What I Ate: Holiday Trip

I've got my life figured out (sort of). I've got my priorities straight.

Food is the most important part of any vacation. Yep.

Here are all the amazing things I (and my travel-mates) ate.

An authentic Dutch Crunch roll in Amsterdam

Belgian Chocolates

Sausage with Spicy Onions in Bruges 

Crepes below the Eiffel Tower

Chinese near Versailles

Lemon Tart #1

My first macaroons 

Raspberry

An amazing mushroom crepe after a long day at the Louvre

Macaroons and French-dubbed Simpsons at the hotel

The beginning of the macaroon obsession

Lemon Tart #2

Warm Baguette with Cheese

This macaroon tasted like an Oreo!

What you get when you order hot chocolate in Paris.

Berry crumble for breakfast

Finishing off the macaroons before the flight - Strawberry

Pistachio

Toasted Baguette 

Lemon Tart #3 .. Obviously my favorite thing about Paris.

A fish market in London.. I didn't eat these but I couldn't resist those stares.

Skewered Salmon and Organic Juice

Carrot Cake in London

Cupcakes eaten by Christine and Kaitlin

Finally, our dream fish and chips experience. So tasty.

In a couple weeks I head to Italy... and you better believe there will be a food diary just as extensive as this one.  

Prost!

Holiday Trip '11-'12: London

I'm finally getting around to my last installment of the Holiday Trip series. I'm such a slacker, I know! But the thought of picking my favorite pictures and then editing them was too overwhelming with finals looming over me. Thankfully, the end is right around the corner. Not thankfully, it's almost time to leave this wonderful place. But that's for another post.

London! My favorite city on the trip, and maybe ever. I just fell in love, everything about it was amazing. After a rocky end to my Paris trip anything was up from there, but I like to think that had nothing to do with it.

Christine and I arrived to London in the evening, and even though we had some tricky night-time transportation to deal with -- tricky mostly due to the fact we were so ungodly tired we could barely keep our eyes open -- we made it to our couch surfing hosts' place. If you don't know what couch surfing is.. well google it right now. It changed the way I think about travel and now I consider "connecting with locals" high on my travel must-do list. Anyway, Christine and I were lost for a bit in a rather shady part of town (opposite direction of where our host's pad was), but magically, a fox appeared and led us to a park, where the place was just around the corner from. We had never seen a fox before and I may have squealed with delight. After that we lovingly referred to that fox as our "spirit fox guide". 

Our host set us up in her living room with a blow up mattress, and to our delight their Christmas tree was still up. We were so happy, I can barely describe that moment. Drunk off of lack of sleep and finally getting to lay down, all while underneath glowing white lights.

Needless to say we slept until 1pm the next afternoon. It was much needed rest, but we were quickly losing daylight. After a wonderful home cooked breakfast by our hosts, we set out to take some picture of Big Ben + the Parliament (the next Florence + the Machine?) and walk along the waterfront. Christine and I enjoyed each others company but we were sad to find that no food places were open, and of course we had set a mission to find the best fish and chips in London. We settled on a coffee shop instead.

On day two, Christine and I met up with Kaitlin who was staying with a different couch surfing host. We did some stops on the Harry Potter tour (that last picture is of the inspiration of Diagon Alley!) which made us insanely happy. We also did a little shopping and I found some cute new things, and some presents that were unfortunately left at a bar in the latter part of the London trip. Sad times.

The rest of the trip we managed to shop, and shop some more (which explains were most of my January money went) and just relax. It was so nice to just hang and chat with the girls and not take on London at full speed like the rest of our trip. We found lots of time to eat, drink tea, BUY tea (yummm), visit free museums (London rocks), get haircuts, and just relax. We did manage to get our fish and chips, thanks to Kaitlin's host.

The last night, Christine, Kaitlin and I met our hosts for drinks at a hip bar in Soho, London (news to me that the one in NY wasn't the first). This first bar was the black hole in which my gifts were lost... but the night was amazing from there on out. Our hosts had to go home and get to bed, but since our flight was really early and because we didn't want to oversleep, we decided to just party and then sleep on the plane. Oh, the life of the responsible. We hung out with a co-worker of our host who was cute as ever, and her date who was also way adorable considering he danced like a goofball with a group of girls, and had to share his date with us. We danced, did some shots (some of us not so successfully... Christine), and met a tranny -- hooray! Best night ever!

We went back to the house just to pack and get our things, and then to the airport we went. It was a miserable time, as usual, due to lack of seating and the super fast security (which surprisingly is a bad thing when you have time to kill).

Then it was home, sweet Dessau. I was sad to see the trip end, but reminiscing on it all is still really exciting. I still can't believe that all happened.

Pinch me.

Prost!

Holiday Trip '11-'12: Paris

I'm sorry I've been absent so long... Dead week has finally arrived in Germany. It look a lot longer than normal to come around, and it did a good job of sneaking up on me. I took a break from my floor plans (which WILL be done today) to edit some of my photos and get this whole holiday trip coverage back on track.

So here we go! Paris was especially hard to be selective about photos. So bare with me here.

 

 

That sunset has zero editing! It was seriously amazing.

 

I have an obsession with the goddess Diana.

 

Real mummy!!!

 This Parisian trip was seriously all over the place.We had mostly good times, but some bad times too. I came into Paris on my own on December 28th by bus from Bruges. Bruges happened so quickly, and I had no internet access, so I'm not going to lie, I was a little unprepared. I know I was getting off the bus in Paris... but where in Paris? I knew where my hotel was but had no sense of the scale of Paris. And peoples, Paris is huge. The width of my finger on the map could have easily been three miles. Maybe even more, I'm no map expert. So I get off the bus and it's late afternoon.. after coming out of the bus station, I look for an information booth, yet they are all closed. I still have no idea why, unless 12/28 is a French holiday that I've never heard of. A young bus driver approached me as I probably looked visibly confused walking in circles and looking at maps posted by the street. His English wasn't perfect but we managed to get on the same page. He looked up the distance on his iPhone (I really wish I had one in that moment) and said to me "damn, that's far". Haha, great!

I eventually made it to my hotel after lots of walking around and asking people on the street. Christine and Amanda had already been in Paris for two days, and their stuff was in the hotel room we had reserved, but they were not! I met up with them at Notre Dame an hour later after some more getting lost on public transit (Are you seeing the trend? It keeps going...). By this time it was dark and sprinkling, but oh my goodness, Notre Dame at night was so beautiful. There was a large Christmas Tree all lit up and was all so romantic. Which is exactly what every single Parisian man must have been thinking too, because poor Amanda and Christine were frequently approached by creepy guys who didn't speak English. We exchanged some hilarious creeper-stories as we walked to the Pont de Arts Bridge to see the Locks of Love, and then on to the Eiffel tower. There we were approached by a group of three men who relentlessly tried to get to know us, though we weren't giving them much to work with, haha. Eventually we just abruptly turned and walked the opposite direction from where we came, and ended up at Trocadéro; a beautiful view of the tower where we could take pictures and avoid the huge crowds underneath the tower. 

On day two, Christine and Amanda stayed behind in the hotel in the morning in order to work on some homework and business stuff. I met up with Hazel who is staying in a local apartment with her wife, best friends, and sister and brother in law. We all went to Versailles and had an amazing time; her group was incredible -- very inviting, and so interesting to talk with. We bought the all-access tickets so we got to see the main palace, the gardens, and Marie Antoinette's private house. It was like a dream. Sophia Coppola's version of Marie Antoinette is one of my favorite movies ever visually, and it felt like being right in the scenes (for good reason, it was filmed there!). We were on our way out through the gardens when the sun set, it was perfect timing. That pink sunset was just screaming Marie. 

Day three, we were reunited with Garrett and we took a trip to the Louvre. We literally spent the entire day there. Easily. At this point, my feet had taken a real beating from all the walking of the trip as a whole. Garrett and Amanda felt the same, and we took frequent breaks much to Christine's dismay. We admired her energy. 

Day four was New Years Eve, and we decided to take it a little easy considering we expected to have a long night ahead. We lazed around the hotel in the morning and met up with some of Hazel's group (sans Hazel) for a tour of the Marais distract -- a once aristocratic district taken over by industrial enterprises after the Industrial Revolution. Our tour guide was adorable and so French, haha.

We went back to the hotel to change, and then headed out for dinner. It was the most amazing dinner of my entire life; Duck Confie with roasted potatoes, escargot (yum!), some rose wine and a meringue dessert. I'll post pictures in a food round-up soon!

The night quickly turned sour after that. We met up with Hazel's group, whom are still awesome haha, but the countdown was a little anti-climatic. We went to the Louvre for a good view of the Eiffel Tower, but sadly nothing happened at midnight. Not even a countdown of any sort, so people were randomly cheering in small groups as their phone told them it was midnight. We found a little more excitement as we walked along the main street and some cars were honking and people were shouting. The group of us walked and walked for maybe an hour through giant crowds making our way to Champ de Elysee because we heard there were clubs and bars, and that was the direction of the general crowd. We went into a small, already crowded bar to have a drink with Hazel's crew. We had a lot of fun and laughs, and made plans for when we're all back in California again. I can't wait to hang out with Hazel and her wife in SLO! After one drink we split ways, and Christine, Garrett, Amanda and I looked for somewhere to dance. We didn't find anything except a club of senior citizens dancing to "Celebrate Good Times", so we kept walking towards the arch. 

Suddenly there were people running towards us covering their noses and mouths. Confused, we looked around and saw some guy yelling and running in the street as riot police in full gear were spraying him with pepper spray. Then we felt it -- burning in our noses and mouths, so we turned around and walked briskly away. At this point we lost the will to party.. sadly.. and attempted to get home. Garrett needed to get to the airport for an early morning flight so we said goodbyes and good lucks. 

Myself and the other girls found to our horror that every metro station around us was closed, and piles of people were sitting at all the bus-stops, waiting for night buses that didn't seem to be coming. Our hotel and may others we met along the way assured us public transit would be working (and free!) on New Years Eve.. but it was not. I'm still not sure why. But after many failed attempts at hailing cabs, renting bikes, and hitchhiking, we ended up walking towards our hotel (that was near Versailles, probably close to 20 miles away) for three hours and then waiting 2 hours for the normal day trams to start running, then taking the tram for 30 minutes, then walking another 30 to get to our hotel. We were exhausted, and pretty miserable. And we didn't really get the cool New Years Eve experience. But we were able to laugh about it the next day once we were in our right minds again. Poor Amanda didn't get to sleep because she had to go straight to the train station to catch a morning train for Dessau.

My last day in Paris turned it around as Christine and I woke up right before check-out. Feeling a little rested we walked to Notre Dame once again and took in it's beauty in daytime. We had a leisurely breakfast, read magazines, took pictures in front of gargoyles -- a typical girl's day. We spent the afternoon walking through small streets and finding any new food we hadn't gotten to try yet, and buying little knick-knacks for our friends and family back home.

Before we knew it, London was on the horizon!

If you made it through all that, you're a champ! High five!