Vanessa Luckey
I am a student from San Diego studying for the year in Paris. I am attending both Paris University IX Dauphine for business courses and Paris University X Nanterre for French. My boyfriend Tyler talked his work into letting him work over the internet for 10 months, so he is here with me in our small studio in the 14 district of Paris. I love it here. I only have 4 months left, so I am going to make the best of them. Vanessa and Tyler
Travel Blog Posts
My Dad and Linda come for a visit (by Tyler)
Published: June 3rd 2005Europe » France » Île-de-France » Paris
April 3rd 2005
My Dad and Linda arrived in early April and stayed for 2 weeks. They had actually planned a side trip to Rome that coincidentally coincided with the Pope’s funeral. Since it was so crazy there, they did not go to the Vatican, but got to see many parts of Rome that we missed when we went with Ian. The first day that they were here we took them down to the boat ride on the Seine so they could get an idea of the layout of the city and hear some interesting facts from the tour guide on the boat. Next we took them for ice cream at a place on Ile St. Louis, which just happens to be the best ice cream in the whole entire world (as Vanessa mentioned in her last blog). The ... read more
Rollerblades, a Cool Ceiling, BBQ Ribs, and Roman Ruins (by Tyler)
Published: February 26th 2005Europe » France » Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur
February 26th 2005
In late January I bought Vanessa an early birthday present - rollerblades. I bought some for myself too so we can go out and skate around Paris. They are pretty good ones so we should be able to use them when we get home (down at Mission Bay and at Lake Murray). Anyway, we bought them now since every Friday night they have a group skate through the streets of Paris with thousands of people. Vanessa has been using them as much as she can - except for when it is too cold / wet outside. Speaking of which, we were hit with a major cold streak for about a month. It was in the 20’s and 30’s (with wind-chill making it feel like 10). It actually snowed several times and even stuck to the ground ... read more
Ice Skating...on the Eiffel Tower?
Published: January 30th 2005Europe » France » Île-de-France » Paris
January 30th 2005
On Sunday the 16th of January, we finally got around to going out on the Christmas/Winter themed date that I won in a game of rummy. Actually, the activity which we choose as the focal point of our outing was one that we had been planning to do since before I even won the date. For our date, we went Ice skating on the Eiffel Tower. What an experience! This year was something like the first time in 50 years that the city of Paris has decided to construct an ice skating rink on the first floor of the Eiffel tower. In fact, we wouldn’t have even found out about if it were not for our relatives back home. A lot of you read about it in the papers and let us know what was planned. ... read more
Crazy Italians, Riot Gear, A Three Hour Walk Home, and A Happy New Year
Published: January 15th 2005Europe » France » Île-de-France » Paris
January 15th 2005
New Years- We decided to join the crowds at the Arc de Triomph for the New Years Eve celebration. It was Crazy. The city organized a fireworks display on the Champs Elysees down towards the Place de la Concorde. The Ferris wheel was decked out with a huge Paris 2012 sign, and was the center of the display (Paris is in the candidature to host the Olympic Games). But, it is in reality March, I can tell you about the strategically placed complete shut down strike of the French transport system on the 9th of March- during the International Olympic Committee’s visit (in French- la greve, which means to strike, is practically a national past time. In fact I heard that some of that days protests were veritable street parties with food vendors and wine and ... read more
December 26th 2004
I love Christmas. I love Christmas trees, Christmas lights, Christmas carols, and Christmas food. It was certainly difficult to be away from our families, but Paris responded wonderfully to our need for Christmas type stuff to do. Around the 5th of December, the entire city started to put up all of their Christmas stuff, and I had a field day. All the local markets had decorations up; even the fish store had a blue Christmas arrangement. Around the city, about 13 temporary Christmas markets opened up. They were like our swap meets back home. You could buy gifts, food and there are even food stands where you can try out some Alsacian dishes. Alsace is a region on the French/German border. So, like Tyler and I discovered, Alsacian food is heavy (we had potatoes au gratin ... read more
Switzerland is cold Who knew?
Published: December 23rd 2004Europe » Switzerland » South-West » Interlaken
December 23rd 2004
We took a trip up to Lucerne, Switzerland from the 17th to the 23rd of December. We figured it would be nice to be in a winter wonderland. We had a great time, saw a lot of beautiful things, and froze our butts off. Lucerne is a really neat little tourist town set by a lake in an absolutely breathtaking environment. Parts of the town date back to the 14th century, and have an absolutely medieval feel to them. Our first couple of days in Lucerne were spent looking around the town and enjoying the local sites. It was cold and rainy, so whenever the weather would clear up, we would head out to check something new out. We saw the Lion Monument which was very pretty (even if it could use a cleaning). Then ... read more
November 29th 2004
For the most part, November passed relatively quickly, and we worked a lot. My classes took up a ton of time; I had group meetings at least two or three times a week outside of class in addition to homework. Tyler was studying for his GMAT and getting application stuff together to apply to grad school. We were busy people. Luckily though that all paid off. I got 16 of my 30 required units finished, and my classes the second semester are a lot less time consuming. Also, Tyler got a really good score on the GMAT, and got in to SDSU’s graduate business program for MBA’s. The ninth was Tyler’s 22nd birthday. I made him a really fattening dinner, so he was happy. Also, I got him a Katana (it’s just a display piece) since ... read more
October 31st 2004
Well, as October was coming to a close, my classes were becoming more demanding, and we started to settle into Parisian life. However, Halloween in one of my favorite holidays, and I did not want to totally miss out on it just because we were here in France. Luckily for us, Disneyland Paris had a Halloween themed month in October, and I was interested in seeing if the Disneyland over here measured up to the original southern California Park. It was a lot of fun. For the most part the parks are the same as each other, but there were some surprising differences. For one thing the rollercoasters Space Mountain and Thunder Mountain are much more like real rollercoasters here than in the original. Thunder Mountain actually includes a fairly large drop that carries you under ... read more
October 18th 2004
It’s funny how when you live in a city, it’s hard to imagine why people choose to come there on vacations. You sort of become accustomed to all the “sites” and forget to take the time to enjoy them. This is, believe it or not, even a little true for Paris. Maybe not as true as for someplace like San Diego, however, by the end of September, the only sites we had visited were those from my mandatory school field trips. Luckily for us, we have plenty of people coming to visit us over the course of the year. Our first guest was Lisa, Tyler’s mom, for the first two weeks in October. We had a great time. For the first time in 5 weeks, we were done with all the set up chores, and ... read more
A Little Bit of English for a Change
Published: October 10th 2004Europe » United Kingdom » England » Greater London
October 10th 2004
By this time, Lisa had been visiting for a little over a week, and I had started my courses at Dauphine. We spent the first 6 days of her visit looking around Paris (see following entry) but we decided to take a weekend trip over to London. We only had two days, so we ran around like crazy people trying to see all the major sites. Our first day was spent at Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and the London Eye. We actually decided to take buses around the city rather than the Tube for two reasons. 1.Compared to the Paris Metro, the Tube is just about the slowest thing you could imagine (only slightly exaggerated) 2.As you can see from the photos, there was actually some sun, not all clouds; we got a better tour of ... read more
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