Biking it up

Sooooooooooooooooo happy that winter is coming to a close and spring is showing it's face around here. It's starting to be so beautiful right now and it's getting me so excited for fun adventures with the fam. This daylight savings deal is not so bad, either. It's given us the chance to go on family bike rides after Mark gets home from work. We usually just ride around our little village but we decided to switch things up yesterday and rode a wonderful bike path that is ten minutes from our house. Loving every bit of sunshine we can get around here. It's not too common. Here's to a stupendous spring! May the sun be with you!

Paris: Day one

Ahh, Pa-reee (please use accent)... Again this trip was forever ago but alas it was one of our finest.  When we had just barely barely barely arrived here in August we hurried to Paris as soon as we could to catch Kristi and Cade before they left.  We are glad we did because it was everything that we hoped and dreamed about since we were little children. We spent three memorable days in the city of romance, fashion, love, and croissants. We have said it before that Kristi and Cade are excellent tour guides and hosts and they sure did not disappoint. Cade served his mission in Paris so we had some real first-class tours.

Our drive into Paris started pleasantly enough, on the autoroute, but things soon got a little hairy:  all of a sudden it was 10:00PM, we entered the city and were thrust into whirling, swirling traffic circles full of Renaults, Peugeots and scooters.  Up was down.  Left was right.  The GPS went off-line.  Mark has driven a 15-passenger van right into the heart of downtown Manhattan, and also quite handily negotiated San Francisco and Washington DC.  Well, all that may as well have been John Denver's country roads compared to Paris. But we made it to their apartment, and we even found a place to park.

 

Cade introduced us to a "typical French breakfast," or, as we say in France, un petit dejuneur. The croissants were so good that we ended up eating about four petit dejuneur's the first morning. This little guy may be the best thing we have eaten in Europe (and we have eaten a lot in Europe).  Our recommendations: apple or almond.

Our first stop was predictably the Eiffel tower, a nice short walk from the apartment.  It was truly glorious.  Beautiful day, a nice little breeze, love in the air...

Sadie climbed practically the whole stair portion by herself. 

More commanding views 

Ahh me, Le Seine...

We did a TON of walking... Our tour continued to the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees.

Le Louvre... 

Home of some magnificent feats of artistic ability, including the most famous resident, Mona herself: up-close and personal.

Let's just say that Sadie's education here went a little beyond art history...  She was very proud of herself for learning to distinguish gender and quickly began running around pointing and showing off her ability to differentiate.

Question for philosophers: Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?

Our first day was culture-filled and action-packed.  It left us hungry, exhausted, and thirsty for more!  To be continued...

Brussels and Brugges

This was a quick day trip we did way back in September. Hopefully I will be better this year at updating our trips right after we take them instead of months later when I can hardly remember them. But I don't want to forget them entirely; hence the blog. So, here is our trip to Belgium. I didn't take a bazillion pics like normally because honestly, we were too busy stuffing our faces with all the delectable foods that Belgium has to offer. I will tell you Belgian waffles are DEE-licious! And we would know because Mark stopped for waffles every chance he got. They were nothing like I expected. Nothing like the waffles you pour syrup on; these were decedent desserts. YUM! And I don't want to forget about the chocolates, but I have to say that I think the German chocolate is better. But you still did pretty good, Belgium. Well done, well done. We spent the first part of our day in Brussels. Explored the streets, checked out what the ol' Bruss had to offer: the little naked peeing boy, the beautiful streets and main square, and of corse the food.

Manneken Pis: that popular little peeing man... not sure what the big deal was, but whatev.  It's culture.

Brussels was neat, but Brugges, in our opinion, was WAY better. Charming town indeed. We took a lovely boat ride along this beautiful canal and took in the incredible sights. CHARMM-ing. All the houses were so very quaint. The pics did not capture this city at all. We plan on going back some time with bikes in tow. Loved it!