Windsor (England)

If you go to London, a day-trip to Windsor is clearly a must.  It's a cute small town again.  There you can find the Windsor Castle, home of the Queen.  Its a pretty cool place to see, especially if you get a glance of the Queen.  Like Versailles, it's worth sticking around the village and checking it out.  Not that much to do, but it is very cozy compared to London.

London (England)

After a long train ride, we finally made it to London - where unfortunately, our hotels needed a little bit of upkeep.

The very next morning we headed out to tour the city.  The city is huge, and the metro is definitely the best way to get around (unless you're staying in the centre, where the prices are crazy).  If you plan on doing a lot of sightseeing and visiting places, the London Pass is a great idea!  Plus you can get it including the transportation.  Its a little pricy, but you make your money back really fast.  

We got to check out all the major sites again: Westminster Abbey, Tower Bridge, Buckingham... The city was just packed with people!  As we were there over the week of the Royal Wedding, the whole city was in the centre.... absolutely ridiculous!  One site you must check out is the St.Paul's Cathedral, where Lady Di was married.  It is probably the most beautiful church we've seen in Europe!

London was not the best weather, but it didn't rain!  It's a beautiful city, but just huge!  It has 6 times the population of Paris - so crowded!  Again, put your hiking boots on, because every tourist site there has stairs and once in the centre, it is much easier to walk everywhere or metro.  To reach the top of Saint Paul's, 530 stairs, the top of the Monument, over 311.

There are also a million plays/musicals happening in London.  If you go and walk around, you can find some for pretty cheap.  We had the opportunity to go to Wicked, which was great!

Versailles (France)

If you go to Paris, it's definitely worth it to make the trip to Versailles!  It's only a 45mins metro ride outside the city, to a small town where lies the Chateau de Versailles (or Marie Antoinette).

This property is nonsense!  It has a big chateau which was built by one of the kings and later became Marie Antoinette's property.  The gardens are HUGE - there are a million pathways, multiple sections, a hundred fountains!  Go there early, you can easily spend the whole day there! On top of that, there is a second smaller castle at the end of the property that Marie Antoinette had built as a home away from home.  Going there you quickly realize why the citizens didn't like her and killed her - it is just ridiculous the size of that place!  Put your good shoes on though, because there is tons of walking to do there!!

If you go check out the Chateau, take some time and walk a little bit in the village, it's really cute!

Just a little note to those interested - buy the tickets at the chateau!  There are plenty of places selling them, but their tickets don't give you full access to everything.

Paris (France) - Round 2

So just a little heads up to anyone following this blog: Get ready for a 12-city update! haha  I promise I'll try to keep them short!

Around mid April, I met my mom, dad, aunt Jeanne and uncle Laurier in Paris for the beginning of their Europe journey.  After getting them set in, we've started pretty quickly to visit Paris.  Again, amazing place!! Last time I didn't get the opportunity to do so many touristy things as I was there for work, but this time, trust me, I've walked Paris in long and wide.

We got to visit all the ususals: Le Louvre, Catacombes, Eiffel Tour, Arche de Triomphe, Basilique, ...  We even got to go to mass at the Notre Dame Cathedral for Easter - it was nonsense packed!  We also got to attend a Moulin Rouge representation.


We took the hop-on, hop-off bus, which gave us the opportunity to visit a lot of the city without as much walking - however, there's a ton of traffic in Paris, so the bus can be slowed down.  If you plan on being somewhere at a specific time - maybe the metro would be the best decision (it's actually pretty cheap).

People were really nice, and we had pretty great service - definitely a great place to visit!

PS- Dad took a million pics, I'm sure you'll get to see plenty this summer!