Huge Europe Mega Post

Disclaimer: this post is really long, 4 pages in Word long, if you don't want to read it just look at the pics. I'll try to put captions on all of them.

Many of you know that I was in Europe last week, but if you didn’t know that, now you do. I had two cousins (who are sisters, Maggie and Caitlin) that were studying over there and figured I may as well take the opportunity to visit them. I spent two nights in Paris and 6 nights in London and overall it was an extremely trill time. I’ll try to stick to the chronological order of the trip:

Flew out of Philly around 6PM on Friday the 18th on British Airways. The flight was from Philly to London-Heathrow and hen Heathrow to Charles De Gaulle. My plan was to try to sleep the whole flight since I would be arriving in Paris around 9:30 AM and hopefully I could just act like it was a normal morning. Unfortunately my plan did not work as well as I hoped. The flight itself was nice and I had an open seat next to me but I had a lot of trouble falling asleep and probably only got around 3 hours of the 7 I hoped for. Note to others: if you take Simply Sleep and still have trouble falling asleep, don’t take more, it just dries you out completely. The layover in London was uneventful and I got into Paris fine.


I took the train from CDG to the Chatelet stop in Paris which is a big station. It was at this point that I realized I probably should have gotten a map of Paris before I left… After wandering the streets for 20 minutes I was able to find a map and figure out how to get to my cousin’s hotel.

View from Maggie's hotel, Les Halles fountain in the square

She had some meetings and lectures so after ditching my stuff I wandered around the area (Les Halles area for those in the know). It was a pretty touristy area with a lot of shops and restaurants and it was near the Pompdou Modern Art Museum. Once she was finished we walked across the Siene to check out Notre Dame and Saint Chapele. Notre Dame was really cool and the architecture was amazing. We didn’t wait in line to go inside but just walking around the outside was good enough.

Notre Dame

Ridonk detail on Notre Dame, can't imagine doing all that by hand.

After that we had dinner at a little bistro with some of her friends that was really good. I had a maple syrup glazed duck breast and lava cake for dessert. We also had a very good bottle of Rosé. By that point I think the jet lag was starting to hit me and I hung out for a bit at her hotel and then walked over to where I was staying and crashed for the night around 11PM.
The next day I did my own walking tour of Paris. I headed over to the Louvre which was about 5 minutes from my hotel and checked out the exterior (the lines to go in were way too long). Once again, the architectural detail was awesome.

The Louvre and it's glass pyramid entrance

From the Louvre I walked down the Champs Elysees which is one of the main roads in Paris. Very touristy again with lots of shopping (3-story Louie Vitton store) and restaurants. At the end of the Champs Elysess is the Arc De Triomph which I believe was built by Napoleon and is also the finish line of the Tour de France.

Arc De Triomph, site of many Lance Armstrong dominations

From there I cut through side streets to the Eiffel Tower. As you might be able to tell I’m not a line person, so I wasn’t about to try to go to the top of the tower, plus, I’ve been in taller buildings already. I did walk under the tower and then down the grass park area that extends away from it (think Washington Monument and the National Mall).

Do you really need a caption....?

Quite a few things to honor Americans, I was surprised. Also saw stuff for Woodrow Wilson and George Washington.

After that I met up with my cousin again and we checked out some different shopping areas in Paris. By that point it was time for us to go to a group dinner with her school group. I thought the dinner was good and I got to hang out with her friends more (one of them is Thai and her mom owns a tiger farm….). After dinner the entire group went to the Moulin Rouge since the school purchased tickets for them. Most people already know but it’s a cabaret show with lots of singing and dancing and… boobs. The guys wear ridiculous costumes and the girls wear equally ridiculous costumes, except without tops. Made the show much more entertaining. The tickets also came with champagne, so that was pretty cool. We went to the late show so by the time it ended everyone was pretty dead.

Unfortunately no pictures allowed inside...

On Monday Maggie and I had to fly out around 4PM so that morning we (and her Thai friend) walked across the Siene to a pastry shop to get some macaroons for Maggie’s mom (my aunt Martha) and Caitlin.

So good!

After that we did some shopping at Le Bon Marche, which apparently is the oldest department store in the world, so I could get gifts for my family. We then went to another department store so her friend could do her tax refund paperwork for stuff bought there earlier. It was here that I saw some extremely depressing sights. This place has a boatload of luxury good, LV, Chanel, etc. so there were a lot of wealthy people walking around. However, while sitting at the tax refund area I saw a group of kids come up with all these shopping bags from these high end stores. They couldn’t have been older than 12 or 13 and these kids are buying Louie, Armani, whatever you can name that I (and most others) certainly cannot afford. Plus, to add insult to injury, one of these little kids pulls out brand new Beats By Dre, freaking $300 headphones that are probably even more expensive over there. It made me so angry.

Basically those kids life story.

The flight from Paris to London was only an hour long and it was uneventful. Customs between EU countries seems like a bit of a joke. We went through the non-EU/Nothing To Declare doors, and there wasn’t even anyone there to see what we were carrying, you just walk right through. We took the subway from the Airport to the flat my Aunt Martha rented for the week and met up with her and Caitlin. We went to a local pub for dinner and I had some legit English fish and chips with mushy peas which are a lot better than they sound.

Also, so good!

Tuesday started off with a Fat Tire Bike Tour of “Royal London.” Figured it was a good way to get an overview of the sites and get familiarized with the city. It lasted around 3-4 hours and exceeded everyone’s expectations. The tour guide was great and biking was great since you could see a lot more than walking but didn’t have the same constraints as a bus tour.

Looking baller on our bikes

The tour began in Hyde Park and went past: Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Prime Minister’s Residence, Westminster Abbey/Parliament, Princess Di Memorial, and The Albert Memorial. After the bike tour we went to Covent Gardens, which is a misleading name, since it’s really a pedestrian area with mad bars, haha.

Buckingham Palace, the Queen was in and holding a garden party that day. We weren't invited.

Trafalgar Square

Back of where the PM lives

Westminster Abber, home of 3000 dead people....

Albert Memorial, how baller is it to have a statue of you in gold.

Wednesday had one main thing on the schedule: England vs. Slovenia. We went to the Gloucester Arms pub which was near my cousin’s place to watch the game. Got there about an hour and a half early to get a seat, which was good because the place was packed to the rafters by the time the game started. Watching over there was pretty cool, people were decked out in flags and singing songs and doing chants for England (does the US have any songs/chants?). The most popular was probably “I’m England till I die, I’m England till I die, I know I am, I swear I am, I’m England till I die.” They did have the USA game on in one corner of the bar and there were some American fans, so that was cool too. It was a pretty fun experience and even though I watched the first half of England v. Germany at the airport there was surprisingly more German fans (fine by me, go Deutschland!!).

Booze money for the game! All the little gold ones are one pound.

That night we went to the London Eye which is a ferris wheel that is much more advanced. You can get views of all of London on a clear day (which it was thankfully). To do a full rotation takes about ½ and hour, so we got plenty of time to see all the sights. It had a direct view onto Parliament and Big Ben, so that was pretty trill.

The London Eye

View of Parliament and Big Ben from the Eye

A brief side note here: Kensington has some of the sickest cars I’ve ever seen in my life, and lots of them. We saw BMWs, Benzs, Bentleys, Maseratis, Rolls Royces, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, fully chrome Audi R8 (tacky but expensive) and probably some I’m missing.

Thursday took us to Wimbledon which was awesome. My family is really into tennis, so going to Wimbledon was really exciting. Though it seems pretentious it’s actually set up to cater to all people. A limited number of advance tickets are sold to member of the All England Club and people who “ballot” for them (basically enter a lottery). Then, on each day they have about 150 “show court” tickets (Centre Court, Courts 1&2) and about 6000 “grounds” tickets which get you onto any of the other courts.

The Qeue

In addition to that, at 3 o’clock you can purchase resale show court tickets for only 5 pounds. So if people need to leave early the main evening games don’t just have empty seats. We arrived at Wimbledon around 9:30 to wait in the line “qeue” for tickets and finally got in around 12:00. Since most of my readers are sports fans, I assume you’ve heard about the 11 hour match between John Isner (USA) and Nicolas Mahut (France). A little background, at Wimbledon and the French Open, the 5th set does not have a tie-breaker, instead the winner must win by two games (for those who have no clue about tennis: men must win 3 out of 5 sets, a set is first to 6 games or if tied 6-6 a tiebreaker is held, and a game is 4 points (love, 15, 30, 40)). So in the 5th set if the players are tied at 6-6 they don’t do a tiebreaker, they keep playing games until one of them wins by two games. So this match started on Tuesday and was called due to darkness, it resumed on Wednesday to play the 5th set. Normally this would take an hour at most, but these two were pretty closely matched and when night fell on Wednesday the score was tied 59-59 in the 5th set. It had already eclipsed the longest match in history and it wasn’t over yet so the tennis world (and the sports world to a lesser extent) was abuzz.

A sight not seen often....

Well the first thing we did upon entry was head straight to court 18 since we knew that is where they would be resuming later in the day (rules say they can’t change courts). We waited in line at court 18 for about 45 minutes to get seats (no reserved seating, if you leave, you go to the end of the line) and once we got in we were staying put! We saw one women’s singles match and then it was time for the Isner-Mahut match.

Flavia Penneta, 10th seed.

You could tell that both were physical exhausted as they both looked shaky at the start while they loosened up. The match was really exciting considering the historical aspect of it and when it finally ended Isner won 70-68.

Isner post victory

Isner (left) and Mahut (right)

John McEnroe in the crowd (Yanks hat with a suit, nice)

ESPN in the house

I also have to mention, Isner graduated from UGA and AK would be proud since we repeatedly shouted Go Dogs and I yelled “win it for Uga!” (wish I had remembered which number Uga died last year). After that match we stayed at court 18 to watch the Bryan Brothers (USA) play doubles since they are the #1 ranked team in the world. Took a break after that and got some strawberries and cream and some Pimms and lemonade (cocktail). Went back to court 18 after and stayed until play was halted due to darkness. It was a really awesome time.

On Friday we went to the Borough Market and the Globe Theater (home of Shakespeare), and then walked over Tower Bridge to go to the Tower of London which house the crown jewels.

Globe Theater

They said the room where the jewels are stored is the most secure room in all of London and there has been only one attempted theft of the jewels. I can’t imagine how much value is in that one room since some of the crowns and stuff were blinged out like you cannot imagine. The Tower of London is also the place where traitors were sent to be tortured and eventually killed, so it wasn’t all jewels and fanciness. I’m pretty sure a shit ton of people died there, but don’t feel like looking up any estimates.

Tower Bridge

Tower walls

Protecting them jewels

Saturday we went to Harrods which is a huge, over the top department store. Like the ones in France it had mad luxury goods and I saw purses and stuff for like 4000 pounds, absolutely ridiculous. It did have a really cool food section though, haha. After that we went to Buckingham Palace for some close up views. Though the palace itself isn’t spectacular the fencing and arches and stuff is pretty cool. Lots of gold and ornate sculptures.

Buckingham Palace

Palace Gates

Trill ass statue

We then went back to Trafalger square to try to watch the USA v Ghana game at a pub. However, the one we went to had a really shitty TV and we got there early enough that we decided to just have dinner and then go back to the flat to watch it (very disappointing game).

Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery

Sunday was my last day so we went out for a true English breakfast (eggs, sausage, ham, tomato, and beans). After that we just walked around the Kensington area since I had a few more things I wanted to buy as gifts. The flight back was uneventful, however before it took off a chiller unit overheated and we were delayed two hours on the ground for it to be replaced, so that sort of sucked.

British Airways showing love for Ithaca!

Overall verdict: great trip. I liked London more than Paris, but the weather could have helped that and it was nice to not have a language barrier. Paris might be cooler if I went with someone who was conversational in French. Either way I’m really glad I was able to go and it was great to be able to see Caitlin and Maggie while they were there.

Random Pics:

So little space devoted to Budweiser, awesome

Cockfosters...seriously England?

Cockermouth! Seriously!

Total Slacker

I have been slacking bad on this blog, but not as bad as Jing or K! This might be another random collection of thoughts post, we'll see how it develops.

First, Hulu has a relatively new thing that ask you if an ad is relevant to you. It's in the top right corner of each ad, and I don't know what happens if you click it. People get paid thousands of dollars to determine whether an ad is relevant to someone watching 30 Rock, The Office, whatever. There is no way in hell I'm doing that work for them for free. Once the feared Hulu Plus launches maybe I'll do it if they give me free access but I'm sure they will not.


Is beer relevant to me? Hell yeah, but I'm not telling Hulu that!

AK did a mega-post about Chicago, so I'm not going to repeat that, but I will say that my pics are now on facebook. I think most of you who read this are probably my friends so you can check them out there to get a sense of the mayhem. I must say though, I disagree with AKs take on the Chi, both times that I've been there I've liked it a lot. It doesn't have the hate that Philly has, but I think it's a pretty good city.

I'm getting ready to head to Europe on Friday, which is super trill. I have some cousins over there so I'm visiting them, the itinerary is two nights in Paris and 6 nights in London. We might stand in line (sorry, "queue") for tickets to Wimbledon which would be super trill. We'd probably only get grounds tickets, not main court, but early on in the tournament you can still see some big name players on the grounds courts. It'll be my first time in England and 3rd time in France, but the other two were just for a day each in Strassburg, which is practically Germany.

I'm moving to a new place in Philly in July, it's back in the city (Fairmount area) and it's a pretty big one bedroom place with a backyard. The backyard (and huge basement for hockey gear) is what really drew me to the place. I'm pretty excited.
Mad grillin' and chillin' to occur here.

On a final note, this is what I try not to do when I go to the gym (warning: little bit of puke)

How to tell that someone is a D-Bag.

If you see them wearing eye black like this:


Sources say: unnecessary.

KILLA!

I have a lot of stuff I could post about, but I thought this was way more important:

Updated my Netflix queue, and after a quick search I saw what movie had to be #1...

(Click for larger image)

I'll provide a full review after viewing it (if I feel like it).