All Good Things Come to an End

Okay okay, I know I didn't post the last few days of my trip. I was busy enjoying the sites and the rest of my days in London. Here's a review of what I was up to:

First and foremost was class. We spent the rest of our week at the Dickens Inn, just a cobblestone walk from our hotel. It also has a traditional pub and a pizza place inside!

 We had class right behind the huge windows. It was a really great setup! We were very thankful for the unlimited supply of coffee too.

And of course we were VERY thankful for the TWO starbux right next to the hotel. This one was our fav, located right across the docks from the Dickens Inn.

Wednesday night we went to the spa, and it was AMAZING! Definitely the coolest spa I'd ever been in. It was 4 stories of serenity. We did a "sleep retreat" which is essentialy a meditation session, and then we each had a 50 minute massage. It was fantastic! Exactly what we needed in the middle of our busy week.

On Thursday night we went on a dinner cruise down the Thames River. We left from Embankment Pier and spent 3 hours with some of our classmates eating, drinking and taking a TON of pictures! Here is a picture of Kristen and I after boarding the boat and finding our seats.

A toast to a fantastic trip with some of our classmates! We had a wonderful evening with them!

 Here is a view of the London skyline from the Thames River. Pretty impressive :)

We came back inside to warm up from taking pictures up on the observation deck. At this point in time Kristen was probably telling me to man up since I live in MN afterall. The temps that night were probably in the forties.

The green laser light represents the Prime Meridian. One night. Two Hemispheres.

 We cruised right under Tower Bridge on our boat cruise! Some sights really just never get old. :)

 A picture on the tube is a must - it was our main source of transporation afterall!

We walked back to our hotel from the Tower Hill Station. The green grass is the moat around the Tower of London, home of the crown jewels and the original castle for the royal family.

Like I said, some views never get old. :) This is right outside the front door of our hotel (there is also a Starbux directly behind me) Simply amazing.

Unfortunately, there was a casualty on my trip - my heels. Turns out Cobblestone is KILLER on heels. The shoe further in the back wore down and around the nail in the heel, and the stems were ripped completely thru. Needless to say they didn't make the trip back to the US.

Friday we had class and presentations all day and our class celebratory evening that night. It was really fun, but unfortunately(?) not too many pictures were taken. On Saturday we took a boat taxi down to the Westminister to see the big sites and do some shopping on Regents Street. Here is our view headed down the river - Big Ben and House of Parliment on the right...

 ... and the London Eye on the left!

 The sun started coming out as we started walking around - thank goodness! It made for some good photo opportunities! :)

 As we were walking down Regents Street (part of the West End shopping district) down one of the side streets was a small sections of these unique buildings. I couldn't get enough of the amazing architecture in London!

We (well okay, I) bought a few things on our shopping tour before we headed back to the Tower of London. Unfortunately we got back too late to go inside, so we'll definitely have to do that next time we're in town. :) We took pictures on the outside anyway.

 Here's panoram of one side of the Tower of London.

We took our little bit of free time to buy some souveniors and sit by the river, looking at the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, drinking of favorite HC from PAUL. We found PAUL in Paris, and visited there almost daily during our stay. They have the best hot chocolate ever!!

On our last evening we took one last look over the whole city on the London Eye. These are the pods you stand in as you go up and around the giant ferris wheel. the London Eye never stops - you get on and off while it's still moving - it's very slow and takes about 30 min to make one complete rotation.

 Here's a snapshot of the view out our pod on the way up and around!

 The city skyline is beautiful! You can see St. Paul's Cathedral in the middle

 House of Parliment from the top!

It was a great ride, and a great way to close out the trip. All in all, it was a fabulous 2 weeks. Coming home has been bittersweet. I have 1,367 pictures to help remember all of the amazing sights and experiences I had during my time there. Definitely a trip I would recommend to all of you! :)

Class Begins...

Monday was our first day of class. We had it at the place called the Dickens Inn, very near our hotel. The room was really nice, and our speakers were amazing! We had a great first day at class. Monday evening we didn't do too much - Kristen and I went to the Covent Garden area and had Italian food for dinner. After that we had the most amazing hot chocolate from a place called Paul's. It was so good that we went back today.

Today (Tuesday) we had class in the heart of the financial district at the Willis building (they are the ones who bought the Sears Tower) Notice how in the picture I'm not even wearing a coat (and might be a little chilly...)

 The view on the outside of the Willis building was really awesome. Tomorrow we're going back to the infamous Lloyd's of London on a tour. The Lloyd's building is really unique because all of the pipes are stainless steel and are on the outside of the building. You can see part of it on the right side of the picture below.

One important lesson we learned today is that British people are only really in the office in the morning. The afternoon is spent making deals over a few pints at the pubs. We experienced this first hand at 230pm. This picture is actually taken at a pub down Diagon Alley for you Harry Potter fans.

Class ran late, so we booked it back to the hotel, changed and headed straight for the theatre district. We went with the Dans to see Dirty Dancing! The show was spectacular - the choreography was amazing! We all really enjoyed it!

Well, that's about all for today. Tomorrow we have a full day of class, a visit to Lloyd's over lunch, and a our much anticipated trip to the spa in the evening! AND there's no rain in the forecast! Thank goodness!

Hope you're all having a great week! :)

24.5 hrs in Paris

WARNING: This entry will probably be pretty long! :)

A lot has happened since the last time I updated this! We went on a bus tour with our class on Saturday morning to see the sights of London. It was fun to see all of the big sights (again). Here is a panoram of Buckingham Palace.

Then we came back to our room, grabbed our bags and headed to the Eurostar station! Off to Paris we went. Here is a summary of Paris in numbers:

2.5 = hours it takes to get to Paris on the Eurostar
20 = minutes under the English Channel at a depth of 100 meters
Here is a picture of the view from our room - it was so warm when we got Paris! 50 degrees at sunset - yes please!

1 = blocks our hotel was from the Eiffel Tower - here's the view!

3 = course dinner that came with our cruise, including french eclairs! LOVE THEM!

3 = hours it took us to eat dinner and walk back to our hotel, probably because we took a million pictures like this :)

6 = maximum hours of sleep we got - with a view like this, who could blame us for being excited!

 We walked past the Eiffel Tower again in the morning before hopping on a city bus tour - definitely the only way we got to see everything in one day!

First stop we got off at - Notre Dame!

Here's the inside of Notre Dame - they were having Sunday mass so it was pretty cool to see.

The organs were playing - it was definitely eerie, but neat to see.

Next we were onto Champ Elysees!

We got off the bus at Arch de Tromphe at the far end of Champs Elysees, the second largest and most well-known monument in Paris (next to the Eiffel Tower of course).

We went under the road to the Arch - the detail was amazing!

Priceless = a chocolate eclair and a Starbux Mocha while shopping on Champs Elysees :)

Here is a view of some of the buildings on Champs Elysees. I love the architecture! The fact that it was around 50 degrees and sunny probably helped out too :)

Check out this view! We walked from here back down to the Eiffel Tower - A view in Paris really doesn't get any better than this!

Our last stop for the day was Musse de Louvre - definitely the largest art museum I've ever seen - it was gorgeous!

Before we went inside - you actually enter thru the pyramid and the museum lobby is underground.

The highlight of our time there was seeing the Mona Lisa!

Another panoramic shot from the road - it's so HUGE!

After the Louvre, we headed back to the train station, a sight in itself at night time.

A few more numbers to end our visit to Paris:
1 boat cruise the first night
9 bus stops on our city tour on day 2
9.5 hours on our feet to cover the city
496 pictures I took while in Paris (this is not an exaggeration)
PRICELESS memories from an amazing 24.5 hours in Paris!



Transition Day

Today was a pretty busy day. I started out having breakfast with Brandon in Southampton, and wound up at the Dickins Inn with Kristen and 30 of my classmates tonight. Brandon's flight left at about 2pm local time, and he should be landing in MN very shortly. (Actually, I just checked and his flight has landed, yay!) I hope he had a good flight back.

I met Kristen at the airport and we headed down to our hotel near Tower Bridge. Here is a shot from out the front door of our hotel.

 We only had about 1.5 hrs to do something by the time we got checked in, and it started downpouring outside. Lucky for us there are not one, but TWO Starbux outside our hotel. We went to one, grabbed a drink and just hung out until the rain was over. After that we walked around the area to find where our class was meeting later in the evening. It didn't take very long, so we still had an hour to burn. We decided to take the tour of Tower Bridge. The tour took us up and through the high passages, and through the engine rooms. Since Kristen and I are both engineers at heart, we thought it was pretty cool. By the end of our tour, it was definitely night time...

By the time we got back to our hotel, it was time to head to The Dickins Inn to meet up with all of our classmates. It was nice to see some familiar faces, and meet some new people too. We needed some dinner so split a pizza with the Dans - it was really good!

We hung out there for awhile and heard about everyone's travels before the weekend, and got some great advice about things to do while we're in Paris tomorrow and Sunday. We're both excited for that! We'll be doing a bus tour of London with our class tomorrow morning, and then jumping on the EuroStar to Paris in the afternoon. Please pray for our safe travels! I'll be updating with pictures when we return on Sunday night!