So So Vienna & Beginning of Venice

We were in Vienna for a couple of days (Aug 2-5). Not much to say about it; it was pretty boring. Really beautiful city, but not a whole lot to do there, unless you like museums.

The Hapsburg's city palace.

The Parliament building.

I'm not sure if you know this about us, but we are huge thrill seekers (haha). The sign reads: 'Due to storm entire park area DANGEROUS!'. Still not sure why the park was dangerous, but man were we careful...

August 4 we went to a palace in Vienna and the grounds were gorgeous.

 
We went through a maze and only ran into dead ends a few times.

I wasn't feeling great so we headed back to the hotel early. We figure we spent only 6 hours out of the hotel in Vienna because I was sick (or just a baby). The time in the hotel was spent watching 'The Wire'.

Yesterday, August 5, we spent the afternoon watching 'Inception'. It was a great movie and our favourite part of Vienna (is that bad?). We caught a night train last night and it was deluxe compared to the train from Poland to Prague (had AC, no bugs, got breakfast delivered to us in bed). When we arrived in Venice this morning at 8:30 we were well rested and ready for the day. We immediately fell in love with Venice. It is amazing. Here are a few pictures from this morning.

The Grand Canal.

Us.

We spent a few minutes in St. Mark's Square and although it is very pretty, there were too many people, so we left as quickly as we could.

The rest of the morning and afternoon was spent wandering the streets/canals. We didn't get too lost... yet. We really needed a huge change in scenery after so much Germany & Austria, and this definitely hit the spot.  We have the next 4 nights in Venice and are looking forward to it.

Brussels, London, Wimbledon and The Wimbledance

It has been a while since the last blog and we have been up to quite a bit. 

June 27 Andrew and I spent a night in Brussels. We didn't really do that much, just walked around the main square and of course watched some World Cup Soccer.

June 28 we caught the Eurostar (train through the Chunnel) from Brussels to London. Once we arrived we checked into our hostel, got some groceries, cooked dinner (it has been a long time since we had hot food!) and went for a stroll in Kensington Gardens.

June 29 we decided that we were really going to be tourists and see all the sights that we could possibly see because we anticipated spending most of the week watching tennis matches at Wimbledon Park. So we first went to Trafalgar Square,

then we went to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guards (much better than in Monaco), 

had lunch at St. James' Park, 

went to Westminster Abbey, 

saw Big Ben, 

the Tower of London, 

Tower Bridge,

took a river boat to the London Eye, went back to the hostel for dinner and then back out to go to Hyde Park to read and play some crib. 

June 30 we had to get up early to make it to Wimbledon to stand in line for ground tickets. Just as we got our tickets and got on the grounds we turned to our left and I spotted Federer warming up for his match. Andrew and I were so excited to see him!

After our encounter with the Greatest player of all time, we went and setup our blanket on the Hill to watch the matches on the big screen. Andrew went wandering before the matches started and he ran into Nadal who was on his way to warm up for his match. 

So we had a great day at Wimbledon (even though Roger lost... he was injured). These guys below really helped make our day. They were 4 of them (one is missing from the picture, obviously). They were getting smashed watching the tennis matches, cheering for Andy Murray. They were all dressed in white tennis gear (which is mandatory for the players at Wimbledon). They were constantly standing up and doing this weird dance thing, which was really funny. They would point their hands out to either side above their head, and then pump them up and down. After the last match of the day we saw them and were about to walk right by them when Andrew said "Heyyyyy" and started to do their dance. This really got the guys excited and they wanted a picture of them and Andrew doing the dance. They called the dance the "Wimbledance", and were quite certain that it was "going to catch on next year". Hopefully we will see them again Sunday for the finals.

Yesterday (July 1, Canada Day), we went to the British Museum. Andrew really enjoyed looking at all the really old stuff, while I preferred to scout out benches and to admire from afar. The museum was really neat, I can't believe how much stuff the British stole (even though in the description of what the object is it usually said something about how the Brits "paid" for the article or saved it from being demolished, etc.). Then we spent the afternoon at the Camden Market. We were on the hunt for a few pieces of clothing... but left empty handed even though they had a thousand stores there!

Then last night we went to see Billy Elliot (I couldn't convince Andrew to see Grease or Dirty Dancing, both of which are playing in London). It was a really good musical and we really enjoyed ourselves.

Paris: Jour Un, Deux, Trois Et Quatre

Ok so that's enough french. We got to Paris May 31and went on a walking tour... a free walking tour. It was a tour of the city and gave a little bit of history.  We took a few pictures along the way.

The Eiffel Tower. We will be visiting it soon.

An Egyptian obelisk, in Place de la Concorde, where the giant guillotine used to be and thousands of executions took place.

Arc de Triomphe. We will be visiting the Arc today.

It was a really good tour, but by the end of the 3 1/2 hour tour Andrew and I were really tired. So we went back to the hostel and watched an episode of Glee, watched a UFC fight and ate popcorn.

On June 1, we were rejuvenated, so we hit the town running. We got our museum passes (which allow you to go into almost any museum in Paris) and began at Notre Dame Cathedral, which was beautiful. We climbed the North Tower and had a great view of Paris.

After ND Cathedral we were all churched out so we went to Pantheon. The architecture of these places are amazing!

It was around noon by this time so we went to Jardin de Luxembourg for a picnic. The gardens here in Paris are not the same as those back at home. They don't really have any grass, and when they do have grass there are signs saying not to walk on it. They are also obsessed with symmetry, to the extent that all the trees are made rectangular or square.

This is a well known gay area in Paris. There are always rainbow flags flying around and men in short shorts... notice the street name? It also smells bad... Coincidence, we think not.

We thought that it would be a good idea to go to Le Musee D'Orsay. So we went, we saw... and I almost died. I don't like museums. I don't have an appreciation for art. I get it, it's old but that doesn't mean it is good. Also, the museum was packed! We saw some Monet and Van Gogh (which I do really like), but then I was done. So I was following Andrew around, which I am sure is pretty annoying, but then I found some benches. Andrew could now go look around and then come and get me when he moved on. Thank goodness I don't think Andrew has an appreciation for art either.

Then if we hadn't been to enough museums already, we decided to see Napoleon's tomb and walked through the Military Museum (very quickly!!!). We only went through the WWII portion (which was large), and it did not compare to the one in Caen. However, there were lots of French WWII items of display, including lots of rifles and uniforms that were in great shape (because they were hardly even used in the 2 weeks or so it took Hitler to invade France, which, by the way, had the largest land army at that time...).

June 2, and then we went to the Louvre. So I thought I didn't like museums when I came to Europe, then after June 1, I really didn't think I liked museums, but after this day I knew 100% museums just aren't my thing. We get to the Louvre at around 10am. The line to get in isn't bad and we decided that before the masses came we would go see the really famous pieces first. So... we went over to the Mona Lisa. The rooms leading up to the room holding the Mona Lisa are 40 degrees because there were so many people. Once we get into the room where the Mona Lisa is there are tons of people and every one of them is holding up their cameras trying to take a picture of a picture... Don't they get it... they can buy Mona Lisa replicas, magnets, towels... pretty much anything you could ever want, and yet they are still taking a picture. You can even download high definition Mona Lisa pictures on the internet for free I am sure. Pictures of pictures...

After we had seen some of the famous things Andrew wanted to see we were wandering through the museum and I found the best thing in the entire museum (other than the exit): the 2rd floor. Here is where they keep some french pieces, none of which are extremely famous, so nobody is up there and the temperature drops about 10 degrees because the rooms aren't packed with sweaty barbarians.

Picture taken after we left!

After being at the Louvre for a good part of the day (ok maybe only a few hours), I was tired (I believe that museums suck the life out of me, much like malls), so we went grocery shopping and went back to the hostel for supper and another episode of glee and a movie. We did, however, get lots of walking done through the city's large and beautiful boulevards.

June 3, we got to go to Versailles Palace and it was gorgeous. The gardens were so beautiful and we spent all day there. We managed to get there quite early, so the gardens (which span 800 hectares of land) were relatively empty. The sweaty barbarians, however, were soon to follow.

The palace.

The gardens.