Favorite Paris Picture

Along with our London picture, here is my favorite Paris picture. Not only does it have the Eiffel Tower, but it has the river and the tour boat as well. I think it sums up my favorite things.

Favorite London Picture

We were asked to post our favorite picture of London, so here it is. I picked this one because not only do I love Big Ben at night, but I thought it was so cool how I got a picture of the double decker bus blurred. I am no photographer, but I was proud of this one...

When in Rome....

After our two amazing days in Venice, we were off to Rome. We arrived in the city around midnight, so went straight to our hotel. Little did we know what would be there waiting for us when we woke up...

We saw so many amazing things in Rome, there is no way I could post all the pictures worth posting. Here are some of my favorites...I'll let them speak for themselves...



This is me and Whit in front of Trevi Fountain, my favorite place in Rome!



These are some pictures of the Pantheon.




This is outside the Pantheon at the entrance.


These are some ruins on the way to coliseum. It is so tight because the modern city is just built around the ancient ruins. It is like a whole different world.


This is one of the sites we saw on our bus tour. This is where they used to hold chariot races back in ancient times. The winner was determined by the first man and chariot to cross the finish line first after seven laps!
This is the "liar's temple", another site we saw on our awesome bus tour.
This is the coliseum. It was so tight to see it in real life after seeing it in a million movies and books. The structure is huge and even more detailed and amazing in real life. It is a shame we didn't get to go through it, too bad we aren't tour guides!

Shopping In Venice

We only spent two days in Venice, so naturally our second day we went shopping. The streets were filled with little booths and there were shops everywhere!



This was one of the hottest shopping streets close to where we were staying.



Could a girl honestly ask for a better atmosphere for shopping? NO WAY!!! Shopping, Italy, and Pasta....paradise!

The Louvre

Since we had Monday off as well, we decided we would wake up early and go to the Louvre. We wanted to wake up as early as we could so we could beat the crowd, but we kinda slept in. So when we got to the Louvre it was packed! So we made a plan of action to go straight to the Mona Lisa and the Venus di Milo, since those were the two main things we wanted to see. So we ran past the groups of people and went straight to the wing where the Mona Lisa was.



This is me in front of the original Mona Lisa, right before we got kicked out. Yes, we did get kicked out for taking pictures. But the important part is that we got one.



After getting kicked out of the Mona Lisa, we went straight to the Venus di Milo. Here is me in front of it, a long with an unknown tourist in motion.



Here is the staircase in the main area of the museum which goes up into the pyramid I.M. Pei designed.



If you have ever seen the Da Vinci Code, you know what this is. This is where the two pyramids meet in the lower level of the museum.



Here is me and Brighton in front of the Louvre. The older part of the building was built back in the medieval times, but the Pyramid was built in the last decade. Suprisingly, the two go really well together.

On to ITALIA!

Today was our last day in Paris. It was sad to see everyone go, but we were excited to get to Italy....even though we were going to have to have a 13 hour train ride. Since the train excursion was so long, we got to sleep in catchets. Inside each train car there are these little cabins, if you will, with beds in them. Ours slept 4 people. So it was Brighton, Whit, Paulo, and I. Paulo is an Italian man that knew about for words in English, and of course I had to sleep in the catchet next to him. This is what they looked like...



Look at these blue beauties! They were about as cozy as they look believe it or not...



After 13 hours we got off the train finally and saw this...THE STREETS OF VENICE!!!



We were so excited to go on a Gondola ride that we hurried to our hotels, showered, and went on one!




These are just some of the things we saw on our Gondola ride. Our boat "driver", if one could drive a boat, was named Roberto.



After a long day of boat riding, we decided to get some Italian pasta. Here is my gorgeous and scrumptious lasagna...

Centre Pompidou

Today we went to the famous Pompidou. I really enjoyed seeing this building because we learned about it in History of Architecture and Furnishings and ever since then I have wanted to see it. The building literally looks like it is inside out. The architects, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and Gianfranco Franchini designed the building on the lines of an "evolving spatial diagram". The building was designed in two parts, a three level infrastructure that has technical facilities and services areas, and a huge seven level glass and steel superstructure.



Here is Whit and I in front of the building. That tube on the side of the building is actually the elevator that leads to the top floor.



This is the inside of the building where you can see the bookstore and the gift shop. There are also a ton of exhibits, most of which were closed when we were there, except the erotic art ironically. I am pretty sure we saw enough of that in Amsterdam, if you call that art, so we didn't go to that exhibit.




This is a picture of the restaurant on top of the building. It is beautiful, you can see the most amazing views of Paris, like this...



Even the rooftops in Paris are tight!



This picture was taken in the gift shop. These are tiny replicas of famous designer chairs, like the Coconut chair (the black one)!