Paris Lately

I believe we owe everyone who reads this blog a huge apology. We have been slacking lately on updating this thing, but can you blame us? We are in Paris! With that said, we have exactly 20 more days here in the City of Lights. This summer has flown by and we are so thankful for all the memories and experiences we have had so far. There isn't a theme to this blog post, we just wanted to give you an update on our recent adventures and give you glimpse into our lives lately.

Well, first of all, I believe we have officially skipped right over the season of Summer. It has been rainy/cloudy/cold for a little over 2 weeks now and I am pretty sure we are experiencing Fall right now. Goodbye sun and goodbye tan skin. We definitely do not let that bring us down though. Because of the rainy weather, the office has been extremely slow at times, but we keep ourselves entertained in the office, don't you worry.

We recently had a few days off together, which doesn't happen too often so we decided to take advantage of it! We hit up our favorite breakfast spot, Breakfast in America, and took major advantage of the bottomless coffee and huge portions! We went to a different location then our other trip to BIA, and this one was super cute and less crowded. It was our waiters first day of work, which is always a funny time. Patricia got the omelet and I got none other than the French Toast. I realize that is ironic to order a French dish in an American Breakfast place, but we are in France, and it is made American style. Wow, I'm confused, but the bottom-line is- It was phenomenal. AND healthy- notice the bananas :) Here is a before/after picture of my meal.

After breakfast we walked over to our other favorite spot, Notre Dame. We have been here for over 2 months and still haven't been inside! It was on our Paris "Bucket List" so we decided today was the day to cross that off. The church is so beautiful, the only downside is it is crawling with tourists and pigeons. After standing in a line where we heard the most english we had in a while, we finally made it to the inside of the church. Again, it is so hard to ever get used to beautiful stain-glass churches and cathedrals. Here are a few pictures we captures during our journey to Notre Dame.

And here is Patricia attempting to ride a rabbit. I guess we have officially outgrown playgrounds. How upsetting.

From there, the shopping began! We walked all around Paris and stumbled upon lots of cute shops in various areas around the Opera and Latin Quarter. Our first purchase of the day was a set of coasters! Georgia and Liza- I hope you are okay with using these in our house in College Station!

We walked into a Swatch store and I seriously have a guilty pleasure for watches, especially fun colored ones! I tried this one on and within 3 minutes of thinking about it, I bought it! I am slowly starting to realize that I have more of a spontaneous purchase problem then I thought! Either way, I am very happy with it :)

Then we ventured into a shoe store (one of many). We are both on search for Birkenstock sandals. Patricia found some that she tried on and were super cute, but decided not to buy them. I got a little side tracked with my mission and spotted some Nike High-tops. So, naturally, I bought them. They will be making plenty of appearances at Chi-O parties, don't you worry.

We had a pretty fun day together and have plenty of pictures to prove it!

A different night we went to our first concert here in Paris! The band was "Architecture in Helsinki" which neither of us had heard of before. We youtubed them before the concert and got a good laugh, but I will say they were much better in concert! We went with our manager, Jack and his wife Leigh, Baby Jack, Travis and Jillian! The venue was pretty cool and it wasn't too crowded. Here are a few pics of the evening. I apologize for the blurriness!

We have thoroughly been enjoying our time here and we hope we have done a good enough job sharing our experiences with y'all through this blog and our pictures! More updates to come!

Fuimos a la Playa

Hola familias y amigos! This past weekend we took a glorious vacation to Barcelona with Patricia’s friend Nick. We had an amazing time relaxing, eating great food, seeing awesome sights, and spending long hours on the beach.

Our inability to speak French (still) caused for a rather silent Taxi ride to the airport, but once we were there, we were all smiles! Here we are about to board our plane!

On our first night in Barcelona we went to a great tapas restaurant and tried some of the most interesting foods. We tried green peppers, fried cheese and raspberry sauce, potato stuff, and these fried small fish! Look!

After dinner we went to the famous ICE BARcelona, where we received furry parkas and heavy gloves before entering a freezing (-15 degrees celcius to be exact) bar with loud music and even louder Americans. We had a blast dancing and taking lots of pictures!

On our second day in Barcelona we embarked on a Fat Tire Bike Tour through the city. We got a glimpse of the beach, saw the INCREDIBLE Sagrada Familia, and many other sights.

Later that night we went to a Flamenco Opera in a cool, modern theatre called Palau de Musica Catalana. We were blown away by the talented singers and dancers – it was a blast!

On our last day in Barcelona, we went to La Boqueria and met up with Patricia’s friend from high school Celina! The market was colorful and plentiful, but full of anxious tourists.

We left after quickly strolling down the aisles, and headed straight for, you guessed it, the BEACH! We hadn’t seen the ocean or had the chance to lay out since before arriving in Paris, so you can only imagine our excitement. We and Nick staked out a great place on the beach and laid there for six hours. Yep, six. Despite the multitude of topless women and the major sunburns we walked away with, we had a blast at the beach relaxing and swimming in the Meditteranean. We also got hennas!

We will never forget it! Around 10:00 pm (totally normal in Spain) we had dinner at an incredible seafood restaurant. We shared the greatest seafood Paella in the world, we’re convinced.

All in all we had an amazing adventure in Barcelona, but are glad to be back in Paris! Gracias para todas las memorias, Barcelona!

Day Tripper

It is official- we are full-blown working women. We work roughly 40 hours a week and man can it get exhausting! Of course we love what we are doing, but naturally we look forward to those 2 consecutive days that we get off per week! It is a great time to relax, catch up on some e-mails, reading, sleeping, and of course BLOGGING! (which we have been slacking on lately...oops sorry!) One of the main goals of ours since our arrival in Paris was to utilize every moment we have and to seize the day every day we are here. That means doing cool things on our days off- which we can honestly say we have! It helps that we are working with people that feel the same way so we always have companions on our journeys. Here are just a few of our adventures we have experienced on our time off.

One morning we got up fairly early (lets get real, we need our sleep) and hopped on the Metro where we made our way to a park called Butte-Chaumont. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't exactly ideal for an afternoon in a park napping and getting our tan on, so we did a quick walk through, took some cute pics, and ate inside a cafe once it started sprinkling on us. We got some great pics, but this was for sure one of our favorites...

We also have the opportunity to go on as many Fat Tire Bike Tours as we want...FO FREE! So, naturally, we take advantage of that in as many ways as possible. One of which is going on our wonderful Monet's Garden Tour out in Giverny! We went separately on different days and each had one of our besties as companions. Patricia went out there on a Saturday with one of her best friends from home, Nick, who was staying with us for a bit. Bethany went with one of her BFF's from home, Kristin, who has been studying here in Paris for the past 6 weeks. Here are some pics of each of our afternoons and words cannot describe the beauty of the gardens and paintings!

After Monet's Tour, we got on kind of a "Monet's kick" and had to visit Musee De L'Orangerie which features 8 of Monet's water lilly paintings, each at a different time of day. Here's a picture from inside of it...

One day, we decided to walk around near one of our favorite Metro stops, Odeon, and we stumbled upon the Luxembourg Gardens! It was cool to finally see the place that we had heard so much about. It was full of statues, flowers, and the lovely gravel that seems to make up most of Paris' "gardens." Needlesstosay, we loved it!

Near the beginning of our time here we were able to go up to the top of a building called Montparnasse, which is one of the most boring and ugly buildings in Paris so that is why you go up to the top floor of it so you can see a sky view of Paris without having it in the view...makes sense. Here is one of the shots we got...

We have also visited Socre Coeur, the tallest point in Paris that offers a great view as well! Surrounding it are a bunch of restaurants and cafes as well as artists that paint right in front of you.

Nick was in town for a few days and one of those day we got up early and headed out to Versailles. We didn't rent bikes, which was probably a poor decision on our part, but lets just say we got the work out of our lives walking around town. We went to the Market and got chicken, fruit, baguettes, cheese, and of course dried strawberries. Once we had our food we started our treck towards the Grand Canal which offered a beautiful view of the Chateau. Here we are on our picnic!

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, we have had so many visitors come and stay with us. Our last and final one (that was planned) was our friend from A&M, Bess! She had been studying in Spain for 6 weeks and headed our way once she was finished and we got to play for a few days. Currently, there is a carnival in the Tuilleries Gardens so naturally, we hit that up. We rode the best ride ever, the Air Swing, where we were taken up in swings and offered the most beautiful view of the Gardens, the Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower! We got some good pics...

This blog is getting long so we will end with a bunch of pictures of some of our other day trips that we have enjoyed. Below are pictures of the Head in the Hand statue, Arc de Triumph, St. Chapelle, and Napoleons apartments found in the Louvre.

We have had so much fun on our days off and we hope you have enjoyed seeing what we have been up to on our free time. On Saturday we will be heading to the exciting city of Barcelona! Stay tuned for an incredible blog post from that! Until then, Au Revoir!

-B and P