Escape To Paris!

What a week it has been!! First of all, the weather has been crazy. Yesterday was particularly interesting. The sky would be bright blue with scattered clouds one second, then I'd turn back and it would be completely dark and pouring rain! For a minute, I thought I might be back in Ohio haha.

The day before yesterday, our friend Matt was able to stop by for the night. He was just passing through on his way down range for 6 months. Matt works for AFAA just like Regan, but he's also a member of the Air National Guard. We decided to take him to Landstuhl for some sight seeing. I really like Landstuhl! We ended up just going out for dinner, though. We went to a place called DaNico - it's a typical German/Italian blend restaurant (those are very popular around here). I felt bad, though. Before we went out to eat, Matt had mentioned that he didn't really like Schnitzel. Shocking, right?! Apparently, he had tried jagerschnitzel years before and hated it because it was covered in mushrooms. Like most people, he wasn't aware that there were so many different kinds of schnitzel! In any case, we told him we'd find a place that had some variety so that he wouldn't be forced into the schnitzel. Well, DaNico has variety, but somehow all 3 of us ended up with schnitzel! haha. Matt got pfefferschnitzel, which is pork schnitzel in a peppercorn sauce. It's fantastic, I tell you! AMAZING! He said it was much better than the jagerschnitzel, so I was happy for him haha. After that, we took him to Globus so that he could get some candy to send home to his kids. I like going to Globus. In all honesty, I just like going to German stores in general. It's fun to walk around and look at the German products. Is that weird? I hope not haha

Regan and Matt in front of our house. Love those yellow trash bags!

Yesterday we were finally able to have our home-visit with our social worker. Regan and I cleaned like crazy people all morning, and I'm not going to lie, the house looked great! I think the inspection part went well - the only comments he made were about how much space we had and how big our yard was, etc. And anytime we came upon something that I thought could be construed as a safety hazard, I pointed out how we planned to change it. One of the many adoption books I've been looking at said it was better to point it out and talk about plans to change it than to hope it wasn't noticed. After the initial walk-through, we sat and talked about the process for about 3 hours. He went over our questionnaire (the crazy long one we filled out about a month ago) and then we talked about different forms we're going to need to fill out with different agencies and about the trips to Russia, etc. I really enjoyed the visit, actually! He was so friendly and I got the impression that he liked us and all of our answers. YAY!

When he originally called to set up a time to come see us, I had invited him to dinner. He forgot about it, though, and I can't say I'm sorry for that. I had a bit of a mishap yesterday involving our slow cooker. To be honest, I really haven't used our slow cooker much. We've had it for over a year (we got it for our wedding), but I've only used it a handful of times, so I'm just not a slow cooker pro. Yesterday morning I was trying to think of something to make in the slow cooker so that I wouldn't have to think about making anything while the social worker was actually here. Somehow I figured that if he arrived at our house at 1 PM, that's when we'd have dinner. Of course, that's silly - we'd eat around 5. But in my confused mind, I picked a recipe that needed to be cooked on high for 3-5 hours. Since our slow cooker is a 110 volt appliance, I had to bust out the extremely heavy and annoying converter. I put all of the food in the slow cooker, turned it on, and went about my cleaning. I came back an hour later to check on it, only to find out that the slow cooker's plug had fallen out of the converter. Great. As I plugged it back in, it occurred to me that I'd miscalculated the time for dinner, so I set the slow cooker to low and hoped for the best. 2 hours later, I came back to check on it and discovered that it was still soup and not a casserole at all! I decided to throw caution to the wind and set it to high. The plan was to turn it back to low around 4 PM so that it wouldn't over cook, but still be warm at 5 PM. Well, while we were with the social worker, I forgot about it and at around 4:45 I went to check on it only to find an over-cooked, mushy mess. I made the decision not to mention that we'd invited him to stay for dinner, since he hadn't brought it up yet, and hope that he forgot. Forget he did and I was very grateful! Regan and I ate the mush, but it was...yeah. The flavor was ok, but the texture was something like oatmeal. And oatmeal shouldn't taste like chicken, garlic, and broccoli *shudder*

So last weekend, Regan and I took our first trip to PARIS!! Ah it was so fun. I can't wait to go back again! There is so much to do and so much to see! We hit a few of the major sights, but 2 days (more like 24 hours) is not enough time to spend in Paris.

Paris! C'est magnifique!

We left our house around 7:30 AM, but after getting gas and driving about an hour down the road, we realized we forgot our passports. So we drove all the way home an got them. Regan and I were both very irritated by this set back, but after a little while on the road the excitement of going to Paris overcame our annoyance at our late start. We decided to take the long way to Paris and avoid the toll roads - this saved us close to 90$, but bumped our travel time up to 6 hours one way! We got to Paris around 4:30 PM. I had a head ache and Regan was really tired, so we took a nap in our hotel before hitting the town. We decided to go to the Louvre first, so that we could pick up our museum pass. We hopped on a train and got off at a stop that is pretty much directly under the Louvre. Very convenient! The Paris train system is pretty easy to navigate, I found. It's no different than any other major city's system I've been through - of course, we didn't try the RER trains, which I hear can be more confusing.

Anyway! The Louvre!!

This was taken just outside of the train station. We hadn't even figured out where to get our tickets yet haha

The Louvre is HUGE! I didn't realize how big it was at all. We spent 2 hours there, and barely scratched the surface. I think it would be easy to spend an entire day wandering the halls.

The Oath of the Horatii by Jaques-Louis David! In recent years, this has become my favorite painting. Regan found it for me and I was VERY happy to take my picture with it!

The Venus De Milo! When I saw it, all I could think about was Disney's Hercules. Is that lame of me?? haha

I set our camera up on a small light post to take this picture. Next time, I will remember the tripod! I love this shot, though. I like the shadows and the blurred people and of course, the Louvre looks awesome!

We saw so many famous paintings there, it was kind of surreal. In fact, most of what we did in Paris was kind of surreal. It's so strange to visit a place that you've heard about your whole life. But most of our time here in Germany has felt like that.

After the Louvre, we decided to be bold and walk to the Eiffel tower. From where we were, it didn't look too far away! It was about 9 PM by this point, so it was dark and we didn't meet very many other people on our way. Probably because NORMAL people would have taken the train haha. The closer we got the Eiffel tower, the more people we saw, though. It took us an entire hour to walk there. It was fun, though! And since we were mostly alone, we were able to goof around talk as loud as we wanted to haha. When we got to the tower, it was 10 PM so they had the fun flashing lights going! It was so beautiful. Really. REALLY beautiful. There were still a lot of people around, too.

We took about 100 pictures, but I'm only posting one! Suckers!

By the time we got back to our hotel, it was after 11 PM and we were both exhausted. Regan stayed up to watch the Ohio State game anyway, though! Dedicated fan! The next morning, we had Special K Blueberry for breakfast! Our hotel had a mini-kitchen, so we were able to save a lot of money by bringing in our own food. In fact, the only food we bought in Paris was a pair of Crepes! After breakfast, we decided to head for the Arc de Triomphe!

I was shocked at how huge it was! I mean, I knew it was big...but it was REALLY big!

We got there early enough that the crowds weren't too bad. With the help of our museum pass, we were able to cut the ticket line and head right up the stairs! There were a lot of stairs, too. There were also two mini-museums inside, which I didn't know about. We were a little anxious for the view from the roof, though, so we didn't spend much time inside.

TA DA!! That's a pretty fantastic view!

The Eiffel Tower! I think this shot makes it look kind of small, though...

Those weird posts were all around the roof (so people won't fall, I suppose). They made it hard to get cool shots, though. Oh well.

After we finished at the Arc, we decided to once again, walk to the Eiffel Tower. From the Arc it was only about 30 minutes, though. Not too bad! We bought our Crepes at this time - just thinking about them again is making me hungry. They were SO yummy!

We came at it from the other side, so we were able to take a lot more photos. Plus, the clouds were clearing a bit! Very nice!

I'm torn between this picture, and the first one I posted - I don't know which one I like more! They're both so pretty!

Regan brought his Buckeye gnome and insisted on taking it's picture everywhere haha! This was my favorite shot we took of him.

After re-visiting the Eiffel Tower, we decided to head over the Les Invalides - it's a huge complex consisting of a military museum, Napoleon's tomb, and some other stuff haha. Out of all the places we saw, this is the one I regret not spending more time at the most. The military museum was SO COOL but we were only there for about 45 mins!

This is the center front. Napoleon's tomb is right inside those center double doors.

This is the dome directly above Napoleon's tomb! VERY PRETTY, yes?

The reason we couldn't spend longer there was because we had to hurry over to Notre Dame at 2:30 PM for the guided tour in English! For some reason, I thought Notre Dame was smaller than it was...it was not small at all, actually!

AAAH so famous! It's fun to see famous things, I think. The square was crowded and the line to get into the cathedral was VERY long, but moved quickly.

Whenever someone asks me to take their picture in front of something, I always try to do a really good job. It seems like when we ask people to take our picture in front of something, it's always crooked, not centered, or (as is the case here) they cut the top off! *sigh* oh well.

It's funny with cathedrals...I always just think about their facades and forget that they're really long, too! Am I the only one that does that? So I'm always surprised when we walk around the side of a cathedral. You'd think I'd learn haha.
ps. how many people can you spot having their picture taken with Notre Dame!

After touring Notre Dame, we set out for the Pantheon! Very, very cool place. I wasn't really aware of its existence before doing research for our trip to Paris, but I think it's definitely worth a visit! Many famous and important French citizens are buried there - including Victor Hugo, whose tomb we were able to see.

One of the MANY sculptures inside with one of the MANY paintings behind it. That place was just crawling in cool art.

This is the view down the street in front of the Pantheon. I just thought it looked very Parisian (especially with the Eiffel tower in the distance).

And here we are in front of the Pantheon!

After that, it was like 5 PM and we had to hit the road. I'm pleased with the number of things we were able to see in such a short amount of time, but we will DEFINITELY be going back. I can't wait to take my family there next summer! On the way home, we listed to "Into the Wild" on CD - I thought it was a very interesting book (I wasn't familiar with the story at all), but it made me really angry.

Anyway, that was our last big adventure for a while. Regan will be in Iraq soon, so I guess he'll be having an adventure! But I'll be here, looking for work and sticking with the usual daily grind.