http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Vanessa-and-Tyler/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Vanessa and Tyler en-us Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:55:35 +0000 Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:55:35 +0000 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 Popersquos 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 cou http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-10076.html Well I donrsquot know where to start. Todayrsquos actual date is the first of March. Yikes That means I have 6 months worth of activity to sum up for posterities sake. Okay. Well over the last 6 months I have sent out a few emails so some of this will be old news to you all but bear with me. So I guess I will start in the beginning. After months of preparation we arrived in Paris on http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-4865.html 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 Lon http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/United-Kingdom/England/Greater-London/blog-4869.html Itrsquos funny how when you live in a city itrsquos hard to imagine why people choose to come there on vacations. You sort of become accustomed to all the ldquositesrdquo 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 wer http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-5084.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-5088.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-5093.html 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Switzerland/South-West/Interlaken/blog-5101.html 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 fis http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-5102.html 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 t http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-5740.html On Sunday the 16th of January we finally got around to going out on the ChristmasWinter 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 http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Ile-de-France/Paris/blog-6666.html 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. Va http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/France/Provence-Alpes-C-te-d-Azur/blog-7140.html