Update

We are 10 days into our term break trip and we are having a wonderful time! We have been to Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, and Toledo, Spain. Right now we are in Porto, Portugal. We are grateful to be in places that are a bit warmer than it would be if we were back in England. We have been able to go to three temples - London, Frankfurt, and Madrid - which were all neat experiences. One of the highlights for us was being able to see Scooter´s brother, Skipper (yes, the nicknames are extremely confusing) in the Frankfurt, Germany airport. Skipper has been serving a mission for the LDS church in Samara, Russia for 2 years, so we haven´t seen him since he left. Because we aren´t going back to the States until July 2009 it would have been a long time without seeing him. We were sad that we couldn´t be with the other members of his family to greet him in Chicago, so we decided that we would fly to Frankfurt and surprise him on his layover at the airport. Our flight from London to Frankfurt left an hour and a half late, so we were really nervous about being able to find him at the airport because we knew that we weren´t going to be able to wait at his gate for him to disembark the plane. It worked out perfectly considering the circumstances however. The Frankfurt airport is HUGE with multiple terminals with trains connecting them, so it was a true miracle that less than two minutes after we got off our plane Skipper just happened to spot us though a window as we were walking through the terminal. He told his companion that he thought he had seen us, but I think his companion tried to convince him that he was hallucinating or something. He persisted and found us about a minute later. We just heard this totally incredulous voice say, "Scooter?" They ran and hugged. Then Skipper said, "What are you doing here?" which was pretty cute. He just couldn´t believe that we had come all that way to see him. We had lunch with he and his companion and talked for a little over an hour and then walked them to their next flight. It was two hours never to be forgotten! Then we got our backpacks, left the airport, took a train to a suburb, went to the temple, took the train back, and got to the airport just in time for our flight to Spain. It was a memorable day.

Blogging Break

We are going to be taking a big trip over the Christmas break. We are still trying to work out all of our plans, but the maps below show where we are going to try to go - Spain, Portugal, Morocco, and Egypt. We are sun-searching! The colored markers are places we may realistically get to, and the white markers show places we wish we could go but that we just don't have time for. If anyone has been to any of these places and has any advice for us please leave a comment. Even if it is just the name of a place not to miss. We obviously won't be able to post very often, however, we will try to when get a chance. We leave tonight! Merry Christmas!

Paris - Day Five

We tried to take advantage of our last day as much as possible. We still had a list of things we wanted to get done. We went to Sainte-Chapelle first thing in the morning. It was beautiful and one of my favorite places in Paris. It was built by Louis IX as a shrine for his religious relics. He paid almost three times as much for the relics themselves as he did for the construction of the chapel to house them, which seems amazing because the chapel must have cost a pretty penny. The glass in Sainte-Chapelle is beautiful and jewel-colored. I ran up the stairs to the chapel ahead of Scooter so I could see his face as he entered the chapel – it was priceless. We went from Saint-Chapelle to Notre-Dame to climb the towers, which were closed the first time we were there. We got to see something that was pretty interesting when we got there. They had the towers closed for a few minutes while the rain gutters were cleaned out. So, we were waiting on the side of the building and a man with us on the sidewalk was yelling to a man on the top of the cathedral. They would yell back and forth and then the man would usher us out of the way and then we would watch as gunk and water came out of the gargoyles mouths. Then they would move us along and the next gargoyle would spew water. Later on when we were part-way up the tower a gargoyle was cleaned above us and it got the man standing next to me really wet and dirty. It was pretty funny – they must not have been able to see us below. We got to go into the belfry of Notre Dame as well. It has the bell named Emmanuel that weighs 13 tons. Interestingly we learned that belfries are always made of wood because it absorbs some of the vibrations of the sound waves that the bell makes which may crack the stone of the tower. When we back on the ground we walked through the Latin Quarter to the Pantheon. The Pantheon houses the graves of some of the most important people in France including Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Rousseau, Louis Braille, Alexander Dumas, Marie Curie, and others. For those science nerds out there, Scooter and I were thrilled to learn that the original Foucault's pendulum was also house in the Pantheon. It is still swinging from the dome today, proving that the Earth is still rotating. Very cool! Next we went to an incredible museum that I had never been to before called the L'Orangerie. It contained more art from my favorite time period. Monet left eight huge paintings from his Water Lily series to the French state when he died. They are displayed in this museum according to his specifications, which included round rooms and natural light. It was really neat. In the basement they had the personal collection of an art dealer in Paris named Paul Guillaume It is hard to believe that he had such an amazing collection. He had works by Renoir, Cezanne, Modigliani, Picasso, Matisse, Utrillo, and Soutine. The feature of the exhibit I loved was that they had a tiny model of his home and it gave examples of how he displayed his collection. It was hard to picture paintings that filled the entire basement of the museum in one man's home, but having the model really helped you grasp the scope of his collection. I can't even imagine how it would have been to live in his home with priceless works surrounding you. The L'Orangerie is located in the Tuileries Gardens, which we explored after leaving the museum. It was a beautiful, fairly sunny day! The next thing we did was a bit strange. Scooter had seen in a brochure that there was a museum about the sewers in Paris and he really wanted to go. We had about an hour, so we decided to go. We entered the "museum" by basically a kiosk on the street that had stairs that went into the sewer. Seriously. Into it. You could literally see sewer water flowing under your feet – they had built walkways above it. They didn't have raw sewage in there with us, luckily, but whatever was flowing under us wasn't clean and wasn't smell-free. It was pretty interesting once you got over the fact that you were in a sewer (which took Scooter about one minute and took me pretty much the whole time we were in there). I had no idea how huge and advanced the sewer system that was built in Paris. If you stretched it out it would reach from Paris to Istanbul. After we got out of the sewer we went straight to the Eiffel Tower to try to get up it for the last time. We were successful! We climbed to the second level and rode the elevator the rest of the way. We were there exactly when we wanted to be – at sunset. We were able to see the view in daylight and at night. We had a great time. We left for the train station directly after we got back on the ground and were home later that night. Strange isn't it? Spend an evening on the Eiffel Tower and then back home to England to sleep in our own bed the same night!

Paris - Day Four

We got to Rodin Museum as soon as it opened so it was nice to be able to enjoy the gardens and museum in almost solitude. I love his sculptures because often every detail is not perfect. The faces sometimes look roughly done or almost generic and not detailed enough to be of a specific person. We went from the museum to church. The building that church is held in is not labeled as being a church and you need a code to enter, so we had a bit of a hard time finding the large door. Luckily, some French girls came and punched in the code and let us in. We were there for the Primary program which was adorable. The children were darling and so proud to be singing their songs and saying their memorized lines. The meeting was being translated into English and Chinese through headphones for those of us that didn't speak French. It was wonderful to go to church in a foreign place and see that everything is conducted the same as at home and to feel that feeling of camaraderie with the other members. The spirit is the same no matter where you go. On our way to the train station we stopped at the flower and bird street market that is held every Sunday. It was so unique. I had no idea that there was a big enough demand for caged birds to warrant a street market for it! We took the train to Versailles, which is only about a half hour from Paris. It unfortunately started raining, so weren't able to see the gardens, but the palace alone was amazing enough. It is the single most ridiculously opulent building I have ever seen. No wonder the common people of France revolted against their crazy rulers. I would have too! What kind of ruler thinks so highly of himself that he thinks that he deserves a home like that?! There was an exhibition at Versailles by a very famous contemporary artist, Jeff Koons. His work, art historically speaking is really amazing and Versailles was a clever place for an exhibition of his work. It was a bit annoying however to walk into the very famous Hall of Mirrors and have a giant, blue metallic balloon at the end of it. Here are some other examples. Yes, that is a massive sculpture of a balloon animal, vacuum cleaners displayed in a lighted case, an inflatable lobster hanging from the ceiling, swim-floats that look like turtles, and a huge inflatable heart hanging in the stairwell. We tried to go to the Eiffel Tower again, we even got up to the counter to buy our tickets, but we were informed that the top was closed because of high winds and it would not open again that evening. By this point we were afraid that we would never make it to the top of the Eiffel Tower – we were leaving the next night! Disappointed, we went back to the hotel and watched a movie, which was actually really nice and relaxing.

Paris - Day Three

On Saturday we went to the Sacre Coeur in the morning. We were able to avoid the con men who tie string to your fingers or wrists and then hold the end of the string and won't let go until you pay them. Luckily we knew about this in advance (thanks to the unfortunate experience of one of the people on my study abroad) and were able to avoid it by keeping our hands firmly in our pockets. Scooter also pretended like he could only speak Portuguese, and they gave up on us after a couple minutes of arguing. We climbed the long staircases (the Sacre Coeur is on a large hill – one of the highest points in the city) up to the basilica and made sure to turn around and look at the spectacular view of Paris frequently. We unfortunately don't have any pictures of the inside of the basilica because taking pictures was forbidden. It was, however, a lovely building. We then went to the Arc de Triomphe at the end of the Champs-Elysees. The monument is in the center of a large round-about that has 10 wide avenues branching off of it. As you can imagine, the traffic on this main intersection is quite incredible, and it was fun to even just stand and watch all the cars fight for a place on the round-about and then fight for a way to exit the round-about at the appropriate street. We climbed to the top of the monument and had a great view of the surrounding city. The Arc de Triomphe is the middle arch in a set of a three large arches that are in Paris. They are all on the same street but five miles apart. The street runs from the Louvre, where the first arch (Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel) is, down the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, and then to La Defense – the business district of Paris, where the Grande Arche is. It was neat to be able to see this feature of the city from it best vantage point. We approached our next site by walking down the Champs-Elysees and through the Christmas market again. We were getting pretty hungry, and the food on that street is really expensive, so I was confused when Scooter was very insistent on our route. When he paused at a food booth that looked like this all my questions were answered. Yes, that is a giant pan full of mass quantities of ham, potatoes and cheese. Those round things covering it all are big cheeses that were slowly melting into a delicious gooey mess, which we happily ate for lunch. Then we walked across the Seine River toward the Hotel des Invalides. Many of the bridges in Paris are beautiful and this was no exception. Our next stop was the Hotel des Invalides, where Napoleon Bonaparte's tomb resides. There are also military museums and military offices in the complex. It was here that I noticed that our camera battery icon had changed from showing 2/3 to only 1/3 full. As we planned to go up the Eiffel Tower later that night I decided that we couldn't risk it and that we had to find a way to charge the battery. We had forgotten our charger (I know, I know – how does that happen!) so we began our quest. We stopped at numerous camera stores, but none of them sold new batteries, or chargers. Out of frustration we stopped in an internet café and found that there was one Nikon dealer in Paris. It was really far away, but when we got there someone spoke English and they were kind enough to just charge our battery for us for free! We wandered around the neighborhood for an hour while it was charging. Then we went to the Eiffel Tower (yes, again! I'm telling you- there was something mesmerizing about that structure). We wanted to go up in time for sundown so that we could see the view both in daylight and at night. The lines were so long that we decided to try and come back another night, so we left (but not before we took more pictures, of course!) The previous night we had not realized that the tower was decorated to look like the European Union flag because we had been unable to see the circle of yellow stars because we were viewing the tower from the opposite side.