Wedding and Honeymoon Pictures

I was going to post my Paris pictures until I realized I haven't posted ANY of my wedding or honeymoon pictures. So without further ado ....

Wedding:

  Family Ceremony

  Church Ceremony

  Reception

Honeymoon:

  Hawaii

  Paris

Paris Day 7 - Heading Home

• It's been a wonderful week but we are excited to head home. In that regard, this vacation (aka Honeymoon Part Deux) was a complete success. We came, we saw, we would love to come back, but we're ready to go back home. We spent some time away from the normal paces of life and I got to spend some quality time with the woman I love. We've got lots of pictures and memories (although surprisingly we bought very few souvenirs). I'm ready to eat American food, drink a Dr. Pepper, and speak English (by the way, the wife has been great ... she took 4 years of French in high school and knows enough French to get by pretty well. I loved sitting back and not having to talk to ANYONE!). I'm also really glad to be going back to a "normal" schedule. My body clock has been screwed up this entire week. I really haven't slept well at all (I've never had jet-lag that lasted a week). Hopefully my normal surroundings will fix me up.
• On a side note, we're in the Continental President's Club Lounge at Charles De Gaulle Airport waiting for our flight back home. I was getting some pastries from their spread and saw an older gentleman sitting down near by. He sounded like a nice retired person who spent some time in France with his wife (perhaps for the first time). I came back a moment later to get a drink and looked more closely. His face and voice looked/sounded a lot like Robert Duval. The wife confirmed ... our brush with fame on this trip!  
• Speaking of the Continental President's Club Lounge ... my wife travels frequently enough where we get the perks of "elite access" and the lounge. We've enjoyed it on several occasions and I have to admit the lounge is GREAT! I bring it up because I feel (in a very small way) like all these French royals I learned about on this trip. As best I can tell their only job was to accumulate and show off their wealth. They showed off their wealth by building huge homes that also served to separate them from the commoners. That's the way I feel in the President's Club Lounge ... considering how crazy, loud, and uncomfortable airports are, a little "royal treatment" of comfortable chairs, quietness, and free wi-fi isn't too much for this King to ask for! :)
• Finally, thanks for indulging me as I blogged my way through this vacation. It was fun having this outlet to capture my thoughts. I hope you were mildly entertained. Once I get home look for a blog post with pictures. 
  

Paris Day 6

• Today we saw Chateau Cheneaux. This was probably the most interesting castle we saw on this trip. It was smaller than Chambord, but the tour was done very well and restorations made it feel like it was still a working castle (although there was extensive restoration taking place on the exterior which made the pictures ugly). This castle was built on a river. The plan was for it to extend across both banks, but they never started that work. 
• Chateau de Blois was our final stop, and admittedly I was chateau'd out. Even if this was the world's greatest chateau, I probably wouldn't have noticed. It was interesting because there were 4 distinct structures that followed the generations of French kings that added on to it. But none the less, it was similar to what we'd seen and I was ready to head home.
• On the train ride back to Paris there was a large, French woman who had a ridiculous case of BO sitting a few rows in front of us. She bore a striking resemblance to Hagrid from the Harry Potter books. It wasn't even funny how bad she smelled. It was the kind of BO that made your eyes water. Halfway through the train ride we had to move. Ai was getting nauseous. There was a 10 foot radius of stink hovering around her. Once we were out of the stink zone the rest of the trip was uneventful. 

Paris Day 5

• Paris was fantastic but today we were eager to get out of the city. The Versailles and chocolate let downs probably had something to do with it, but we were also running out of things to do to keep us entertained.
• We took a train to Tours, France (in fact I think it was my first time on one of these high-speed trains ... pretty cool but my ears did keep popping and I'm not sure why?) Tours is south of Paris in the Loire River valley which they call the "Garden of France". 
  
• Since we were going away from the city and good public transportation, we needed to rent a car. We got a Renault Megane ... it actually was a pretty good, little car. It was a 4-door coupe, 6-speed manual, and ran on diesel. It was fun and easy to drive, plus being out in the country most of the time we didn't run into any major issues or traffic. Thankfully France drives on the "normal" side of the road (the right side). The streets were small and narrow so that was definitely a change. But we rented a Garmin from the rental company and it was the best money we spent on this entire vacation! It saved us a lot of time and effort. We probably could have found our way around without it but it would have been significantly more difficult.
  
• Our first stop was Chateau de Chambord. It was a huge castle! It was built in the country and was used mostly as a hunting lodge for the king. It was your typical big drafty castle, but it was very impressive! In fact you've probably heard of the Liqueur called Chambord ... apparently it was inspired by something that was produced on the premises. 
  
• As we were leaving Chambord and heading to our hotel to check in, I got pulled over by the police. That was an interesting experience. Not sure what I did. He didn't speak much English, but once he saw I was a tourist and was driving a rental he told me to leave. I should try that when I get pulled over at home.
  
• We checked into our hotel in Amboise. It was an old house converted into a hotel. For half the cost of our hotel in Paris we had a sitting room, a big bedroom overlooking the river and Chateau de Amboise, and a huge bathroom. I never thought I'd see my wife smile again after the chocolate and Versailles mishap, but she loved this place so much she wouldn't stop smiling! She wished we had come here sooner. Very friendly staff also. Just an overall great place.
  
• Chateau Amboise was much smaller than Chambord but still very pretty. What's nuts is the amount of time and money spent by these old French royalty to build these places (as if one castle was enough). Oh yea, and Leonardo Da Vinci is buried at Chateau Amboise. Which is mildly ironic because I've been reading Dan Brown's other book (Angel's and Demon's) while on this vacation. 
  

Paris Day 4

• Sunday night I broke down and paid a king's ransom to get Internet in our hotel room for 1 night. I'm glad we did because it saved us an unnecessary trip to Versailles. This was supposed to be for our trip to Versailles until I saw that it is closed on Mondays. A big surprise and a big let down for the wife. 
  
• We scrambled to find a last minute replacement of something to see/do ... we saw Sainte Chapelle and the Conciergerie. These are in the Palais de Justice which is the site of an old palace, but is now primarily government buildings. The Conciergerie used to be part of the original palace but was converted into a prison during the French Revolution (famous for housing Marie Antionette before her beheading). Sainte Chapelle is a small chapel that was built on the premises as the private church for the king. It has some incredible stained glass. 
• Afterwards we looked for Ai's favorite chocolatier Pierre Marcolini. Two years ago on our first trip to Europe we stayed in Brussels and we were told Pierre Marcolini was some of the finest chocolate in the world. No doubt it was. He also has a store in Paris and we thought it would be neat to stop by and get some more chocolate while we were here. We had already spent some time on Sunday looking for his store without any luck. This time we came prepared with specific directions. Low and behold, he's closed for store remodeling. Hell hath no furry like my wife without chocolate, especially after several wasted hours looking for it! 
• Ai went shopping to ease her sorrows and found another place for chocolate. Meanwhile I sat on our balcony at the hotel reading, enjoying the good weather, and updating my blogs. Dinner was at an Italian joint. Good food but it was the first time on this trip where we had ridiculously slow European restaurant service.

Paris Day 3

• We woke up this morning with the Paris Marathon running outside our hotel. We ate our breakfast in bed and watched them run by glad that someone was being fit while we have been stuffing ourselves the last few days.
• Since it was Palm Sunday, we decided to take in the churches today. We started at Notre Dame ... unfortunately I've run out of adjectives, so the only way I can describe it is awesome. I am astounded at the sheer size and complexity of building something like that so long ago. Notre Dame was built between 1163 and 1200. Not only is it an engineering marvel, it's a complete work of art. The detail in every corner was overwhelming. The experience was made even more interesting because a church service was going on during our tour. It was all in Latin and/or French as best we could tell. But it was neat to see it still in use and made the whole experience all the more special. By the way, despite comments about me from the wife, there were no hunchback sightings.
• Next we went to an area of Paris called  Montmartre. We had heard good things about this part of Paris but we were not too impressed. Moulin Rouge is here (although we did not see it) and so is Sacre Coeur the big white church on a hill (we did see this). Sacre Coeur is a beautiful church and architecturally it's very different (and more modern) than Notre Dame. However, the atmosphere around the church left much to be desired. There were all street performers and gypsies loitering around outside Sacre Coeur. No big deal but it was kind of distracting and as we left we ran into an overly zealous gypsy trying to peddle his wears a little too aggressively for our taste. Anyway the church is beautiful and the view of the city is cool, but we didn't hang out much here.
• After dinner tonight we walked over to the Eiffel Tower. I must say it was more beautiful lit up at night than it was during the day. Ai got a big cotton candy and was very happy.
  

Paris Day 2

• We did a 4 hour bike ride today with Fat Tire Bike Tour.  I don't think they are affiliated with the beer company, however it's run by a Texan and many of the staff are from Texas (although today there were mostly West Coast guys). I felt good supporting a "home town" company and the tour was a lot of fun, so it was a win-win. The guide was an art, architecture, and history buff and enlightened me on some basic French history that I admittedly had never heard or never cared to remember. It was also interesting trying to navigate the streets of Paris on a bike with 20+ people. Despite lots of pissed off French drivers, we all survived and had a great time. Probably the highlight of our trip so far.
• The Eiffel Tower was next on our list. It was impressive but waiting in several lines made the whole experience less than we had hoped for. I should have expected as much, since it's a tourist destination. But it was cold and hazy outside, which meant we spent more time waiting in lines than we did enjoying the view! But don't get me wrong, it's a must see and I'm glad we did it. The structure itself is beautiful, especially when considering it was built in 1889. 
• The Eiffel Tower reminded me of my trip to Prague where there is a mini-Eiffel Tower of sorts and I WALKED all the way up. We had the choice of walking up the Eiffel Tower but decided against it (we figured we already got our exercise in with the bike tour). 
  
• Dinner tonight was great again. The wife made reservations at a quaint, family run restaurant. The meal was typical French cuisine and quite good. I had escargot for the first time and I actually could have had an entire meal of those buttery, garlicy little snails! 
  
• Our bike tour guide suggested we stopped by the Louvre at night. The lighting makes the facade spooky and beautiful all at the same time. Very neat stuff, however I was bummed that I couldn't capture that in our pictures. I need to figure out how to take photos at night. Our point and shoot digital takes good pictures but not at night. I'll need to research that when I go home ...
  

Paris Day 1

• The flight over was pretty miserable, even by my standards. We had a good tailwind that got us into Paris ~40 minutes earlier than planned, but we had to deal with 20-30 minutes of turbulence over the Eastern Seaboard. And for some reason the cabin temperature was at a toasty 60 degrees for most of the flight. Neither one of us got much sleep during the 8 hour flight. Oh and I also accidentally dropped my wedding band and nearly lost it on the plane. Not a good start ...
  
• Getting to the hotel was surprisingly uneventful (i.e. we didn't get lost). The weather was cool and foggy (felt like London). Regardless we were excited to be in Paris, despite our extreme case of sleep depravation.
• After dropping off the luggage at the hotel we walked across the street and took in the Louvre. This was a calculated move. We know we are not "museum people" and we knew we'd have to kill time before we could get into our hotel room.
• The Louvre was phenomenal! Huge, beautiful, breathtaking, awe-inspiring ... these are all appropriate adjectives. But after 2.5 hours we were dead tired. We probably only saw a third of the artwork there (and most of that was "drive-by looking" ... like I said, not big museum people). It's virtually impossible to take in the entire Louvre in 1 day (and we weren't interested in trying anyway). Thankfully our room was available and we were able to get a much needed power nap before heading to dinner. By the way, the Mona Lisa is pretty unspectacular. I had heard as much from friends, but at least I can now say I've seen the Mona Lisa (for whatever that's worth).
• The wife made dinner reservations ahead of time at an upscale restaurant. It was the most expensive dinner I've ever had (we splurged since it was technically "honeymoon part deux"). However it was ridiculously good and we were ridiculously full ... so it was worth it (although I don't want to make a habit of have a dinner this expensive for the rest of the trip!). 
• On the way back to the hotel we strolled the Champs Elysees and stopped by the Arc de Triomphe. The wife was giddy at a 2 story Louis Vuitton store. The Arc de Triomphe wasn't lit up as I expected, but it was still very impressive. We didn't feel like paying to go on top, so we admired it from street level and returned to the hotel for a well deserved night's sleep.
  

Honeymoon Part Deux

So the wife and I are heading to Paris. As you may or may not know Honeymoon #1 (back in Dec) was supposed to be Paris (~2 nights) and then Thailand (~10 nights). The day after our wedding we changed our entire Honeymoon because of a coup in Thailand that shutdown their airport (and the only International airport in the country).

Luckily the airlines gave us a full credit for the airfare and we went to Hawaii instead and had a wonderful time. Even better we had a ~$500 travel voucher a piece for the price difference in the two tickets. We got our tropical island honeymoon taken care of in spades but figured we should also do the romantic Paris thing as well (thus the title "Honeymoon Part Deax").
My point here is I've neglected my blogging for the past month, so I will do "twitter style blogging" each day we're in Paris to keep friends and family apprised of our adventures.
However, I don't think the hotel has free wi-fi and I'm too cheap to pay for it. (Correction, I broke down and paid for it ... so I'll start posting updates now!) So I'll do my blogging off-line and post them as soon as I can find an Internet cafe or something (which reminds me of an episode of the Office ... I need to find a YouTube clip and post it here). Anyhow, we're looking forward to getting away for awhile ... wish me luck!