Bonjour de Paris!

I've always wanted to travel to Paris and last week I was finally able to do so :-)
We thought about taking the high speed train to Paris but then decided to drive. The drive from Belgium to Paris was three hours but we stopped halfway to eat so the time flew by. We saw the high speed trains go past the highway and WOW were they FAST. The train gets to Paris in one and half    hours! When we plan our trip to London we will most likely be taking the speed train.                                   The very first place on my itinerary.... yes I made another itinerary. My schedules may be nerdy but hey we were able to see almost all of the main sights in two days. The first place was the Eiffel Tower! The tower is even more gorgeous than I expected. We wanted to go up to the top but the line was a two hour wait so we figured we'd do that on another visit when it wasn’t FREEZING outside. The cutest part of being there was seeing a stranger propose to his girlfriend!  
                                                                                

We had dinner at Hard Rock Café Paris and the food tasted just like America. I can’t believe with all the yummy French food around us, we went to get American food. We must be missing home.  The best part of my meal was the REAL sour cream !!! First time I ate sour cream in months!!



    

We were planning on staying with Caleb’s friend Zoe but she didn’t have internet at her apartment and we really wanted to watch the first USF basketball game online that night. We decided to go to a hotel which was awesome! We stayed very close to the Arc de Triomphe… this is a monument that I believe was built to honor soldiers who fought in the French Revolution.



                                           



The next morning we visited the Louvre museum. This museum is HUGE, so huge that there is a mall underneath it! The Louvre Pyramid was very nice and  I couldn’t help but remember the DaVinici Code ;-) When we were taking pictures outside the Louvre three soldiers got out of a tinted window unmarked car. These soldiers seriously had the biggest guns I’d ever seen…. Bigger than the soldiers in Mexico. They just started walking towards all the people, we felt really uncomfortable. That’s the first time all the talk of “terrorism” kind of spooked us.










We went shopping near all the designer shops and walking down that street I truly felt like I was in Paris. I thought all of Paris would be a perfect clean “designer” city but in actuality Paris is just like any other city with the dirty aspect. Some of the neighborhoods were really bad and we even saw a boy steal a woman’s purse!

                                                      So happy to find Starbucks to wake me up in the morning :)                    

The "Venice of the North" Brugge, Belgium

We visited Brugge, Belgium with the Tofi family a couple weeks ago. Brugge was only an hour away and is very close to the coast of Belgium. I love Brugge! It is now one of our favorite cities. There our chocolate shops on every corner and even though it was raining it felt like a very "warm" place to be. It was the first time Dior felt like he was really experiencing Europe. Brugge is also known as the "Venice of the North" because canals run along the city. I brought along my travel guides and made sure we stuck to the itinerary. I can't wait to go back to Brugge !                                                   

                                

Time to Catch You Up...

I apologize for the delay in my writing. I have been keeping myself busy and getting in to more of a routine with my day. Now let me tell you about what I have been up to.....

First, I am very sad to say Jared and Lindsey Quayle returned to Utah.  I loved going to Holland with Lindsey and seeing her beloved windmills, almost running over bicycles in Amsterdam, yelling at Stewie in the tiny Smart, waffles in Knokke and most importantly going to get milk! Jared, if you read this, please know Lindsey is a fantastic driver ;) Also please be on her team once in a while when you mini golf, bowl, play board games, etc… even if she sucks. I hope Lindsey bakes you all the cookies and cake you can eat with gallons of milk to drink. Lindsey helped me get through the big transition of moving to Belgium and I am very thankful! I still want to go fishing in Utah for littly fishys… which apparently have guts.

Next, Dior's team has been struggling a bit in their regular season games. They are 0-4. Not so great but I am confident its going to turn around very soon. In between regular season games they also play games against teams in their league for the "Belgian Cup." They won both games in the first round knocking the other team out of the Cup and now we move to the second round!! The Belgian Cup games are all season so we wont know who wins the Cup until May (unless of course we are knocked out, which we wont be).

I've found a couple new restaurants that I LOVE. The funny thing is neither are Belgian :) The first one is in Antwerp, Belgium and its called Amadeus. Their house special is ribs!! They are delicious and are not made with BBQ sauce but are instead covered with a sweet sauce. I guess the sweet sauce can be considered a Belgian meal. The second restaurant is Wok Dynasty, this is an Asian restaurant where you pick up all the raw foods from a table and then a chef cooks it in front of you. This place reminds us of Benihanas in San Francisco. Another restaurant we found (not my favorite) is La Cucaracha. I met a girl in the city who recommended it to us.... The food was "Mexican" but as you can see from the picture of the nachos it was not MY kind of Mexican. Guess I will have to wait till I get home to have real Mexican food.

I have grown confident in my driving here and am now venturing to other cities during the day. I go to the American grocery store in Everberg and the TINY two way road to get there is the definition of Belgian driving.  Here is a picture of the road to the store and the other two pictures are what surround the road a little river and gorgeous field of purple flowers.



If a car is coming from the other direction you have to make room by driving on the curb.



I've been visiting Brussels and taking lots of pictures but the problem I am finding now is that by the time I upload the photos I forget what the pictures are of. I need to start uploading my pictures daily and naming them so I don't forget.

A church in Brussels.

Last but not least its almost THANKSGIVING!! The other girls and I have divided the cooking for the Thanksgiving day meal. We will be having a big dinner with all of Dior's teammates. One of the dishes I will be making is "camotes."  Thats one of my favorite things my mom makes so I decided to do a practice run today. I wanted to make sure I could actually make edible sweet potatoes. I started making them in the morning which meant my mom was sleeping I did my best to remember how she makes it.  When I was finally able to get her recipe I realized I made it a completely different way!  I wasnt too upset since mine were delicious!! I am going to do another practice run before Thanksgiving with my mom's recipe.

I am glad we are planning a Thanksgiving meal, since its an American holiday no one else will be celebrating here. I was really bummed to learn that Halloween is also not celebrated here... Thank goodness Christmas is a Catholic holiday that is celebrated!! But hopefully I wont be here for Christmas!!

Dior would like to add to my blog..... "By the way shout out to the San Francisco Giants for winning the World Series!!!! YEEEAAAHHH! Hope you all had a Happy Halloween! Love Ya'll!"