggage room they had. After that we went walking around to find a restaurant we could eat at and understand the menu. This was a challenge. There are only a few places around Paris that have a menu that is in French with English subtitles on the bottom. We walked around for a half hour and just decided to eat at a French restaurant and try and figure out what the menu says. So my first meal in Paris was a cheeseburger…it was the only thing I could make out on the menu. :)

After lunch we were so tired that we went back to the hostel and feel asleep at a table until it was 4pm. When it was 4pm we went into our rooms and napped until 730pm…talk about exhausted! That night we went to a bar/pub and it was so much fun! Gabby and I got nutella crepes! They were delicious! But we also had the slowest service ever. The place was packed! We ended up being there for 3 hours. But overall it was a very fun first night in Paris.

                            Day 2

Our hostel says that we have a “free” breakfast every morning at 8am so we were really excited to wake up and have some warm, good breakfast. But we ended up sleeping in instead. Every morning we have to leave the hostel at 11am so they can clean so we went to a small bakery and got some chocolate croissants. They were so amazingly wonderful.

After that we went to Notre Dame, yes it looks exactly like the one from “Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Haha

Notre Dame is so beautiful and the architecture is so detailed. We were able to go inside for free and walk around where ever we wanted. They had a choir singing in the background and it sounded so beautiful with the sound bouncing off the walls into a slight echo.

When we went back outside, there was this man letting people feed all these birds that were flying around and playing in a bush garden. It was really cool! There was also a huge flock of pidgins close by and the man laughed and said something in French to us. He walked over to the pidgins with an umbrella and open it up and the pidgins flew over us! Good thing we didn’t get pooped on.

After the Notre Name we went to the Louvre, which is where the Mona Lisa painting as well as many other famous art pieces are. The mona Lisa painting is actually quite small. It's smaller than you think it would be.

We also saw the Eiffel tower for the first time!! AHH! It is so beautiful! We were able to see it for the first time at night. Every beginning of the hour the Eiffel tower sparkles for 10 minutes. It’s gorgeous! There is also a restaurant in the middle of the tower and it’s so expensive. It’s wear Tom Cruise proposed to Kate.

The most annoying thing though when you go to the Eiffel tower is the illegal street sellers trying to sell you Eiffel tower key chains. There is seriously a flock of them every 15 feet of each other. And if you say no to them, they’ll follow you and lower the price. There was at some point all of them standing 5 feet from each other in a row so you had to pass through them. Funny story: So Gabby and Keoni were sitting by the Eiffel tower and a guy comes up to them and hands them a flower. Keoni takes it, looking confused and then the guy says, “2 Euros!” So he pretty much had to buy it since he grabbed it haha

On the way back home, we were in the underground and we look over and there’s this passed out guy with his butt hanging out of his jeans just laying there. It was so disgusting, but really funny at the same time. Haha

Later at night, we met up with one of our friend’s French friend who took us to a nice French restaurant and treated us to a bottle of wine. :) The food was delicious! It was very helpful having him around and speaking French. After the second day in Paris, we were starting to miss London. It’s cleaner, we know the language, we’re familiar with the area. After a while of being in Paris for two days though we did get the hang of traveling around and knowing where we were. It’s also quite funny that Paris drives on the “right” side of the road. And I found myself looking the wrong way since I am so used to the roads in London. I am going to have such a hard time when I get back to America.


Day 3

We actually woke up early to get breakfast. On the way down, Paul, Victoria and I were really excited. I turn to them and say, “I really hope this breakfast is like a real breakfast and not just…” and Victoria says, “Bread…” Our hostel has a bowl of stale bread everyday for anyone who wants to eat it. So we walk down there and what was for breakfast?...BREAD! And also cereal that I had no idea what it was with orange juice and hot chocolate. So the breakfast was a major fail.

For the third day, we decided to go to the padlock bridge, the Arc de Trimphe and try and go to the Eiffel tower to get tickets to go up.

For those of you who don’t know what the padlock bridge is… it’s a bridge in Paris that has loads of padlocks around the links of the fence that couples put on. The locks have the names of the couple, the date, and possibly a quote on it. The tradition is that you buy a lock, put your names on it, and you throw the key in the water below to symbolize ever-lasting love. Paul and I bought a lock near by, wrote our names on it, and we locked it around the fence link together and threw the key in the water. J It is so cool to think that our lock will be there forever and people will be able to pass by and see it. Maybe one day we will even go back to Paris for an anniversary or with our family and see our lock.

The Arc de Trimphe is so beautiful. It’s actually a lot bigger than I pictured it to be. There is a roundabout motorway that is around it so you take an underground tunnel to get through. In the tunnel it shows you facts about the Arc de Trimphe and you can see a picture of Hitler standing with his German army by it.  It’s so crazy.

We unfortunately weren’t able to get tickets to go to the top of the Eiffel tower. Everyday it is so jammed packed with people that it would probably take you 2 hours to just get a ticket and another hour to get to the elevator. Instead of going up we decided to sit in the grass and wait for the twinkle lights to come on the Eiffel tower. When we got to the Eiffel tower, Paul handed me a rose and said “Happy Sweetest day.” He wanted to wait to do the padlocks for sweetest day. J I am so in love with my fiancé. I couldn’t be any more blessed than I am now.

Afterwards, we left for the bar we went to the first night…

And that’s pretty much all to say about that night…haha

Day 4

Last day in Paris! Bitter but also very sweet. We finally were able to go to the top of the Eiffel tower! It took about 2 hours total to get in line get the tickets and go to the very top. It’s so scary taking the elevator to the very top. You can see straight down below you and it’s so high up! But
when you get to the top, it’s so worth the wait. It is gorgeous. You can see all of Paris. You can see the city and in the distance, the countryside. They also serve campaign at the very top!

It was so much fun to experience Paris with such an amazing group of people. I had an incredible time and I can’t wait to experience more new things as the weeks go by. We just bought tickets to go to Barcelona, Spain and Rome Italy for a week. Can’t wait for that adventure.

Well I hope you all enjoyed reading this and experienced a little bit of Paris through this blog. Love you all. Thanks for reading and being apart of this journey with me.

Em <3

Glistening Eiffel Tower :)

ENGAGEMENT!!!

Lets just say that September 29^th was one of the most exciting days of my life. I am going to marry my high school sweetheart and my best friend. :) I am beyond blessed!

I’m guessing most of you want to hear the story about how Paul proposed. :) Well here you go…

London has had the most amazing weather of the season. There was a week where it was in the low 80’s and high 70’s. Knowing that we probably won’t get weather like this in autumn, we decided to plan a day to have a picnic. We bought some white wine, bread with oil and parmesan cheese and strawberry’s with nutella.

The next day it was absolutely gorgeous out with a light breeze and high 70’s. We decided to pack lunches and go to Hyde Park. As I was finishing up getting ready, Paul came in and was complimenting me on everything from my hair to the little bird dress I was wearing. This didn’t really catch me off guard since he normally compliments me a lot. :) (He also told me later that he wanted to make sure I felt beautiful on the day he proposed.) Which was probably why he complimented me a lot and was trying to get me to say I look good. haha When he complimented me on my hair and outfit I said, “Thanks, I do look kind of cute today.” For those of you who have never heard of Hyde Park, it is one of London’s largest parks and it is also one of the Royal Parks of London. When we got to Hyde Park we went down a road that had trees on both sides that swept across the top. Autumn is coming so all the leaves were changing and blowing across the ground. If you didn’t know before, fall is my favorite season.  Anyways, we found the best spot for our picnic, which was under these really tall trees that had tons of leaves covering the ground. We sat down, opened our bottle of wine and toasted to being in London together. We enjoyed our sandwiches, our bread with oil and parmesan cheese and just talked about life. When we started eating our strawberries with nutella we started reminiscing about our past and how far we have come along. In the middle of our conversation a squirrel came along and Paul almost got the squirrel to grab a piece of bread from his hand! Anyways, we continued our conversation and talked about high school and laughed about how we met and also how the years just went by so fast. Then we went into talking about the future and that’s when Paul said, “How about we start the next chapter of our lives in London.” I look at him smiling and probably a little confused and asked, “what do you mean?” Paul reached into his backpack and pulled out a little blue box and went down on one knee and asked me to marry him!!! I immediately gave him a hug and said yes! I was just so happy that I forgot about the ring and Paul was like, “will you put the ring on already?” The ring is so beautiful. I am so in love with it. I look at it probably 50 times a day. Also I didn’t notice, but Paul said there was a bunch of girls in the park that saw and took our pictures. 

After that we stayed at the park for a while and talked about everything and kept saying, “I can’t believe we are finally getting married!!!” Later on we went back to Roehampton, got dressed and went to a romantic dinner in central that overlooked Big Ben.  That was also the first time we went to central at night and saw all the buildings lit up. It is so pretty!

I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. He really did an amazing job and I am so blessed to have him in my life and to have him as my future husband. Wow that’s crazy to say! Well here is my fiancé’s story about getting the ring to London! I hope you enjoyed this blog post. :)

 Hi everyone!

SHE SAID YES!!!

So now I will tell you how I managed to get Emma’s engagement ring to London…

Well I knew I wanted to propose to Emma but I wasn’t sure how or when but I knew I needed a job to be able to support us as a family before I could even begin to think about getting married. This summer, as many of you know I was incredibly blessed get this great summer internship with Merrill Lynch in Chicago and was even more blessed to receive a full-time offer starting July 2012.  I received my job offer on September 1^st and we were flying to London on September 13^th. This did not give me a lot of time to go ring shopping and for those of you who don’t know how I am with shopping, I am always trying to get the perfect item for the perfect price and it takes me forever haha so picking out an engagement ring was not an easy task to do two weeks before heading to London. Once I had the ring I still had to figure out how I was planning to get it to London without Emma knowing I had it. Thankfully, my wonderful mom and Christie combined forces and thought of a plan to tape the ring inside one of the pockets in my wallet. You could only imagine how nervous I was to have this ring that is wrapped in tissue paper and tapped in my wallet while going through security haha. Everything went well while flying out of O’hare. My next obstacle was how I was planning on going through customs. After we picked up our luggage I had Emma go ahead of me then I told her I “forgot” to claim my iPad and to wait here while I talked to them. So while Emma was roughly 10 feet away I had to quickly and quietly tell the customs agent my situation and how to claim it.  Luckily, he played along answered my question and started to ask me questions about the iPad because he wanted one, and just like that I successfully made it into London without Emma knowing her engagement ring was in my pocket the whole time. 

I just wanted to say how excited I am to be starting this next chapter of my life here in London with Emma and I hope you all enjoyed the story. I don’t remember the last time I was that nervous haha but I made it though! So keep us in your prayers as we finish up school and begin planning a wedding! :D

-Paul

The Tower of London/Buckingham Palace

TOWER OF LONDON

Well that day started off with a bird pooping on my shoulder. Here’s the story: There are these trees on campus that have these little nuts falling from them and every time Paul and I walk under them we are hoping that each other gets hit by nut. So we are walking on our way to the bus when I feel something drop on my shoulder and I brush it off. I turn to Paul and laugh and tell him that a nut finally fell on me. He asked me where and I told him my shoulder and looked at my shoulder. To my surprise, there was a skid mark of bird poop on it. Paul starts laughing at me, and I run over to where it pooped on me and there was a big wad of it on the pavement. It definitely felt like a nut hit me. How I managed to get that wad of poop off my shoulder without making a huge mess on my hand beats me.

ALSO you probably would like to know that we suck at catching the bus. Seriously, every time we walk to the bus station or we get off the tube and walk over to the bus we literally just miss it by seconds. Every time we get off the tube and walk over we ask each other, “Do you think we missed the bus.” “Yup!” And we always do.

The tower of London was awesome though. There is so much to do there. Our tour guide knew so much about what went on back then. She told us about the “Bloody Tower” which got its name in the 16^th century. It was believed to be the site of the murder of the young Princes who lived in the Tower. We also went into the “White Tower,” which was built by William the Conqueror. The purpose of the White Tower was to provide a power base for the Norman invaders and control and intimidate the people of the City of London.

What really interested me were the Ravens of the Tower of London. Ravens are like crows but a lot bigger. The presence of the ravens is traditionally believed to protect the Crown Jewels and the Tower. Legend has it that if the ravens left the tower, the kingdom and the fortress would fall. All the ravens there are clipped so they can’t fly away and leave the tower. There are also 7 main ravens that get switched out that are called “The 7 Prisoners.” They have a raven master on the grounds that feed the ravens raw meat a day and bird biscuits soaked in blood.  It’s creepy because before the ravens were held captive, they originally came to the tower of London because of the smell of the corpses and they would eat the bodies…*cringe*

On a happier note…Paul and I were able to go into the building where the Crown Jewels were held. It was so beautiful! They had a diamond called “Great Star of Africa” which was cut from the “Cullinan Diamond,” the largest diamond in the world and is 3,106.75 carats. The Great star of Africa is 530.4 carats and one of the largest polished diamonds in the world.

There is also a place in the Tower of London, which is the official residence of the Queen of England, but she has never stayed there. They had a few guards with the red uniforms and the big black hats guarding the doors to the residence. After the tour we also were able to go on a Jack the Ripper tour, which was scary, but interesting! We went to all the locations where all the dead bodies were found and during each site she showed us a picture of what the body looked like. We also walked in the footsteps of where they thought Jack the Ripper went after murdering one victim.

The tower of London

The White Tower

The official residence of the Queen of England

Where the crown jewels are held.

BUCKINGHAM PALACE

I was so excited to go to the Buckingham Palace. Especially to see Kate’s wedding dress up in person. When we got there we had to go through security and put our bags through those machines that they have at the airport. We also had to get rid of all liquids. FUNNY STORY: So Paul and I had a picnic before the tour and we bought this gigantic water bottle that was only 80p because it was cheaper than the smaller bottle. Right before the tour we still had a ton left and decided to chug it and drink most of it up since we knew they probably wouldn’t allow us to bring it in with us. When we got inside the Buckingham, before security, they told us, “I hope you all peed before you came because there are no bathrooms inside and the tour is 2 hours.” Paul and I looked at each other thinking, “CRAP!” we just drank 1.5 liters of water and we can’t pee for 2 more hours! There was no turning back…

We were able to go into all the staterooms, which are the rooms where all the special parties are held. We were in a room where Kate and William had their wedding pictures and also their wedding reception! Everything in the Buckingham palace is so breathtaking, with crystal chandeliers, fancy furniture. There seriously wasn’t an inch of the rooms where it wasn’t detailed. Everything in the Palace was designed and made with a purpose. They told us about a secret passageway that the Queen takes to go to the parties. There is a fancy dresser up against the wall with a mirror that turns and has a door behind it.

Let me tell you…Kate’s wedding dress is so BEAUTIFUL in person! Oh my gosh…

We were told how it was made and how long the process was. The dress was made with so much detail and was used with so many different fabrics. We also saw the wedding cake and her shoes and jewelry. It was cool being able to stand in the same place William and Kate were after their wedding. I’m sad that I wasn’t able to take any pictures inside to show you how beautiful it was but we did get to take pictures outside in their garden. J

It’s been amazing getting to go and see everything in London. There is still SO MUCH to see. I have been learning a lot here and its great learning about the history of London.

The front of the Buckingham

These are one of the rooms we were in.

All the rooms has this much detail.