Gobble, Gobble

Who can believe it's December already?! Time is just flashing by as it always seems to do this time of year. Any-who, Thanksgiving was a complete blast. As we wrote in the last post, it all started with dinner at Dave and Kevin's on the weekend of November 17 (that's me above carving the turkey with Dave's mom!), and it continued on Thankgiving-proper in London with Darren and Nicole Ludwig. And since we were "out", we decided to throw a little jaunt to Paris in for good measure! This blog will be mostly all about that trip. Let's discuss, shall we?

We left Wednesday, Nov 21st for London and arrived in London City airport around 8pm. We went straight to Darren and Nicole's, had a few drinks and snacks, and called it a night. To note: Darren and Nicole live in Clapham Common in South London, and their location is prime! They've got just about anything you could want/need right at their finger tips. Hate to say we were jealous, but yeah, we kind of are!

The next morning (Thanksgiving Day), Darren and I went out and grabbed coffees at Starbucks (Ag loves the Gingerbread Lattes!) and then fresh bagels and juice at the nearby grocery store. Then we made a stop at the video store and picked up 3 DVDs (they haven't gotten their cable set up, and we figured we'd want something to watch as we cooked, ate, and then veg'd out. Meanwhile Aggie and Nicole were busy prepping and cooking our big meal. Nicole gets the credit here as she woke up at 6am to put the bird into the oven!

We ate around 1pm or so and all I have to say is this was one of the most "casual" Thanksgiving's ever! Aggie and Nicole kept their sweats on the whole time and now think this should become a new tradition....who needs to dress up and wear nice jeans, slacks, dresses, etc? It's all about being comfortable! Anyway, the dinner was delicious and afterwards we all migrated to the living room area and watched 2 of the 3 DVDs!



After the movies, the girls got ready and the four of us went to a nearby pub to watch American football. Really, Thanksgiving would not have been the same without it! After we watched Green Bay whoop up on whoever it was they played, we called it a night.

Friday we got up, had breakfast and then headed out to explore. We walked around their area a bit and, like I said above, it's super nice! They have some good restaurants around, a huge park, a huge grocery store about a 30 second walk away, etc. Then we went to the Borough Market in downtown London. It was awesome as they had fresh cheese, sandwiches, olives, hummus, bread, nuts...you name it they had it! From there, we walked down to the London Bridge city area, showed Aggie the E&Y office (which is really close to Tower Bridge). We walked accross Tower Bridge, saw the Castle, grabbed lunch, went to Harrod's (a huge department store)....we did it all!

We got back to their place around 6pm and Aggie and I ran to the grocery store to get some "snack foods" to hold us over before we went out. Well, we got back and ate, then popped in our last movie we rented. Around 7:30pm, Ag went to take a shower and I figured I would just lay in bed and take a quick nap, then get ready too. Ag was supposed to wake me up if we did anything, but we didn't! I pulled a "Barcelona" (see our Barcelona blog from June 2006) and slept until 9am the next morning...ha! (It felt incredible!) I was a total party pooper, but the good thing is that I don't think anyone cared.

I will say that on Saturday when I woke up, I was well rested (as I should have been!). We were taking the Eurostar chunnel train to Paris, which I think is one of the coolest things ever.

The chunnel basically takes you from the heart of London to the center of Paris in a matter of 2 hours or so...plus it goes under the English Channel. It's pretty amazing! One funny thing is we didn't even know when we went under the water. There were a few times throughout the trip that you were going through tunnels so you didn't really know if you were going through the main pass or not. Plus, they didn't announce anything. About an hour and fifteen minutes into the trip I saw a highway sign outside my window pointing the way to Brussels, noticed that people were driving on the right side of the road, and knew we were back on the continent!

Anyway, we left Darren and Nicole's around 9:30am for the St. Pancreas station and got through security with no problems. Within 30 minutes of our arrival, we started to board the train. Within 2 hours or so we were in Paris Nord's train station and off exploring Parie!

We got to our hotel and checked in. The location of the place was pretty good and the area seemed great. Well, I must say, the room was quite a different story.

From the reviews we read, this was supposed to be a decent hotel (it was one of the more reasonably priced ones we could find in the city). Plus, we didn't have huge expectations since we have experienced most European hotel rooms - no air conditioning, no towels or wash cloths, some bathrooms have a tub and shower head but no shower doors, the rooms are usually pretty small, no elevators, etc. (Believe me, there are many things we take for granted in the States)

Anyway, we checked in and climbed the three flights of stairs to our room. We opened the door and were greeted by a very small space. We had a double bed pushed up into the corner. There was about a foot and a half of walking space on either side of the bed.

Then, we checked out the bathroom. The whole thing was tiled and about the size of a 3-foot-wide bathtub. There was a mirror, a sink, and a toilet. Um, where was the shower? Was it some communal one in the hallway? Then Aggie looked up and saw a shower head in the ceiling; we were in the shower! Then we realized that the door to the bathroom was actually a shower door. Seriously. We just started laughing and couldn't believe that the bathroom was also the shower...the shower was also the bathroom! My comment to Ag: "Welp, at least I can't get in trouble for peeing in the shower."



We dropped off our things, changed and headed out to explore. Our first goal was to hit this designer tailor made shirt store that we read about in GQ magazine. I was pretty excited to check it out and of course, ended up ordering a shirt! The guy in the shop, while taking my measurements, told me that I had a "model body". I told him to watch where he was putting that measuring tape! Not something you really want to hear from a French guy!

After the shopping, we stopped and grabbed a glass of wine, continuted to walk and grabbed dinner at a really nice resturant we stumbled upon. Then, we met up with our friends from Zurich, Dave and Ali, for a late night drink as they were there that weekend as well.

Sunday we walked around some more and saw some of the great sights again....Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, Arc de Triumphe, Ave des Champs Elysees, and of course my favorite, the Eiffel Tower! (Again, I took tons of pictures of it!) As we were walking, I was talking to big Fred on the phone and took a picture of exactly where I was and the view we had. See below:



We left that evening around 6pm on the high speed train back to Zurich. The trip was about 4 hours and 20 minutes long and we slept and read on the way....an easy and relaxing way to end a great weekend!

This week has been crazy busy with work. Meeting after meeting after meeting. Last night (Saturday night), we went to a great dinner party at our friends' apartment (Helen and John). Back to the work week tomorrow and then we are leaving on Friday for Luxembourg. We are having an "Irish reunion" so it should be a good time. Brenden is coming in from Dublin and Sorcha is coming in from London. (Eoin, Laura and Robbie all live there.) Darren and Nicole are coming in from London too. Fun times!