Family Vaca / Pt 1

New trip, new pics. This time though, things are going to be a lot quicker and less wordy. So I'm in New England for a brief family vacation and first stop was Portland Maine. Maine in general has been giving me a Washington vibe, but overall it's just this wonderful blend of small town Americana and gorgeous nature. 

The hotel we're staying at. Perfect location in "downtown". 

If you're looking for an E30 M3 or EF Civic Si, you're in the wrong area. But if you're into older American hot rods, that's juuust right for this state. 

Sweet Chevelle yo, diggin' the wheels.

That's all for now. Next stop, Bar Harbor!

Paris Day 5 / Pt 2

Again with restaurants using US state names. 

There's many things about the French that is exaggerated, but the stereotype that surrounds their amazing food is quite accurate. 

We would have brought back a lot of lavenders if we could have.

Paris Day 5 / Pt 1

Wrapping up our Parisian trip, the last full day which turned out to be a lot grimmer than what we had hoped for. It almost felt like we were back in London. 

The Locks of Love fad, we've seen it on pretty much every bridge here in Europe.

Just Michelle strolling along the streets of Paris.

Not the prettiest of days in Paris, but I was actually a little happy with the change in the weather. Just a last reminder of the months we had spent in London.  

Going to miss all of the little stores. 

Ahh the Latin Quarters. Probably my favorite area of Paris and Michelle's too, after Champs Elysees of course. 

Paris / Day 2 Pt. 1

We begin day 2 off to a wet start. Almost as soon as we get out of the Metro to our first stop, it begins to rain. Apparently, 20% chance means 20 min. of rain, which doesn't sound that bad except during that 20 min. it absolutely cascades. It goes bright and sunny, sudden biblical flooding (lightning and thunder included), then back to sun again. Best thing to do is just wait it out, as we did at the entrance of beautiful St. Merry. 

We eventually arrived at Pompidou which was larger than I always imagined. Architecture with an external structural skeleton isn't really unique nowadays and the elevator tubes reminds me of the Macy's Mall in Beverly Hills, but it still looked pretty impressive nonetheless. 

These smoke stack things looked pretty neat, but the acoustics from them facing down towards the museum entrance was really, really good. You could hear this kid playing some little weird sax throughout the whole courtyard.

Up we go...

This was the first time seeing above the city up close (Sacre Coeur was great, but it was too far). As far as size goes, it's definitely larger than London. I was able to walk across London fairly easily, but walking across Paris would take the majority of the day. 

There's that Eiffel tempting us again. We'll get there soon enough...

Mandatory selfie for Michelle.

Sacre Coeur again. Again, from the looks of it, you'd never guess that only an hour ago there was pouring rain, lightning and thunder. This wild weather is something we've had to get used to while staying here. On the plus side, it tends to leave as fast as it shows up, so you only need to find shelter for at most 30 min. before being ok to go back out agian. 

Cool LED signs inside. 

Here's the Stravinsky Fountain with a bunch of cool sculptures. Wish they were running though. Finding a fountain in Paris this time of the year that's actually running proved to be pretty rare. 

Gotta love the juxtaposition of these two great pieces of art being adjacent to each other. 

The full sun just after the rain made for some wonderful (although very intense) lighting. 

And lastly we saw the Saint Jacques before heading to the island to see the most famous Parisian church of them all. 

Paris / Day 1 Pt. 1

Our stay in London has finally come to an end. It was fun, but it's time for me to go home. But before we head back to the States, we're going to spend a few days in Paris because, why not? So at 3:30AM, we woke up, cleaned out the few things we had left in our room and on a very dark, rainy and windy night shuffled all of our luggage over to the nearest bus stop to hop on the Eurostar to Paris. We made it aboard (with only a few min. to spare), but it was an extremely stressful and frustrating travel. Next time, we're paying the 5x cost and taking a cab. 

Of course, in the end, it was worth it as we emerge from the Chunnel to an early and refreshingly bright morning in France. While far from sunny by Cali standards, this might as well be San Diego for our Vitamin-D deprived bodies. And it is after all early Feb, so for a winter day in Europe, I'm not complaining. 

We arrive at our rented Airbnb room and took in the fresh air. While it was wonderful being so close to open sky in a very traditional French apartment, the downside to these century-old buildings is the lack of some modern conveniences such as a lift. This is an issue when carrying several 70+ lb luggage pages up 6 flights of narrow, spiraling stairs (see my IG stream). Needless to say, we'll definitely be getting a good workout while staying here. 

Random car rant; It's no secret the US market isn't fond of wagons and MB's last C class estate was admittedly a pretty poor reason anyone would be interested in a smaller MB wagon. However, the past gen C in wagon form looks as good as any other German wagon, if not better (I actually prefer the boxier, cleaner lines to that of the E91). As I walk around UK/France and see several of them, it always makes me think what a shame we never got to enjoy these good cars. 

One common sighting Michelle noticed about Paris so far is how often we look down a street and at the end stands some spectacular structure. In this case, it's just a BNP bank, but it's still pretty amazing the among of work and detail that's gone into decorating these buildings. Speaking of BNP, like Barclays in UK, a BofA customer can withdraw from an ATM without fees. Obviously the currency rate is still in effect (which can be painful as an American who dearly misses low prices and cheap currency) but it's definitely a more convenient and cost effective way for paying for goods aboard. 

It's sort of strange that despite the buildings being generally taller here and the roads being generally curved everywhere, the city feels more open than London. Perhaps the streets are slightly wider or maybe it's the sunny weather we had today? Not sure.

Of course closing with another car pic. Whatever, I am a big fan of the new 3 series. Looks miles sharper than the outgoing non-M E9X's. On a different note, I'm going to start breaking down these tourist posts a bit so the pages don't take so long to load. Look forward for part 2 tomorrow!