I see London, I see France

So clearly I should've blogged all this right away seeing as how I keep forgetting that I haven't finished yet.

My memories of London are kind of in disarray. I keep forgetting which order we did things in. But I nearly forgot one of the most fun things that we did. After shopping a second day on Bond St and thereabout, we made our way back to Regeant St for the only thing that we made plans to do before even entering the country. A trip to the IceBar.
 Jaz wanted to experience this arctic bar that only lets people in for 45 minutes at a time so that no one begins to lose fingers and toes from frost bite. It was really cool. Well freezing is more like it. Great concept. Obviously the IceBar would have been cold on a warm day, but on a day where it was near freezing, the IceBar was practically torture for a cold hating person but a fun experience for sure.

The last full day in London was slow paced. We were chilling at Costas after we had to check out of the hotel and were essentially wasting the day waiting for nightfall in order to go catch our Megabus. I just couldn't fathom sitting in a coffee shop all day while in London so I convinced Jaz to go with me into the city and do more site seeing before we left. I ended up taking one of Lauren's bags, since she'd packed her whole life, and we struggled on buses, up stairs, down stairs, in and out of the tube, but we finally made it to the coach station. Thankfully they had a spot where we could just leave our luggage so we could roam freely. We ended up not having to go far as shops lined Victoria Coach Station. It was fun window shopping. There were so many people packed into the station it was crazy. When we were preparing to go back to the Megabus stop, we went into Sansbury (sp?) a local grocery store where we could buy snacks for the trip. It was waaay more affordable than most of the other food that we had during our time there. What I also found was......wait for it.....HOT CROSS BUNS!

Yeah I learned the song when I played the recorder in fourth grade. I never knew it was a real thing. I just thought it was a silly kids song. But alas, they are real. And really delicious. Its essentially just a raisin bread just in the signature shape of the cross at the top of the bread. And for 50 pence for two, it was sold! I bought 4. Then after Paris I came back and bought some more lol. Yum!

We got back to the station and I ordered fish and chips, just so I could say that I did. Um...yeah...it was flavorless and definitely overrated. But who knows when I'll be back to London so I had to try it, no regrets. Also, I'll just allow myself to believe that it was because it was bus station food that it wasn't so great.

Anywho, we got on the bus and again, that trip took so long and I was freezing. But, I'm grateful that I didn't get sick or anything. I loved the ferry ride so much it was so beautiful the sun finally coming out. Unfortunately, I got a headache from motion sickness so I just laid down and fell into a deep sleep. Best sleep of that trip over since I could stretch out unlike how it was in the bus. I won't rehash the bus trip too much, though. Once the bus drivers decided to put us up in a hotel in Boulogne, France, we were going to go roam that little seaside city. But the hotel staff said that dinner would be in an hour so we just rested, updated our people, and tried to find our lost person. (He was on a different bus.) We couldn't get in touch but Lauren asked her mom to keep checking for him since we would be in and out of WiFi range.

The dinner was phenomenal. Not even taking into account that this was a small bed and breakfast type of hotel whose staff spoke minimal English and with no notice had to serve nearly 50 people a three course meal. Just all around hands down the food was perfect. I had a salad with goat cheese for the appetizer and the chocolate mousse for dessert. I just blanked on what I had as a main course but I still know it was delicious. Everything that I ate in France was. Makes me wonder how French people aren't morbidly obese...Oh wait, they can't be because the shower stalls are so small, if you gain too much weight you won't be able to cleanse yourself properly. I suppose that is incentive enough. Lol anyway back to the food. Jaz and Yetta had Leek soup, carbonara, and a lime pie I believe. I tasted bits of theirs so I know it was amazing as well. Some young ladies our age from the bus sat at our table and we had really good conversation with them. Thinking of it now, we should've exchanged Facebook information or something.

They were nice but really cheeky and sarcastic which was great. We sat at the table until we had to leave so the hotel staff could clear the table and clean up. The best part was that since they were sitting by us on the bus we laughed and joked the rest of the trip into Paris with the bus driver so that made the trip significantly less excruciating. Probably even enjoyable. Lol.

We got to Paris around 10:30 a.m. By the time we got a taxi, got to our hotel. Checked in to find our missing person, and got back into the city it was like 12:30-1 p.m. Paris was incredible. We got the taxi driver to take us to the Eiffel tower which was the farthest site out. We couldn't go up since it was snowing and late in the day but the snow made for gorgeous pictures. I will go ahead and add that I took some Bomb.com pics of Lauren and Marcel with my fantastic phone camera. One of these days I'll need to buy a real camera and start selling my gorgeous artworks. Then we went to a vendor across the street and I bought a Nutella crepe.

Which was really good of course. And on the way we saw a couple standing in the center of the intersection taking wedding pics. Strange but beautiful. I could just see the amazing shots they must've gotten. Poor bride must have really really been in love because her gown was a sleeveless sweetheart style that had no kind of warmth to it. Remind you it is snowing. And the bottom of her gown was getting dirty from the brown slush that comes from the snow starting to thaw. Well I guess most people don't wear the gown twice so I guess that's not too bad. As we left, we walked along the sidewalk nearest to the river. The whole trip really was picturesque. I could see making post cards with nearly everything. I must've taken hundreds of pictures. My battery was running low since I didn't have time to give it a full charge. Thanks Megabus. But we came to this park thing and I photographed our group transform into gigantic kids having a major snow fight. Luckily, I didn't get hit since I was holding the camera. I don't think I could take much more cold, lol.

From there we walked to Notre Dame cathedral. I actually learned two things that day. 1) I didn't realize that we could go inside. I thought it was something we were supposed to admire the architecture and history from the outside. But it was open and we went in. It was beautiful. The architecture, the statues, the paintings, the lighting, the overall grandness of this place was breathtaking. 2) I didn't realize that it wasn't just a historical cathedral but a currently operating church. While we were there, there were people preparing for mass. I wonder how they can focus with the literally hundreds, maybe even thousands of people circling around them talking and taking pictures, oooh-ing and ahhh-ing, but I suppose if they've been going there for years then they are used to tuning that extra noise out.

There is this bridge where people write their initials on locks and lock it to the links in the bridge before throwing the key into the water. It symbolizes that their love can never be unlocked/unhinged/separated and all that jazz. It is for lovers, families, or friends. It's such a beautiful concept. Although we all forgot to bring locks, we admired the locks and took pics on the bridge.

(The Love Locks bridge was taken down due to the wear that the excess weight of the locks caused to the structure of the bridge edit 2015)

Afterwards we went into a few different souvenir shops. If I'd had more money and/or luggage space I would've bought everything. I did get a few things for my family. But I don't think I actually bought myself anything there, well except food. LOL. I figure I will have the actual pictures and memories. After about six we went to the Louvre. We'd heard that "youths" age 18-25 got in free after six so we wanted to try our luck. Although for only 11 bucks it would've been worth it anyways.  We were mistaken, it was for university students with IDs only on Fridays. But due to the language barrier, and probably the fact that we are just so darn cute. The French man let us all in. Score! I won't even attempt to describe le Louvre. It's just something you have to see for yourself. All of the sculptures and paintings and just everything.

View as we were leaving

We easily spent 3 hours there and didn't get through the whole thing. We probably weren't even close to being done. However, it was 9 pm and we hadn't really eaten all day so we decided to hunt for food. I thought Kenyetta was gonna try to push us all in front of cars because we were slowing down her quest for food. Although I'll add that she wouldn't have been so hungry if she hadn't made the guy from the food stand cancel her order because he didn't have proper glove etiquette. LOL. She really did though. I don't know what restaurant we actually went to but when we got there we ordered like everything on the menu lol. And once again everything was fantastic, escargo, lamb, duck, salmon, veggies, drinks...just. Everything.

















Perfection on a plate.

The good thing about only having a half a day in Paris instead of 2 full days is that we could splurge since we knew we would be leaving the next day. After hunting down two taxis nearing the end of their service and having Jaz interpret directions in French, we safely made it back to the hotel around one and crashed before having to get up and do the Megabus thing all over again. Two things will be needed if I ever go back to Paris: 1) a boo thang, because the whole city just screamed romance. Hence the "City of Love." 2) More time, I'd like to do some less touristy things as well including finding a good pastry spot. That would be awesome.

When we arrived back in London we did a little more souvenir shopping and went back to the hotel to just relax. Thank God we did because the return trip home was brutal. When I finally got home I was so happy. I didn't want to be on any mode of transportation for days...but since I had work and school to get to...I proceeded. I really enjoyed myself on the trip. And even though there was tension and differences of opinions about many different things throughout the trip, I chose to leave them out because honestly, I was determined to enjoy myself, even if no one else did. And what I shared was what made the trip for me. I learned a lot about my friends and myself on this trip...

...and I can't wait for my next one. :)