Category: Uncategorized

Mom’s alarm went off at 7 this morning, I decided to ignore it (as did she), but sadly it went off again at 7:03 so I got up and got dressed for my run. She was just starting to stir, so I hoped she’d be getting ready while I was gone.. we had to leave by 8:30 to get to the train station on time.

I did a quick mile through the park, and gauged I’d end close to the road I’d need to walk down to get us some bagels to go.. I was almost spot on.. I only had to go past the gate by 20-30 seconds. When I finished I walked quickly towards the bagel shop, and about fell out when I realized it was Sunday, they were closed, as was almost everything around me. Crap.

I headed down the Main Street to our hotel, now sad and with a stomach acting like I had starved it for 4 days straight 🙄. Even the gift shops were closed. Surprisingly, less than a block from the hotel, I passed a little cafe that was open. I was the sole person on the block and in the cafe, minus the man working there. He made me 2 americano coffees, and 2 ham and cheese croissants. Not too shabby.. this meal to go was less than the cost of one of our buffet breakfasts yesterday and sure to be twice as good.. I’d say I won 😉

I quickly took everything back to the room, Mom was already out of the shower and drying her hair. We ate our food and sipped our coffees before she finished getting ready and I started. Shockingly, we were packed and walking out the door by 8:28 and asking for a taxi by 8:31. What a successful morning!

Our taxi driver was the kindest gentleman I’ve met so far.. when Mom told him that I’m an ICU nurse, he stopped our meter and didn’t charge us for the rest of the ride. He was telling us about his heart attack and how he never thanked the nurses for their care and skill when he was so scared, because he was so scared and how grateful he is for people like “Us” nurses. So very sweet. He dropped us off at Kings Cross Station and told us how and where to go.

We looked for a gift shop before getting in line to go through security, but they didn’t have any that had the little “Big Ben” trinkets we wanted. We made it through the line to find out that they DO stamp our passport on leaving the country! Heck yeah! I was giddy as hell over a half second stamp, and I honestly still am. Lol it’s the little things in life.

The train took us from London to Paris through a tunnel that goes underwater through the English Channel. I would say it was really neat, but it was a dark tunnel and you couldn’t see anything..Mom slept and I read a book on my kindle app (Verity, by Colleen Hoover.. it’s dark but damn it’s good). Before I knew it we had arrived, it was time to get off the train and all I could think about was needing to pee. All mom could think about was taking a picture of the train. Ha

We got out of the terminal area and into the main station, I found bathrooms, I had to Apple Pay to use one-ugh-and then I found the little help desk to get someone to point us in the right direction of the local train to take us to our hotel. The man was nice and made it very easy to find.. we bought our tickets at the kiosk thing (a whole €3.80 for both of us) and we made our way to the platform.

We only had to ride 5 stops before getting off, and I got Mom to slow down and wait a bit before going up the stairs because a man had been eyeing us the entire time on the train and followed us once we got off-to the point that he stopped on the stairs when we didn’t continue up them.. and then turned to ask us if we wanted his help with our stuff. It sounded kind, but I’m here to tell you it felt creepy. He had gotten close to Mom on the train once already, I had missed that but she mentioned it when I whispered to her to wait and let him go on.. once we got to the top of the stairs, we saw him circle down to the other train platform.

After that, we walked out into the sunshine and busy streets of Paris. It was STUNNING! We gathered ourselves, found our sunglasses, and walked less than 2 minutes before we were at the door to our cute boutique hotel. In that 2 minutes, we passed 3 different cafes! I think we’re in the perfect location for our time here in Paris 🙂 Our hotel is adorable, the front desk man was so nice, after he checked us in and we unloaded our stuff in our room, he spent 10 minutes showing me a map and how to get to the best rooftop bars, where to eat desserts only, the best crepes, and the easiest way to navigate from the hotel to the main “hot spots” of the city.

Sadly, the first rooftop bar he mentioned is closed on Sunday’s. Haha. So that didn’t go well, but we are in such a busy and exciting area that we literally had over 50 places to choose to eat at.. we picked the “burger joint” because many of the places we went by only had their menu in French and we were both too tired and too hungry to figure out Google Translate for this meal.. we just wanted to eat. The burger place was slap full, so the girl told us how to walk to a little park around the corner a ways to eat our “take away” food. We were sold!

We ate our burgers and fries (I had a goat cheese something or other burger, mom had a blue cheese burger) at the little park at a table meant for chess.. hey, it worked, and they were delicious! From there we walked the streets towards the Seine River. We got our first glance of the Eiffel Tower and saw Notre Dame Cathedral. We passed a couple street performers singing, and as I walked by I realized they were singing an Outkast song. Outkast is one of my favorite groups, but it’s Nana’s all time favorite group (Nana is the man I’m dating, his name is pronounced like NahNah not NaaNuh lol), so naturally I stopped to listen, record a bit, laugh, and give them some tip money.

Mom and I carried on walking to a little cafe no where near our hotel to have some wine, tiramisu, and use their bathroom. Mom had some Rosé while I had a Pinot Noir. We sat, sipped and people watched, which seems to be what everyone else was doing too. We slowly made our way back towards the area of our hotel, on the hunt for a store that sells a curling iron for mom.. no such luck..

We did stop into another cafe, this one within a few steps of our hotel.. we (I) had more wine and we continued to talk, laugh, and people watch. Mom kept saying she was drinking white wine, aka the still water they poured into wine glasses..hahaha lord have mercy. Now it’s almost 10 pm, we’re settled into our room, showered, and about to start a movie on tv (I’m still drinking wine, this room comes with a stocked fridge). We have a decently early morning tomorrow.. we’re going to the Louvre Museum to see the Mona Lisa (and well, everything else in that ginormous place). I’m hoping we both enjoy the experience and take it a little slower than we did Kensington Palace.. because honestly we were both bored as hell in that place. I don’t think the Louvre will be like that though.. surely..

Cheers, y’all.

We got up around 8 this morning.. Mom to have her coffee and shower, me to run 2 miles in the park. It was absolutely gorgeous this morning! The sun was shining, the skies were blue, it was just cool enough to run well.. perfection. Once I got back, I quickly showered and then mom and I went downstairs to eat breakfast.

Breakfast is usually my favorite meal, but I don’t think that will remain true for this trip.. that buffet had watery eggs, funky sausage, and thick bacon.. and beans-that we didn’t eat lol. Thankfully there were croissants, too, and I could make a little runny scrambled egg sandwich.

We started our sightseeing adventure shortly after 10:30 and walked our butts off. We saw the Italian Fountains, The Marble Arch, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben & Parliament Square with Westminster Abbey and Palace, The London Eye along the Thames River.. and from that point we started to take advantage of the sightseeing busses all over the place.. and sat down to ride and rest our feet.

We ate a quick subway sandwich for lunch and continued over to the London Bridge and the Tower Bridge. There were so many people out and about and as the day wore on the more and more crowded it got. We took one of the buses back towards Hyde Park from the Tower Bridge area late afternoon, and got lucky enough to snag seats on the top of the double decker.

We walked through Hyde Park to Kensington Palace and then took the tour of the Palace and the Gardens. I preferred the gardens to the palace, because it didn’t really have much inside except for paper replicas in plastic boxes, set up like dollhouses in each room.. showing what it “would have” looked like instead of making real sized replicas.. I mean, some rooms had actual beds and tables and things, but not many. In the Gardens there was a statue of Princess Diana and her boys. It was beautiful.

We walked back to the hotel room from the Palace and then decided to book tickets to see Matilda, the play, at the Cambridge Theatre. We changed clothes and got a taxi to the area.. it was already 6:30pm and the show started at 7:30. The restaurants were busy and sidewalks were packed with people, so we made the sad decision to go to McDonald’s for our dinner.. yikes! I mean, it served its purpose.. it was fast and filling, and we made it to the show just in time to use the restroom, grab a drink, and take our seat!

We loved the show! It was funny and very entertaining, although musicals do get a little annoying to me at times.. haha. When we left we had to walk a little ways to a main/busy street to hail a cab. The process took a good 15-20 minutes. And then it was easy going to get back.. way less traffic than the way there, thank goodness.. because we’re both pretty exhausted. My watch says I’ve walked 15.2 miles today. Only 2 of those were from my run this morning!

We’ve mostly packed up already, because in the morning we take a cab to Kings Cross Station to take the Chunnel (a train that passes underwater through the Channel) to Paris. I’m so excited for the next leg of our trip! France, here we come!

I didn’t get anymore sleep on the flight, although Mom seemed to. We’re both heavy sleepers in general and tend to require more sleep than average.. which made today entertaining. It was like we were both in a bit of a fog for the first half of the day.

When we got off the plane and went through immigration and customs, we were super disappointed that we didn’t get stamps on our passports.. hello! We want stamped proof we were here, not just memories, photos, and experiences.. hahaha

Figuring out the airport and following the signs to the train stations wasn’t difficult, even with spotty free airport WiFi. The express train to Paddington Station was more expensive than we expected. And originally the man helping me had us paying for round trip tickets. Hopefully it wasn’t a mistake to tell him we didn’t need that.

Our train ride was quick and before we knew it we were lugging our “light” suitcases through the downtown London streets towards our hotel. It was pretty entertaining-both of us exhausted, wheels not wanting to roll well over the sidewalks, forgetting that the cars would be coming from the opposite direction at crosswalks. We made it though! And relatively faster than I thought we would!

The hotel didn’t have our room ready yet, because it was 10am .. but they did let us leave our luggage with them as we left on foot in search of coffee and breakfast. The temperature was in the 50s, and we knew immediately we should have grabbed our bigger jackets. The walk to the cafe we chose didn’t take long, but man it was cold! Originally, Mom wanted to sit outside, within 5 minutes she asked the waitress if we could move it inside. Lol

We had our black Americano coffee and a pretty good breakfast (avocado toast topped with a poached egg for me, eggs and bacon for mom), and tried to warm up and wake up. After leaving I ended up getting an energy drink for some extra pep.. it didn’t help.. but I was dead set on us not taking a nap today so we’d offset the jet lag, sleep hard tonight, and wake up refreshed and ready to explore tomorrow.

We walked around to a few shops, looked at souvenirs and got the lay of the land for our little area near Hyde Park. We inevitably got too cold to continue exploring, so we made our way back to the hotel and sat in their lounge to find the feeling in our fingers again. Close to 12:30 I went to ask about our room, and they were able to let us check in. We were so grateful!

I quickly took back everything I said about not taking a nap. Once we settled into our room, we agreed to set an alarm for 4pm and take a nap.. then get up and go explore the park and find some dinner. I was a little worried we’d both ignore the alarm and wake up at 1am starving.. because we both fell asleep immediately, and when some random fire alarm went off at 2pm, we both woke up, looked around, and decided to ignore it completely and fell back asleep.

When our actual alarm did go off, we got up, dressed more warmly and headed out to see what this Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens were all about. It reminded me a lot of Central Park in Manhattan. It was beautiful, there were dogs running around chasing their throw toys, kids chasing birds, people strolling. There was a pond with a ton of pigeons, ducks, swans and geese. I did my mile run (I’m on a run streak to where I have to run at least one mile every day) around the pond and then Mom and I walked over to Kensington Palace. We had hopes of going inside the palace and the garden grounds outside, but we missed the cut off time to be let in. So, we’ll try to do that tomorrow.

We continued through the park and then down one of the main roads. We checked out a bookstore and got some British Pounds from an ATM.. took pictures of phone booths, funky taxis, and the double decker buses before finding a restaurant to eat dinner at. It was a nice pub with some damn good food. My fish and chips were top notch.. I’d say it’s been my favorite meal while traveling lately (Lauren and I ran half marathons in Maryland, New Jersey, and Oklahoma this month.. I wasn’t a fan of the food we had during our trips lol). The beer was quite good, too.. although it’s not really Mom’s thing.

We took our time walking back to the hotel, and now we’re laying in our beds watching tv with heavy eyes. I think we’ll both be back asleep before too long (it’s almost 9pm haha, how silly), and will be wide awake bright and early. We plan to go to the main touristy things tomorrow, like Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, and Shakespeare’s Globe.

Fingers crossed that it’s a bit warmer tomorrow!