Eurotrip 2009

As a post-classes, pre-graduation celebration of reduced responsibilities, Sheldon took me on a vacation to Europe! We flew into London Heathrow at 6 am on Sunday May 25th, completely beat after taking the red-eye next to an adorable screaming toddler. Upon arriving at the airport we discovered Yotel, which is this really cool hourly hotel in the airport. I know what you're thinking - either A) Hourly hotels...sketchy, or B) You went to Europe and you're blogging about the airport hotel? The answer to those questions is A) not like you might think, and B) YES, it was amazing to get off the plane feeling dirty and exhausted only to discover this little clean, shower and bed oasis. Ahhhh. 

After a quick rest and cleanup we went on our merry way to wander about London. First we went to Liverpool to this great Turkish restaurant called Haz, we were at a weird hour between lunch and dinner so we got the place to ourselves. We were definitely underdressed in our jeans and t's, but they were polite and gave us awesome food anyways. We stumbled onto this restaurant because I knew there was a phone store near the station, and when we were there I asked a couple random people for good places to eat in the area. Even the starter pita's and hummus were to die for. 

After our late lunch, we wandered over to the theater district and caught the dinnertime showing of Le Clique, which is like an old fashioned circus show - people performing all sorts of little (very strange) acts: there were two boys doing crazy lifts, a contortionist, a hula hoop girl and a juggling unicyler in a leather outfit dancing to Queen - it was my kind of place! When the show ended we caught the subway over to Victoria Coach Station and boarded a bus for Paris. We took a ferry over the English Channel halfway through, where there were all sorts of duty free goodies like Wine Gums and champagne. The breakfast on the boat was exactly what we were craving at 2 in the morning after a crazy day. 

After sleeping on the bus we arrived in Paris at 7am and took off to Montmartre. Montmarte is the area where the Moulin Rouge is located, it's a very romantic part of town, with lots of winding roads, brick streets, and pretty views. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and wandered down to Le Templier restuarant at the suggestion of the Concierge. It was delicious, but the portions were huge and we overheard quite a bit of English (I'm pretty sure the concierge was thinking that us American tourists would want to eat a lot and speak English the whole time, needless to say we didn't take any more of his food suggestions...) Afterwards, we wandered back to the hotel for a shower (oddly, cleaning up in the bus station's enormous, french bread serving McDonald's hadn't made us feel all that fresh after our 9 hour ride, hm). We spent the rest of the day wandering around outside.

The next morning we geared up and grabbed a baguette from this delicious bakery right outside our door. We then trekked to our second hotel, also in Montmartre, but in a different part of it. This was our cheapest hotel, but it looked really nice in pictures. I discovered on the way there that it was probably the cheapest because it was right next to Pigalle and the red light district. Sweet.

When we arrived the hotel itself was very clean and nice and in a better part of town, but still it was like living a couple streets off the seedier side of Dale Mabry. We asked the new concierge where a good place to eat was, and he directed us to Le Cloche d'Or, which was pretty much perfect. The waiter didn't even speak English so I actually got to practice my language skills a bit. After a hearty lunch there, we hopped on the subway to check out the Eiffel Tower, where we took pretty much some of the only pictures we got on our trip. Paige and I are secretely not related, and my life post-tampa is more poorly documented than the nutrition facts in a Chinese restaurant, which is "killing her softly". Sorry Paige.

After the Eiffel Tower, we walked over to the Galleries Lafayette because our clothes were starting to smell like dead possum. We spent a bit of time trying to find it, and ended up arriving after they'd already closed. Oops. So instead we walked into the nearest hotel and asked the doorman if there was a good restaurant around. The doorman, mistakenly supposing we were staying at said really nice and expensive hotel, not only gave us a recommendation, but also a card that got us free champagne and olives. Yay! I forget the name of this restaurant, but again it was fancy and we were underdressed (and smelling of possum recall), but with our little card we made it in, to a nice table, and were given free booze - which probably would have been even cooler if we drank much. Sheldon had one sip and turned bright red from being asian and suffering asian glow (def: An allergic reaction of the skin that occurs when asians drink alcohol, also known as bukkake blush - ex: Carol only needs half a shot before she gets a bad case of the asian glow.  Thanks Urban Dictionary!). Sheldon drinks so rarely I didn't know what was happening and asked him if it was too warm in the restaurant. Oops.

This place was pretty cool until my escargot got too hot and exploded when the oil on top was broken covering my (only decencent) shirt and chest and hand with boiling liquid. I had three mini-blisters for the rest of my trip. They were still delicious. I thought the staff was going to have a hernia they were so worried. I spent the whole meal with ice in a napkin pressed to my skin, which made it look even worse because my skin gets really red in the cold. Oh well, it happens. We went home and I put some (difficult to procure since I never leaned the word "burn") antiseptic cream on it and slept like babies.

On Wednesday we moved to our final hotel - this time in the Latin Quarter, just next to the Luxemburg Gardens. By this time the dirty clothes thing was just too much, so we grabbed some bread from a nearby bakery and went shopping. Clearly Sheldon had to drag me kicking and screaming to do this. We both got new shoes since our sneakers had been attacked by rain and sweaty feet. He got a new shirt and I got a skirt. It made us smell much nicer, and we were able to be only mildly underdressed at dinner this time! We went to a place from the Frommer's Guide To Paris, it was in the middle of no where, but inside was very classy (waiter's in tux's - they liked my new tennis shoes too i bet). We got oysters and steak and of course good bread.

The last day in Paris - Thursday - we got up early and went to L'Ile de la Cite which is an island in the middle of the Seine which runs through the heart of Paris. There we saw the Sacre Coeur church, the Palais de Justice, the Conciergerie and Notre Dame Cathedral. After wandering around for a while, we hit a cafe for lunch and for tourist observing. We noticed that you could tell who the tourists were just by watching people's feet walking by. Europeans all had cool, fashionable walking shoes whereas the Americans usually had the big white running type shoes I was always whining about having to wear when we visited NYC as kids. Finally I feel justified ! You really do stick out like a sore thumb when you wear that stuff ! After lunch we followed a crowd of plushy white running shoes over to a double decker red tour bus and took a tour of the city. We saw the Louvre, the Opera House, the Eiffel Tower (again), the Military Acadamy, the Arc de Triomph, and Pont Neuf bridge. After all the running around we went back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and grabbed dinner in the Latin Quarter. We found this cool open air restaurant that had this really tasty pinapple skewer heaven dessert and stuffed ourselves silly before getting back into the subway and getting on a bus to take us to London again. We arrived in London the next morning completely wiped. We went to the airport, grabbed some Z's at Yotel again, and bought some duty free goodies before flying home and back to the real world.

What a rough life, eh?