Italy

Okay, so its been a while since we blogged so sue me! Here are the pictures from Italy. What a trip!

We started out in Venice and fell in love with the place. It is literally a post card picture around every corner. We took the oligitory gondola ride with the kids and saw some incredible museums. The famous drawing by Leonardo da Vinci, the Vitruvian Man (sp.?) was on display. Apparently they only take it out every ten years or so. Emma was again unimpressed (the Mona Lisa did nothing for her) she thought it was too small.

Next we travelled to Rome. Beautiful churches, the Vatican, the Collosseum, it was all incredible. We had the good fortune of hooking up with a priest we knew from home and got a compressed tour of the sights and an overall great evening. Enjoy the photos.

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This set of photos concludes the boat trip on the Seine and includes our trip to the Louvre (or "Loof" as Emma called it) as well as our evening trip to see L'Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower.

To anyone considering a trip to Paris, I highly reccomend the boat trip. There are a number of companies who provide this service. We did ours in the afternoon but would have liked to have had the time to try an evening cruise as well.

The Louvre was, as you can imagine, both amazing and daunting. It is sooooo huge and a bit much to try and cover in one day, especially with an eight and ten year old in tow. We got to see the Grand Gallery, which is home to the Mona Lisa, the French Painters, a lot of Greek and Roman statues, and the Egyptian antiquities, including a real mummy!

The Arc had 284 steps to the top. How do I know that? Because Lori, Ian and I climbed every one of them! The view was incredible as was the sense of accomplishment at climbing the thing. We only made it to the second level of the Eiffel Tower, not that I'm complaining, it was quite high enough. Enjoy!

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Paris Part 2

Sunday was another wonderful day. The most incredible thing about this trip was that everyday seemed to be better than the one that preceeded it. Sunday was truly extraordinary however. We started off by hopping on the metro and attending the Gregorian Mass at Notre Dame. The intro on the pipe organ was spectacular and the music throughout exquisite. If the intention of the church was to draw the mass goer towards the Almighty, it suceeded on every level.

Our next stop, after lunch at a sidewalk cafe of course, was Ste. Chapelle. It was originally built by the French king, St. Louis, to house the Crown of Thorns and a remnant of the original cross. It has now been secularized (the relics are now housed at Notre Dame) and remains quite a site. The king's chapel has some of the most beautiful stained glass windows ever seen.

From Ste. Chapelle we moved on to the Concergerie. It was part of the palace that served as a prison during the reign of terror. Marie Antoinette spent two months there prior to being beheaded on the Place de la Concorde. Ouch!

After that we decided to rest our feet a bit and took a boat tour on the Seine. This tour highlighted the major tourist attractions in Paris and afforded us our first close up view of the Eiffel Tower, the kids were thrilled. All in all quite a day!

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Paris Part 1

We arrived in France on Friday afternoon. Our loft apartment can best be described as delightfully French. We went out for dinner and Emma experienced escargot first hand, brave child. Our first sightseeing expedition was to the Opera house, "The Palais Garnier". A beautiful building. We went onto see the Madeiline Church as well as St. Augustin's. We also took a walk through the Tuilerie Garden's past the Louvre. It was love at first sight.

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Disneyland Paris 2009

Well after a considerable delay here are the pics from our Disney trip. While not quite Orlando we had a ball. Space mountain 2 rocked and the Tower of Terror was just as scary. The first two days were nasty weather wise but as it turned out this was a good thing because as soon as the sun came out the lines became intolerable! For the record the ride of the trip was Crushes Coaster, totally! Check out the pics!

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Later!