What an epic trip! This trip was not in the cards at all until I saw a friends Facebook post back in January. She was selling 4 tickets to see Taylor Swift's eras tour in Paris on May 10th. I thought to myself, man wouldn't that be fun? I told ty about it at dinner and he said did you buy them?!? I said no why would I buy something like that before talking to you? He then said well see if they are still available. By that time the tickets were pending. He said well instant message her and tell her we are interested in them if they fall through. So I did. I asked how much she was selling them for and that Ty and I were interested. We both went to bed thinking man that would have been fun.
We got up the next day and continued on our day like normal. I headed to work and did all my morning things there. I checked Facebook at like 11:30 and I had a message from my friend. I opened it and she had sent it at 8:30 that morning. It said that 2 of the tickets fell through and if we wanted them they were ours. I went WHAT? I immediately call Ty and he said the same thing, WHAT? I said are we going to take them? He then said heck yes we are going to take them! So with that we bought concert ticket to Taylor Swift. Which they are impossible to get here in the US because they are prices so ridiculously high!
We asked Grandma Debbie if she could come out and watch the kids. She said she could and so away we went with planning an epic trip. I have always wanted to go back to London. I went there as a Senior in high school and have wanted to go back ever since. Ty has never been to Europe and so he was game for whatever.
We left the night of May 7. We had a direct flight to London. We paid extra to have spacious seat. Man that was a game changer!! London is 8 hours ahead and so when we landed it was my 36th birthday!! Happy birthday to me!! We spend 4 days in London and then on the 4th day took a train to Paris. We were in Paris, Saturday-Thursday.
We used the metro A LOT on this trip.
We landed and struck out on adventures! First stop was Buckingham Palace. There is also a queen's park right next to it and so we walked it. While we were walking around I kept saying ohh this look familiar, I have been here before! It was amazing.
My birthday dinner was at an Indian restaurant that was not like any Indian food we have had before. Way fun! Then we went to Trafalgar Square. Which I have pictures in the same spot almost 18 years ago.
The time difference messed with us hard! So we had really early mornings which was nice because we got out walking before all the traffic started. This is Big Ben and parliament
Westminster Abbey
We didn't know we had to get tickets to Westminster Abbey in advanced and so we went to St. Paul's cathedral instead which I am so glad we did! The cathedrals are so amazing! We decided to walk to the top! It was around 350 steps and boy was it a work out!
After the cathedral we went over to the Tower of London while we were there we saw the Crown Jewels.
This is the hotel I stayed at when I went. It was right next to the Tower of London bridge.
Lego store!
On our last day there we took a day tour. We went to Windsor, Stonehenge, and Bath. I would do Windsor again and would spend an entire day in Bath! The countryside is absolutely stunning! King Charles was in residency, but we did not get to see him. I love the town of Windsor.
We had to recreation pictures because when I visited we had their Starbucks and it was heavenly. When we went to Windsor in high school it was winter and SO cold. The day we went to Windsor back then was rainy and so so wet. We wanted to get out of the rain and so we went to McDonalds and Starbucks! This trip we did not have McDonalds. And side note, the weather while we were there was WONDERFUL!! Which is not common for London. Usually there is rain often.
Next stop was Stonehenge. It was neat but seeing it once was good enough. It is in the middle of no where just in the middle of a field.
Ohh Bath!!! What a magical place you are. We drove by where Jane Austin lived and it seriously is as how it is described in romance novels. The Roman Baths were really neat and SO old! That is what is so crazy about Europe is how old everything is. America does not have the history like Europe does.
We tried some of the famous Bath water. It was warm and it tasted kind of like how a penny smells. Definitely couldn't drink a glass of it everyday.
Our tour guide suggested this Italian place for dinner and boy was it yummy! I still crave it. Also we had Coke with almost every meal. It was delicious. It does not taste like America's. I am not usually a soda drinker, but I loved it over there.
We had a little tea tray in our room and we would have tea everyday.
Another one of our dinners. We cooked our own stake on hot stones.
I of course had to go to platform 9 3/4 to get my Harry Potter fix. Where is at is where we needed to go to catch the Eurostar to Paris.
The Eurostar is a train that goes almost 200 MPH. It was so smooth! It took us almost 2 hours to get to Paris. Definitely would take the train again. It was such an easy process. Definitely suggest getting tickets early because like airlines they up the price. I was super duper nervous about going to Paris and not speaking any French. We were told over and over again how French don't like Americans. We were also told that most people speak English. I didn't know what to except. However, we did not run into any problems with the language. Most people were friendly and helped us.
Paris was a totally different vibe than London. We did a walking foods tour the night we arrived in Paris and that was AMAZING. We tried wine, cheeses, meats, crepes, baguettes, chocolate, and macaroons. Well worth our money and an experience for sure. The group of people we were with were a lot of fun as well. There was only 10 of us. This is the love wall. I love you written in all different languages.
After our food tour we walked up the road to another cathedral. We also saw the Eiffel Tower all lit up. It does this at the top of the hour. The crazy thing with time over there is that it doesn't get dark until almost 11:00 and so we kept saying we'd go to bed early, and then it wouldn't happen.
Paris was getting ready for the olympics while we were there. It was fun to see different things being prepared. The croissants were as good as everyone told us they would be.
Notre Dame is still being fixed up from the fire it had. It is also so much bigger than I thought. I loved going to bookstore while we were over there. We went to one of the oldest bookstore in France and it was right by Notre Dame. There is a really cool feature that our food tour guide lady told us. There are different fountains throughout the city that people can use to fill up water bottles. She shows us one and then we saw one by the book store! Another weird thing we noticed in France is that you have to pay to use the toilets.. yes toilets not restrooms.
We then headed back to our hotel to change and get ready for the concert. The concert was on Mother's Day. It was also her last show in Paris, the 4th night. We actually knew the other couple that bought the other pair of tickets. Bo and Jordan Ramsey. I went to high school with Bo and then Jordan grew up in my home ward. Breann's husband, Justin is also first cousins with Bo. The friend I bought the tickets from is someone I went to high school with and now lives in Vegas. Bo and Jordan currently live in Colorado. It is such a small world! They were a lot of fun to go with! We went to dinner before the concert and then hung out afterwards and got something else to eat.
The concert was absolutely AMAZING!! Paramore was her opening band and they were one of the best opening bands because they have been together for so long. The energy in the arena was outstanding and so so fun! Taylor sang for almost 3 and a half hours. It was unreal. She ended and I said I could do that over again right now. One of our top 5 concerts for sure! Not just because it was in Paris. I am a total converting swiftie now.
Emmy was so excited for us to go to the concert. She asked us before we went if we would get her a shirt. It was about noon back in the states when the concert was happening at night over in Paris. She text Ty asking what era we were in and so I told him to FaceTime her instead of writing back. When she got on the phone and we flipped the camera around she started squealing and jumping up and down. We couldn't talk or hear her because it was so loud. It was pure happiness on her face. Later on in the concert she text us asking if she could see Taylor again. Her and Lynn loved it. Technology is amazing. Our family was 5000 miles away, but we were making a core memory with them.
Paris is set up in a kind of circle. There are different areas of the city and things are kind of spread out. The metro was a lot harder to use here than in London. We got the hang of it, but there was a big learning curve. We changed hotels after the concert. We stayed near the arena, but then we were going to go to Disneyland later on in the week and it is on the complete opposite side of where we were staying. Once we changed hotels, we went back to site seeing. The Eiffel Tower was also so so big. They were getting things built around the tower for the olympics and so there was a lot of construction going on. We did not go to the top.
When we were planning the trip, I knew I wanted to do Disney Paris because we are Disney people. It is a lot smaller than Disneyland California. It was rainy the first day we went. It was so fun though because there hardly any lines. It was fun to see similar themes, but also to see how they do things different. Pirates was different, haunted house was SO creepy, Indiana jones was different because it was a roller coaster, its a small world was themed just a bit different too. Still had the happy vibes all the way!
My book haul from Europe
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