Girls Trip to Europe

A few years ago, Cam, his brother and his Dad went fishing in Alaska while the girls stayed home. We had been having a hard time finding the perfect time for a girl's trip since between babies and nursing it has seemed impossible. Several months ago , Katrina and Marion drove up to my house and asked if I was able to finally take our girl's trip to... EUROPE! I almost died! I thought for sure it was going to be to New York and was thrilled and amazed that Europe was the place Marion and Frank thought would be fun. I was like, HELLO? For sure I was in! We decided to see a few different spots and it was really hard to narrow it down since the only place I had been in Europe was Germany, so we decided on France, Switzerland, and Italy. Here is a quick peek at our trip. These are only a few pics, but I just don't have the patience to download more.
We started and ended our trip in Paris, France. it was amazing to see the Eiffel Tower. It was much larger at the bottom than I expected and the view from the viewing area is incredible. We saw it at night and it was beautiful to see the city with all the lights and bridges.

Here we are at Arc di Triomphe. It is a major roundabout that has a TON of traffic. It was pretty crazy! I would hate to drive in Paris!

We went to see the only church in Paris that is dedicated to Christ,Sacre Coeur. This is a the view of the city from the Church. It was beautiful!

Here we are in the Louvre with Mona Lisa herself. The painting was much smaller than I expected.

Here I am eating Escargot. It was surprisingly good and not at all slimey like I thought it would be. The sauce was delicious, but they sure are hard to eat!

We went to see the Versailles Castle and Gardens and it was all so incredible. The gardens were huge! If I lived there, I would just take the day and go hang out in those gardens!

Eating our french baquette sandwiches in the park. We did not really enjoy the food in Paris, but their bread is to die for!

Here we are in front of Notre Dame.

We climbed up all the way to the top of Notre Dame and is was one of my favorite things that we did the whole trip. We climbed up a bunch of tiny, circular staircases all the way to the top. It was an amazing view of the city below and it wasn't very crowded, so we just hung out up top and enjoyed..it was awesome!

We then flew to Switzerland, rented a car and drove to Bern, Switzerland. I don't have many of Bern, since we were so tired that we went to bed at 8 pm that night! The next morning we woke up to rainy skies and drover to Interlaken. We stopped in a little town called Thun and took this picture. Switzerland is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It is so green and the mountains are amazing! So green and straight up and we couldn't even see the tops of them because of the clouds. We were a little disappointed that we couldn't go on the tram and see the view because of the crappy rain!

Interlaken, Switzerland means 'between 2 lakes' and it literally is a little town between 2 lakes. It was beautiful! Just look at the color of that water!

I loved all the Swiss architecture! All of the shops and houses are so quaint and charming. I opened our window in the morning and wondered how lucky the people are to live where everything is so beautiful!

We then took the train to Florence, Italy. It was such a drastic change from Switzerland and France and it was AMAZING!! Here we are standing by the Duomo, the famous church in Florence. Our hotel was just down the street from this and we had so much fun wandering the cobblestone streets, eating wonderful Italian food and gelato, and SHOPPING! We saw the statue of David, of course, but did a lot of shopping in their fun outdoor market.

We hiked up to the top of the city for the look out point. Isn't this an amazing view of the city?

On the way to the look out, we got lost, but didn't care much because everything that was saw was sooo beautiful! Can you believe people walk these streets everyday and call this place home?

After Florence, we took another train ride to Rome, Italy. It is such an incredible city with such history. Here we are at the Colosseum. It was one of the coolest things that I have ever seen.

We took a tour of the Colosseum and Palatine Hill and all of the ruins were truly amazing! Here Katrina and I are walking on the same exact street that Julius Caesar did ages ago.

Here we are at Trevi Fountain. I did toss a coin over my right shoulder into the fountain and I hope that I will return to Rome someday. It is such a spectacular city!

Here I am standing in front of the Pantheon. It was amazing to see something so old still standing.

Here were are at Piazza Navona, which was pretty close to our hotel. Every few blocks in Rome is a Piazza and they are all so pretty. We had some good times people watching and watching the street performers here.

That is basically our trip in a nutshell, but here are a few things that I will never forget about the tip:
* Mare and Katrina eating 'chicken chest' in Paris. We became a little leary of eating meat in Paris after this. If you go to Paris, don't try it!
* Lugging our luggage through the Metro system in Paris up and down stairs until we thought we would die. Took us 2 1/2 hours to get to our hotel due to problems with their Metro system that day. Not fun at all...so much for trying to save money! We didn't do that again!
* Acting like gargoyles and the hunchback of Notre Dame while we were in Notre Dame. Hilarious! We must have been exhausted because we were being way too silly!
* All the smoking in Europe! It did not stop and we hated it!!
* For some reason when I would try to speak the native language, it always came out Spanish.. Weird, I know.
* Pumping my life away! I was still nursing Parker and wanted to continue, so I lugged my pump through the whole trip and then got home to Parker not wanting to nurse anymore! I was soo mad! I pumped everywhere: dirty bathrooms, on the train, in the airplane, in the car, in the middle of a park in Paris, it was crazy!
* The train ride from Switzerland to Florence traveled through some amazingly beautiful scenery and tons of tunnels!
* Our flight on the way there was cancelled so we were bumped up to first class. It was incredible and completely ruined ruined flying in coach class from now on. Oh those seats reclined soo nicely, the warm nuts, the nice blankets and pillows, the food was fantastic! It was a great start to the trip!
* Our friend Tryan in Rome. He worked at our hotel and was hilarious! He told us his life story! Such a nice guy! oh, and our sweet housekeeper.
* Walking soo much and too fast for Marion. She told me to slow down several times.
* All the people in the Vatican. We thought we would go nuts! We saw the Sistine Chapel and bolted!
It was a wonderful girls trip and we saw some amazing countries! Hope our next trip will be as good as this was!