After relaxing over Easter weekend we decided to take advantage of cheap airfare and headed to Paris for the May Day Holiday Weekend. It was our third attempt  and we finally made it! The weather was lovely warm and sunny and even a little hot on Sunday. We both loved Paris. We wished we had a third full day but we crammed as much in as we could.

We arrived late on Friday and took the subway from the airport to our hotel. Mike and I both wish America had public transportation options like so much of Europe, it is something we will miss when we go home.

After checking into out hotel we decided to walk around a bit just to see what our neighborhood was like after dark. After a quick walk we settled in for the night. Our hotel was in the Latin Quarter, it was small but adequate and only a 5 minute walk from Notre Dame.

We started our morning off by finding a local restaurant to order crepes for breakfast. Mike practiced his high school French and did surprisingly well considering how long ago he took French. The waitress spoke some English but it definitely helped that Mike spoke some French. Our breakfast was great, one thing about Paris is all the food was yummy.

After breakfast we walked over to Notre Dame. There was a short line but it moved fast and admission for the main part of the church is free. We both expected it to be bigger than it was but it was still pretty. I guess after touring a handful of churches and cathedrals since our move some things aren’t what we expected.

Statue of Charlemagne

The one thing we realized with our timing to take advantage of the May Day holiday is that May Day is actually a holiday in most of Europe and therefore some sights were going to be closed on Sunday, oops. Luckily we realized this early in the day on Saturday so we could make sure to adjust our schedule.

We took the subway to the Eifel Tower to confirm they would be open on Sunday since we knew the Louve would be closed and we needed to prioritize. Before heading back to the Louve we stopped at a café for lunch, again another tasty meal and then we headed for the Louve. We purchased our tickets downstairs and because we avoided the main entrance outside there was only a short line. The Louve is amazing, it is huge and you would have to spend an entire day if not more if you wanted to see it all. We decided to hit the big things like the Mona Lisa and then spent another 2-3 hours wandering around till it closed. Mike was amazed at the size of some of the paintings. I was enthralled to see some of the painting I had learned about in history class like the famous painting of Napoleon crowning himself Emperor. All the captions were in French but luckily we overheard a few tour guides speaking English so we got the history of some of the paintings. You can hire an audio guide but we didn’t since we knew we would be rushed on time as it was.

After a busy afternoon we walked home to our hotel, we stopped along the way for a beer and again just to watch the locals. A friend, Al, who is English and grew up vacationing in France recommended a place for dinner and it was great. After stopping by out hotel to freshen up for dinner we headed back out hitting the Arc de Triumph. The Arc is often overshadowed by the Eifel Tower but we both agreed the views were worth it. The line when we went was short, so we paid and headed up the stairs to the top. They also have an elevator but we decided after all the yummy food the exercise would do us good.

By the time we finished it was about 8:30-9 pm so we headed to our restaurant (this is normal dinner time in France especially on a Saturday). Le Relais de Venise has a fixed menu, steak and fries. That might not sound all that amazing but it was. When you sit down you tell them how you want your steak cooked and order a bottle of wine and that is it. You get a lovely dinner salad and then you get the best steak ever. Another great thing was you got two servings, when you finish your first they bring you a second helping. It had the most amazing hot mustard to put on the steak. Mike and I split a desert because we were so full. By the time we were done it was almost midnight so we took the subway back towards our hotel. We walked over to Notre Dame and took a few photos of it at night before heading back to our hotel.

Sunday was our last day in Paris, so we started the morning off with coffee and croissants, then we headed to the Eifel Tower. If you can purchase your tickets in advance otherwise the lines for the elevators are very long (around 2 hours), Mike and I weren’t able to purchase our tickets in advance (they were sold out when we tried to buy them a week in advance) so we decided to take the stairs. The line for the stairs was still about an hour wait but it was  better than two hours but honestly it wasn’t that bad. If you don’t have knee problems I think the stairs are doable and cut the wait time in half.

The Eifel Tower really is amazing. On the first and second levels there is lots of information about the building of the tower. Then we lined up to take the elevator to the top. The views from the top were amazing, definitely worth the wait.

After our morning at the tower we decided to walk along the Seine and just see what there was to see. There was lots, I’ll put a few photos here but Mike has posted them all on the website www.mikeandgraceh.com.  We stopped into a café called Angelina’s it is famous for it’s hot chocolate but unfortunately we were both so warm from walking we settled on cold drinks instead.

Before we knew it the day was almost over and it was time to head back to the airport. There was so much we didn’t see but we were really happy to hit the “big 4” while we were there. Mike and I both highly recommend Paris to anyone. We had a great time and the people seemed very nice. I know there is the stereotype that all French people are rude but we didn’t experience that at all.

Oh my I first must start this entry with an apology for being so late on these entries. It’s hard to believe it’s been 6 weeks since we traveled to Barcelona. The last 6 weeks have been extremely busy for us and I’ve just not had the time. We always take a million photos and I can’t post them all here however Mike listed all our photos on the website www.mikeandgraceh.com.

Barcelona – we originally planned this trip with the intent of meeting up with Mike’s grandma and aunts but they had to cancel their trip. So we did not plan as much in advance for this trip as we have for others. Our first day, Saturday, we took the train from the airport and found our hotel. It was a lovely warm day so we decided to wander around and get our bearings.

Barcelona is a beautiful but extremely large city. It has a number of large shaded avenues and unique architecture.  We found a little place for lunch and did our best to order off the menu since the place we popped into did not have an English menu. Between our trips to Mexico and my high school Spanish all those years ago we managed pretty well. After lunch we explored a local farmers market, it was starting to shut down for the day but I took a few photos.

After lunch we headed to one of the main squares in search of the hop on hop off bus to get some information about the city. We purchased a two day pass and hopped on the bus.

On our second day we found a little coffee shop close to our hotel and enjoy breakfast out in the sunshine.

We then made our way to the nearest hop on hop off stop to start our sightseeing.  The hop on hop off was a great way to get around, we stopped a Castle de Montjuic , Park Guell, and down the grand Avenue Diagonal,  before heading back to the city center.  Some of our favorite things included the Columbus statue in the harbor that purposely has Columbus pointing east, since he was looking for an Eastern Passage to Indian when he stumbled across North America. One of the first stops of the bus was at a beautiful park on a bluff above the city. It made for some great photos.

We found an amazing tapas place for dinner on Sunday, we enjoyed sangria with dinner and the food was amazing. After an amazing meal and our favorite overall of the trip we just wandered around town. We found a little bar around the corner from our hotel and enjoyed a cold beer and some football (soccer) with the locals.

On Monday we had enough time to visit the Sagrid Familia, which is the most unique cathedral we have ever seen. The designer Gaudi had amazing vision, and Mike as an engineer, was greatly impressed by his design skills and use of math for his design.

After the cathedral we took the subway to Park Guell, and then took the escalators to the top. Gaudi had envisioned this place as a clean, peaceful place for people to live outside of the hustle and bustle of the city. It’s a beautiful park but it was extremely busy. A few of the original buildings still stand.

By this point it was time to head to the airport. Overall Barcelona was a beautiful city. It wasn’t our favorite city but we had a wonderful time. The weather was perfect, warm but not hot so it was great to just sit outside at a café and watch the locals and look at the beautiful architecture.

So excited after looking for tickets pretty much since we arrived we finally found tickets for a Saturday showing of Les Miserables playing at the Queens Theatre in London. Mike has had me hunting for tickets for months and since our departure to Belfast has been delayed we decided to look again. Sure enough there are tickets for the Saturday Matinee on May 14th. We will be taking the train down and back in one day so we don’t have to board Lex. In order to get cheap train tickets we leave early on Saturday and arrive in London around 8:15 am which gives us some time to play before the show at 2:30pm and then we catch the 7:30pm train home. It’s only a 2 hour train ride so it should be a good day! We are truly lucky to have such great opportunities at our fingertips.

I guess my starting this blog has motivated Mike to work on the website he built for us 6 years ago. Over the last few years as we got busier Mike found he didn’t have time to upload the photos to the site and he had pretty much gave up on it. He has posted a number of the photos we have taken from a number of our trips. I only post a few on the blog so if you feel like clicking through them check out www.mikeandgraceh.com

However you want to spell it Mike and I both agree Prague was beautiful. It has so much history and it’s too long to even write out the highlights here which include once being the capital of the Holy Roman Empire so for more information click here.

The weekend we visited was cold but it was still a great experience and I can imagine that in the summer it’s simply beautiful. This was our first trip to a European country where English is not widely spoken. In the tourist areas finding someone who spoke English was about a  50/50 chance but overall we think we did quite well with a little sign language and pointing at menu items. Some places the staff spoke English and then you would go just a few doors down and they didn’t or they would have one staff person who did and the rest didn’t.

We arrived late on Friday night around 10:30 pm; we made our way to the hotel and went out for a late dinner. Surprisingly we didn’t have a problem finding something to eat at 11:30 pm. We ask our hotel to point us in the right direction for food and headed out. We eventually found something after wandering a bit to take in some of the local scenery. After a quick bite to eat  we returned around 1 am and settled into our room.

We had heard that Prague has beautiful architecture but that is an understatement. We found ourselves constantly stopping to take photos.

Some of the buildings have carved stone details and others have amazing painted or engraved details but none of the buildings could be described as plain.  There are a ton of buildings with gold leafing so it really stands out against the old stone. I think the one’s that impressed me the most were the one’s with the painted details because that has to be touched up constantly and someone had done that all these years.

Anyone who knows my family knows we have Czech heritage so I was quite excited to try the authentic potato dumplings and sauerkraut. We were not disappointed and I have to say my grandma’s taste just like the real thing so I guess our family recipe is still authentic. The other item I wanted to try to find was kaloche but I had no luck. I tried asking at three places but just my luck they all had limited or no English-speaking staff so when I asked they looked at me and said “no.” I know it’s a Czech pastry so either I was pronouncing it wrong or it was just not my lucky weekend. At lunch on Saturday Mike got a dish with Bohemian dumplings and I got the potato dumplings both are Czech dishes but we both agree the potato dumplings are the best.

There is no way you can see everything there is to see in Prague in just two days but what we did see we really enjoyed. Saturday we wandered around “Old Town” and the “Jewish Quarter” taking pictures and seeing the sites. On Sunday we made our way across the Charles Bridge to “Lesser Town” and Prague Castle. The Castle is huge and we didn’t have enough time to explore all of “Lesser Town” but what we saw was again amazing.

Along the way of course we had to sample some Czech beer. The Czech love their beer and we both understand why because it is tasty. A little story there is a town in Czech call Budweis and there is a lovely Czech beer called Budweiser that was being brewed long before the American Budweiser but they are both named after the same town. Because of this little naming issue American Budweiser was not sold in Europe for a long time (not like their missing anything it’s not like it’s a great beer). The Czech Budweiser is quite tasty and they have both a light and dark beer. A picture of Mike’s is below.

Prague has an extensive tram system that is cheap and runs almost 24 hours a day. We didn’t use it much because Prague was very walkable but we did use it to get to the airport. It took a little work but we managed to use the tram website to figure out how to get to the airport. The trip to the airport requires a tram ride and a bus ride. We accidentally got on the wrong bus heading back to the airport but with a little help from a bus driver whose English seemed limited to a few words and numbers we found the right bus and made our flight so it was fine.

Overall it was great. We both wish it was warmer but we had no complaints about the city other than we didn’t get to see it all. So here are a few photos but trust me we took way too many to post here.

 

The Astronomical Clock, it tracks the time, the position of the sun and the date. It’s amazingly old and beautiful. On the hour the clock tower statues do a little parade of saints and sinners.

This statue is of Jan Hus – he was a religious reformer who amongst other things believed the Catholic Mass should be done in the local  language instead of Latin. He was burned at the stake by the Catholic Church in 1415.   Today people often stand on the steps of the monument to express their discontent and voice their grievances it was erected in the square in 1915.

 

Shots taken from the top of the clock tower.

The Jewish Quarter

One of the older synagogues in the Jewish Quarter.

The Food and Beer

Bitter Cherry Beer I had this with lunch on Saturday and it was yummy and there was a real cherry at the bottom of the glass.

Mike went for the beer sampler – 8 little beers

and the main dishes

My lunch – potato dumplings with sauerkraut and pork

Mike’s lunch – bohemian dumplings, sauerkraut and roast.

The real/good Budweiser

These were like donuts.

 

This one is for you Bill (my father in law) he loves to put a thick layer of cream cheese on his bagel. The first morning we got coffee and bagels at a little coffee shop. When I asked for cream cheese when they handed it to me like this and it made me thing of Bill. The bagel cost 20 cents and the cream cheese 60 cents. It was easily a quarter inch think. Mike and I shared the cream cheese between two bagels and it was more than enough.

 

Day two Prague Castle, Lesser Town, and the Charles Bridge

Don’t let the sun fool you it was still cold. Mike took his hat and gloves off for this photo but he quickly pulled them from his coat pockets and put them back on.

Sadly the plaque was in Czech so we couldn’t read it but it was still pretty.

Charles Bridge

The archway on the “old town” side of Charles Bridge

Crossing the bridge. There are statues lining the bridge all with gold accents.

“Lesser Town”

We walked up the stairs to the Castle from “Lesser Town” there is also a tram that runs right to the top but we decided to get the exercise.

Prague Castle is huge and is actually the largest castle in Europe.

 

Saint Peter and Saint Paul

The church within the castle walls. All I gotta say is wow, this is huge and beautiful!

The English aren’t the only one’s who do a changing of the guard. In case you haven’t noticed I’m short so Mike put me on his shoulders and I got a few photos. Another perk of having a strong husband.

We stopped at a little cafe on the top of the hill for coffee to warm up and I took these photos.

Overall we had a great time. We wish we could have seen it all but we are happy that we got to see some of  it at all. If you ever find yourself planning a trip to Europe I would recommend it.

A few of our English friends mentioned on Saturday that “Pancake Tuesday” was coming up this week. Neither Mike or I had heard of such a day but both loving pancakes we asked for more details. It turns out that at some point years ago the English started celebrating Shrove Tuesday with pancakes and now it is called Pancake Tuesday. The tradition started so that people could use up and enjoy some of the items they would be giving up during Lent. Most English are no longer religious but the tradition has stuck and now it’s a cultural tradition.

Since as I mentioned above Mike and I both love pancakes we decided to partake. English pancakes are more crepe like than American pancakes so we went with a crepe recipe. I did try finding maple syrup but they were sold out and sadly I couldn’t find any maple flavoring so I couldn’t make my mom’s amazingly simple but oh so delicious homemade maple syrup. The pancakes/crepes were delicious. Below are a few pictures.

 

… and we are lucky enough to be in England this year when there are two in April due to the Royal Wedding!

In England Easter is a bank holiday – in fact it’s a 4 day weekend (Friday off for Good Friday and Monday off because of Easter). And because William and Kate are getting married the weekend after which coincides with May Day there are two 4 day – bank holidays in a row (normally May day is a bank holiday so it’s a 3 day weekend but the Royal Wedding adds the 4th day this year). We have “Bank Holidays” in the states but it’s fun to have different ones than we do back home. After all I’m pretty sure that Mike will be working on the 4th of July this year.

Not realizing it at first we booked a weekend trip to Barcelona the weekend before Easter but we decided we couldn’t let the extra time off go to waste so we decided to use the second bank holiday for another try at Paris! We will have the Easter weekend off between our trips so we should have plenty of time to relax after what I expect will be a busy weekend in Barcelona. We fly out Friday and back on Sunday. The only flight available on Monday arrived in Manchester at midnight and Mike just didn’t want to do that since he has to work Tuesday so we will come back super late Sunday and will relax on Monday. Here’s crossing our fingers that our 3rd attempt to get to Paris works out!

Now I just have to wait for April!

Don’t know why but I feel like writing a post about our typical week here in England. So far I’ve been primarily posting about our weekend adventures but there is more to life than vacations and road trips.

Until this week I was not working but I just started helping out in the EI office 3 days a week.  At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about going back to work since it seems like household things seem to take so much longer here and with Mike’s heavy work schedule I try to take most of it on myself so he can relax in his down time. I admit though I was/am excited to have something not housework related to get me out each day. Although I have come to enjoy the quiet days and doing things when I wanted to and at my own pace.

So below is a break down of our week.

Monday – Mike goes to work, I catch up on house work and usually do my grocery shopping this day. With the tiny washing machine and lack of dryer I find myself doing laundry a few days a week in what use to take an afternoon back home. If the weather is nice I’ll take Lex on a long walk or venture into town to run errands. I enjoy walking to town it’s much more common here than back home and it’s great exercise, it’s about 2 miles round trip.

Tuesday – We both go to work and then after dinner we go to our friend Moose’s house for movie night. It’s a little ritual that we’ve come to enjoy. We all take turns picking the movie.

Wednesday – Again we both go to work and after work we go to quiz at our local pub the Ship Inn with Moose, Matt, Craig and whomever else we can convince it is a good time. Moose is much like me, he remembers lots of facts that seem useless except at something like quiz night. Gotta love having lots of random knowledge.

Thursday – Again both us work, we usually have  chill night at this point because Mike is tired from work and going out the two nights before.

Friday – Mike works, I catch up on homework, laundry, and anything else that needs done so he doesn’t have to think about it over the weekend after working anywhere between 50-60 hr weeks. Sometimes we go out with friends and sometimes we just relax.

Saturday – Yeah time for some fun! This varies as you know, our weekend activities are what I usually post about. The weekends are fun and we do live for them just like we did back home.

Sunday – Depending on how much fun we had on Saturday we either chill or go out and do more exploring. Sometimes we will walk to a local pub and get what they call a Sunday Roast and pint.

It’s funny how in lots of ways life is not all that different here than back home. We are hanging out with new friends and doing fun new things but we still go to work, cook dinner, clean the house and do laundry.

I’m super excited we have just booked a weekend trip to Prague! It will be quick, we will fly in after work on a Friday and return late on Sunday.  My great-grandmother was born in what today is the Czech Republic and for some reason that connection has always made me interested in the country. We will only have time to see the city but I think it will be lovely. I can’t wait to see if I can find kolache like my grandma, great-aunts, and great grandma use to make. We aren’t going until mid-March but I’ll make sure to post lots of pictures after we get back.

Sorry this is so late, I originally wrote it Feb. 7th but we have been super busy since then and I just got around to putting some pictures along with the words…

After spending the weekend before (Jan. 29th)  getting over a nasty cold I was antsy to get out and explore this weekend. Mother nature seemed against us but we decided it was worth giving it a try so we set out for Conwy Castle in Wales. Along the way we say a sign for another castle (whose name I can’t remember right now) so we pulled off and decided to take a look. It was pouring rain so we decided to head further into Wales and hope the weather would break.

I had programmed Conwy, Wales into the GPS and as we go closer Mike said to me “I haven’t seen any signs I hope we can find it” so I started looked for it in the GPS when I heard Mike say  “look up, look up,” and looming in front of us was Conwy Castle. No wonder there aren’t signs you would have to be blind to miss it.

A little history about Conwy Castle, Edward I went on a crazy building spree during his time and build a large number of Castles in Wales during the 13th century. He built these castles with the hopes of encouraging English to settle in Wales. Conwy Castle and the town wall was built in only 5 years in 1282-1287. We were amazed how much is still in tact and had a great time climbing the towers and exploring. This castle was abandoned multiple times over the years and that is why it no longer has a roof but we were still very impressed with how much was still standing.

After the castle we decided to get lunch in town at a local restaurant. We had planned to explore more but it started pouring and we decided it was time to head home. Conwy to Chester is only an hour drive so it was a great little outing. We grabbed pamphlets for some of the other castles in Wales and hope to head back to see more another weekend.

Here are some photos.