Paris

DAY EIGHT

The train to Paris was on time and speedy. We took an uber to our hotel, which was small but had a pretty okay location.

Right across from the Louvre.

And down the street from the Musee D'Orsay. 

Since we were right in the middle of everything, we immediately set out to explore the city on foot. We ended walking all the way to the Eiffel Tower. How convenient!

It's pretty under the clouds.

We only have one picture inside of Kei restaurant because we quickly realized it is not the type of restaurant where you take pictures. We will do our best to describe the highlights of the experience to you in 3 "lessons learned": 

1) use all of the silverware even if there is some silverware that doesn't make sense for a particular dish

2) expect things like ground pepper to be single-origin and served from the bones of a well travelled exotic animal

3) doors to the bathroom hidden in the wall are to be expected and there's no need to applaud

Our only picture inside of Kei. Lavender walls, white trim and mirror accents, silver and crystal. Beautiful decor, even if my picture is really of a random angle in the restaurant.

DAY NINE

The next morning we woke up super early to catch our bus to Versailles. Even with the morning chill and the sun not being fully risen, our first glimpses of Versaille were spectacular and glittery. The camera cannot capture it, but we tried anyway. Not knowing a ton about French history (Kelsey), I could tell from his home why the people had a love/hate relationship with the king. How could you not adore someone with such a spectacular home? But how could you not loathe something so self-indulgent and extravagant.

In front of the golden gates.

Still shiny even with some cloud cover.

Gazing at the gardens.

Sweet, right? This was also just the smaller "side" garden. A teaser for the gardens to come.

The main garden complete with gold-plated statue fountain, marble statues lining the walkways, acres of woods, and a man-made lake.

Picture this place during a party with all of the  fountains on and fancy dresses everywhere.

Selfie for good measure.

Picture gazing back toward the palace.

Fountain of Apollo. I love how it looks like he's coming straight out of the water.

Mike: Kelsey after I insisted on walking down another random pathway on our way back to the main castle.

Kels: Mike literally wanted to go on a walking adventure through the bamboo mazes of Versailles without knowing where we were going. AND I had not had any coffee yet today. :)

Kels: After we got back from Versailles, we had a wine tasting scheduled back near the Louvre. It turned out to be a really cool tasting experience that educated you on the wine process before your tasting portion, and you got to take experiential quizzes through an app you downloaded on your phone. Our favorite (maybe just mine? haha) moment was at the end when our sommelier, Baptiste, educated us on various wines. I asked what his favorite wine ever was (of course) and he said a 1987 Burgundy that he had on his birthday, and that's how we found out we were all born in the same year! Then he also helped us out by teaching us that a Cotes du Rhone is probably the cheapest and most consistently good wine you can order when out. 

Kels: This was the "wine label" room. Around the room were framed wine labels.

Kels: There was even a photo booth....so a little touristy, but we were tourists after all!

After the wine tasting, we took a little nap before our dinner cruise that evening. We walked about 40 minutes down the Seine to where the boat was. What ended being hilarious is that the boat basically took our same route down the Seine and turned around a few feet past our hotel. However, we did get to see the Eiffel tower at night! There was a point at night after dinner, where we went on the deck and tried to snap a million selfies of us and the sparkly Eiffel, but literally every one was blurry or I was uncontrollably laughing at our inability to take selfies or I had hair blowing in my face. 

Delicious foie gras!

Fancy.

Me creeping on Mike.

Close Up.

DAY TEN

I guess I realized on our last day in Paris that we weren't going to see EVERYTHING;), so I talked Mike into going for a run so that we could see some more sights. We ended up running/walking and snapping some pics along the way.

Notre Dame!

Statue of Charlemagne.

A really cool firefighter training exercise.

Because we'd been eating so heavily basically since entering France, I yelped some good "healthy" spots for lunch and Bob's Kitchen seemed pretty popular. I tried to talk Mike into by telling him one of Taylor Swift's model best friends is a notorious fan of the place, so we could end up seeing TaySwift. The logic was a little complicated. But Mike obliged, and we ended up going on a long walking/window shopping adventure to Bob's which was super crowded. I ordered the veggie stew, Mike got a pasta salad with a sushi wrap, and we both got juices and also shared a cookie. Everything was amazingly delicious and also vegan. 

I took a picture of this so I could try to recreate at home. Veggie stew with green curry sauce.

Kels: Of course when ordering our juice, Mike got a combination of like 5 juices for each:) 

Because Mike had been so good about letting me take frequent naps and museum breaks, letting me pick vegetables for lunch, and also letting me attempt to speak French sometimes, I manned up and agreed to go to the Rodin Museum. I'm so glad I did! It was definitely one of my favorite museums of the trip. It's at Rodin's house and houses many of his most famous pieces.

The Thinker

I forget what this one is called (Lover's Embrace?), but it's definitely my favorite.

Mike: The Kiss. Very close guess!

The gardens were nice too.

Later that evening we got dinner at a Spanish Iberico Ham shop, so naturally we got some Spanish ham. It came with potato pancakes, smoked salmon, bread, sauce, and a cute lemon squeezer,

Glass plates.

DAY 11

Unfortunately, we don't have any more pictures of our trip after this, but we did have an adventure waking up early and getting to the airport. We planned to get to the airport earlier than needed and to take our hotel's airport shuttle, which we did. However, traffic, picking up other passengers, navigating Charles de Gaulle, and intense security (which we were grateful for) led to us still not having made it through passport check (much less security check) by the time our flight started boarding (two terminals away). Naturally we were freaking out, but every airport staff we spoke with about this (hey....uh...we really need to make our flight and there are a lot of people in line) seemed perfectly confident we would make it. Well, we did end up making it and also sprinting with backpacks to our gate. 

We flew into Detroit before getting a flight back to DC. One nice thing about the Detroit airport and long layover was that I treated myself to a manicure and chair massage and we got to take showers in the Delta sky lounge When we got back to DC, we had a quick uber trip home and basically went straight to bed.

Until next time, Europe.

Lille

DAY FIVE (CONTINUED)

The train ride through the chunnel was so quick that Kelsey didn't realize we were underwater until we weren't anymore, and Rachel was waiting to greet us at the Lille train station.

We were hungry, so Rachel and Carson took us to a nearby restaurant after dropping our stuff off at their place.

Kels: I got so excited for wine and sunshine and France that I snapped a selfie. Rachel's face says it all.

Kels: I decided to order the beef carpacchio because I was feeling adventurous and thought I could eat raw meat. It was so beautiful that I ate half of it before feeling slightly grossed out.

Mike: This is a good case study of the conflict at the center of all of Kelsey's decisions.

After lunch we decided to take a long walk, and we ended up at Lille's zoo. There was no entrance or other useful indicator that would suggest we were at a zoo, we just walked and found ourselves inside of one. 

Rach was very excited to show us the zoo.

Kelsey: Oh my gosh this guy was the cutest scariest guy ever. I could have watched him for hours.

Kels: Mike is great at candid photos.
Mike: Thanks.

Mike: I forget what was said immediately before taking this picture, but it clearly performed as intended.

There was a train ride near/in (who can tell, really?) the zoo. Rach was too tall. So were the rest of us.

This memorial has a cool backstory:

http://laurasviequotidienne.blogspot.com/2011/12/statue-lille-ses-fusilles.html

After wandering around Lille we returned to Rachel and Carson's apartment, which was perfectly located and only accessible by an extremely dangerous staircase.

Mike: Oh, it was also my Birthday, so Rachel got me some champagne sparkling white wine that was not made in the champagne region. It was excellent.

Mike: We had dinner at La Parte des Anges and ordered many trays of meat, cheese, and fish. Possibly the best meal of the entire trip.

Mike: Of course Rachel arranged for a ridiculous birthday tray to be brought out at the end of the meal. She knows me so well.

DAY SIX

At this point we had been going hard for almost a week, so we started to take things a bit easier. 

Kelsey enjoyed the free sparkling water and cookies provided in the gym at our hotel.

We spent a lot of time just wandering into shops and staring at pastries.

We discovered that putting hamburger buns under glass makes them seem somehow better than hamburger buns.

And we sampled most of the things in Meert, including the famous Meert waffles, which are not really waffles and are really the purest representation of what vanilla oreos could be / vanilla sugar burgers indescribable.

Then Rachel announced that she had a surprise for me (Mike)...

This French guy!

But he wasn't just any French guy- he was handing out quests to find goblets of beer across the city of Lille, as one does.

So we went around tasting various beers...

...and taking pictures of local landmarks (this is where they make a dessert called a merveilleux). 

While trying out one mystery beer we noticed something called "Tactical Nuclear Penguin" so we ordered one of those as well.

It tasted sort of like a whiskey made out of soy sauce. Not pictured- Kelsey vehemently not enjoying the Tactical Nuclear Penguin.

At the end of the scavenger hunt/tasting we ended up at a bar owned by people who were really into science fiction and fantasy.

From the menu.

This was the bar's bathroom.  It's bigger on the inside.  If you watch Doctor Who, that's hilarious.  If you do not watch Doctor Who, this picture and caption do not make any sense.

After the scavenger hunt, we stopped by a grocery store for some dinner ingredients and also picked up a dessert. The French really know how to do pastries. They have tons of beautiful pastries sitting in the window every day. Then you get to choose one. Although it's so very hard to choose one, choosing two is not an option because it would destroy your appreciate of the one. Thus, you have to wait for one to speak to you. Then they wrap it in a special box for you to take home.

Once, you unwrap the box, your pastry treat is perfectly preserved inside, just as it looked in the window. How do they do that?

And when you finally taste it (an experience which is best shared), you can marvel at how incredible it is that it tastes even better than it looks.

DAY SEVEN

Obviously, at this point, I (Kels) was growing accustomed to all the coffee all the time, so Mike and I went in search of a coffee place when we woke up and found a cute place to settle.

Our first "Cronut", a miraculous combination of a croissant and donut. And my (Kels's) latte came with sprinkles! Of course.

Going on a tea tasting adventure, we started in a British-themed tea room. Kels had tomato tart, Mike had a salmon sandwich, and we shared herbal tea. Carson sat most of this day out because we all started to get sick the night before, but he got the sickest.

Later that evening, Rachel introduced us to a American/Twenties-themed bar in the area. It was absolutely fabulous. It reminded Mike and me of a more casual and less pretentious/exclusive Gibson with drinks that were just as good. If you ever end up in Lille, you have to go here. The drinks and service were impeccable.

"Wood Julep"

Something with a liquor we'd not heard of.....with Sprinkles

This was a chocolate-y drink that also had a citrus/sour flavor. It worked!

And "apple pie" drink.

The view outside "Bloempot" when Rachel was trying to negotiate us a table inside. Sadly, she was unable to, but we ended up with an amazing dinner anyway. Apparently it's easy to find amazing restaurants in France.

I have no clue, but it's pretty.

Some sort of white fish with a cream-based sauce.

Potato pancakes and asparagus, venison liver? and steak.

Mike: And then we begged them to stop bringing us more food.

Mike: And then we exploded.

Kels: Thank goodness this dish was light. Otherwise, we definitely would have exploded.

Mike: I remember it differently.

And so we ended our time in Lille. Rachel and Carson showed us an amazing time and by day eight we were both starting to get seriously travel fatigued, but we were determined to finish strong in Paris. More to follow.