Europe - Summer 2008 (part 1)

I had promised to put something here about my vacation and two weeks have gotten away from me without a word! I had the awesome opportunity to take my wife and kids to Europe this summer for a holiday with a great friend and his family. He and I have worked together at four different companies and have talked back and forth over the years about how much fun it would be to meet each other in France one summer. Well lo and behold, our school district last year moved their begin date back a couple of weeks to better match up with the rest of the world. That made an August visit to Europe much easier for us without having to race right back to school.

So the trip! We started by flying in to London and stayed several days in Kent at my friend's house. That gave an opportunity to see Leeds Castle. My wife has threatened to live in a castle in Europe once my kids got to the teenage years, but I have so far got her to stay to help raise them! We of course got to experience the English pub scene and even brought the dog along. My kids thought it was cool that we let them have a Shandy, a drink with a tiny bit of beer and some lemonade. You can see from the pictures that we were blessed with some awesome weather while we were there. Only briefly did it rain on us while in England. Of course, we took the opportunity to visit London and saw the usual sites. We started by taking a walk across the Tower Bridge, which I think is the coolest bridge in the world. Many Americans incorrectly think this is London Bridge but that one is actually just west of the Tower Bridge and very ordinary looking! The London office of the company I used to work for was located right next to the bridge, called the Ivory House in St. Katharine's docks.
The girls got to take a picture with one of the British guards who has the nicest blue eyes! While we were standing in line to have the picure taken, a young idiot (yes, I think an American) started messing with the other guard at the gate, who proceeded to stomp his feet and shout, "Get back!" at the top of his lungs. That prompted a good talking to by a nearby "bobby". We had a great lunch at La Ballerina, a restaurant next to the Royal Opera house that Rachel had to see and got a cool shirt from the Royal Ballet.

Midweek, we all hopped the Eurostar to Paris, where my old friend William picked us up at the Gare du Nord. I will have to tell the story about how I met William nearly 30 years ago, but that is a topic all to itself! For those of you never to have experienced Paris, I believe it is the greatest city to visit in the world. It has amazing sights, unlimited energy, awesome food, and is really easy to walk around. It certainly helps to speak a little French, but I can testify to the friendliness of the Parisians. My son was so proud of my ability to communicate that he would tell me to "do my magic" whenever we went anywhere by speaking French. We saw all the sights that one would want to see and then some. We even caught the end of the annual clothing sale along the Champs-Élysées which saved me a ton of cash!

Well, that is a summary of our first week. London and Paris, what fun! I went over to the Charles de Gaulle airport to rent a car for our second week in the south of France, about which I will detail in another post. Ping me if you want to see more pictures!