Turn it On, Turn it Up..

And sing along.
This is real; this is your life in a song...
Yeah this is country music.



Moving on to August updates.  I received an excellent opportunity at the very last minute in August.  Sunday morning I get a call from a co-worker asking if I'd like to go to London on Tuesday to see Brad Paisley in concert.  She had bought tickets and a friend was unable to go last minute, and knowing I share her love of country music (us country folk have to stick together overseas!), she invited me to take the extra ticket.  So a day of catch up work, ticket buying, last minute planning, and booking later, I was set to go to London on Tuesday to see Brad and Darius Rucker!

Unfotunately, I had to book a separate ticket, so we both left out of Venice, but I traveled to London Heathrow Airport and she traveled to London City Airport.  This was my first trip back to London Heathrow since my nightmare 5 day stay over Christmas when I got stuck there for the inch of snow that fell.  I'm happy to report this visit was all smooth sailing and I made it onto the Tube (London's Underground) and into the city with no problems at all!  Brittany and I met back up at the hotel that evening after our day of travel.

We had a full itinerary planned for Wednesday, sightseeing, a performance of Wicked, and the concert that evening.  We made it to all the major sites, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, London Castle, Westminister Abbey, Tower Bridge and the London Eye.  We observed most of the sites from the outside as I have already been to most of them and Brittany is planning to go again with her husband.  We took the classic pictures in the red telephone booths and found a quaint little British pub to have lunch before the show.

Brittany

I swear they placed that there JUST for photographs...how perfect with Big Ben in the background!?!



Though I look a little awkward, I have a special place in my heart for bagpipes!



Panoramic of the Thames river with the Parliament and Big Ben in the background!

We made our way down to Apollo Victoria Theatre where we had bought tickets to see Wicked the musical.  I can't express how excited I was to see this show as I had heard so many great things about it and have been wanting to see it for YEARS!  And can I just say, it lived up to ALL of my expectations and then some!  Seriously, such an incredible show with huge musical pieces with such powerful voices it gave me goosebumps.  It was worth every penny we spent. 

After the 2:30 matinee show of Wicked, we went right down to the brand new O2 arena right on the Thames river.  The O2 was an incredible concert venue with a whole village of shops and restaurants built into the venue.  We had drinks at one of the restaurants and then went into the concert.  As we walked down to our seats, which were 5th row, by the way, I thought Brittany was going to have a heart attack.  Our fifth row seats happened to be the first and second seats right next to the catwalk out from the stage.  Have I mentioned Brittany is completely slightly obsessed with Brad Paisley?  So you could pretty much say we were BFFs with Brad and Darius during the show.  I'm talking I could see the receipts coming out of Brad's pockets as he was playing on the catwalk right next to us!  What a night!

To top off a perfect day we took a water fairy up the Thames river after the concert.  We got off at the Abbey, but we didn't make it in time before the Tube closed for the night so we caught a taxi back to our hotel.  We had separate return flights as well so Brittany was up and out by 6am the next morning, but I had a few extra hours of sleep before my 11am flight.  We both made it safely back to Venice and agreed we had a fabulously, musical trip!  Thanks for the invite, Brittany!

J'aime Paris!

Fourth of July weekend in Italy is viewed as an extra three day weekend and an extra opportunity to travel.  Yes, the base does a celebration that it inevitably storms for every year, but a three day weekend is a treasured opportunity to leave the country.  Last year we went to London, this year Taylor and I went to Paris.  We planned the trip pretty last minute, as we plan most of our trips...and we headed out on Friday night to take our Ryan Air flight into the city.

Ryan Air is an experience in itself and even more so when you take the discount airline out of the Venice airport.  A fun cultural fact for you that you quickly figure out when living in Italy, Italians have no respect for lines.  There is no such thing as a true line...people barge in, cut, start their own lines, and pay no attention to signs or directions.  So you can only imagine how that works with a discount airline with no assigned seating...yes...think a cattle call.  But I digress...

We headed to Paris and made our way to our hotel via bus and the Underground.  We had a couple tours booked for the weekend, Taylor's pick was a day trip to Normandy to tour the beaches of Normandy and my pick was a day biking tour of the the Palace of Versaille.  They both were fabulous.  We spent all day Saturday on a biking tour...I was a little afraid I would be the one who hasn't touched a bike in 10 years and would go crashing to the street during the middle of the tour, but I'm happy to report I was not the girl who crashed into a tree in the park (yes, there was one on our tour).  We took off through the city...loaded a tour of about 25 people AND our bikes onto a train...got off in Versaille and continued our tour.  We stopped at the local market to buy fresh baguettes, meat, cheese, wine, and pastries for our picnic lunch on the canal in the Palace grounds.  We stuck our purchases in our bags and on the back of our guide's bike (literally like in the movies) and headed off to continue the tour.  We biked all through the Palace grounds, stopped and had a big picnic lunch with everyone in the grass next to the canals and then headed into the palace.  It's hard to imagine the building as a person's home and the arrogance and pompous attitude of Louis XIV was quite apparent while touring through his extravagant home. 

Taylor and I in front of the Grand Canal in the Palace of Versaille.

Biking on my beach cruiser...LOVED it!

The hallway of mirrors in the Louis XIV home...such extravagance!

After our tour Taylor and I wandered the city, we went to the Eiffel tower which we agreed is really quite ugly during the day as it is a large brown metal structure, but we re-visited it at night and it's simply stunning.  We spent some time just lying in the grass at the base of the tower appreciating the beauty and the blessings that surround us.  We walked over to the Louvre to see it at night with everything lit up.  The city came alive at night.  For one, it stayed light until about 1015.  The famous road, Champ d'Elysee, was packed with people walking, shopping, and eating at 1130 at night...it looked like 5:00 in the afternoon!  We attempted to eat dinner on this famous road and we were seated at a way overpriced restaurant at the same table with two other couples...one on each side of us.  As we're awkwardly looking at the menu attempting to not listen to the other couples' conversations, I'm kicking Taylor under the table shaking my head no!  So we politely got up and stopped at the next best place we found.  The Haagen Dazs restaurant...yes restaurant.  They had menus, servers and all!  We ordered 15 dollar ice cream with cookies and waffle cones and it was so delicous and a much better option then sharing our dinner table with strangers!

On Sunday we took a day tour to visit the beaches of Normandy.  We picked up our train tickets on Saturday and caught the 0900 train from Paris to the medieval town of Bayeux 2 hours away.  We arrived in town in the midst of their 1100 year celebration with a medieval festival taking place with re-enactments, crafts, food, and carnival stands.  We had some time to wander through the town, tour the church, and have a little lunch before finding our meeting point.  We met our tour guide and hopped in a bus with 4 other people.  Our guide was great and so very knowledgeable.  We stopped at a German cemetary, Pointe du Hoc, Omaha beach, and the American military cemetary.  As cheesy as it sounds, the history books really came alive at Pointe du Hoc as we were walking on the soil and hearing the story of the military troops taking over the beaches/cliffs and their successes and failures during the endeavor.  We were walking down in the cannon/explosion craters left in the land and climbing down into the bunkers to the look out points for the German forces overlooking the channel.  The land looks like the surface of the moon (or what I would imagine the moon would look like with grass) with the amount of craters and holes left there from the explosions.  Omaha beach, on the other hand, is a regular European beach with sun bathers and vacationers enjoying the surf and sand.  The only remnants of the dreadful day is a small memorial above an original German gunner (a massive 10 foot long machine gun) still stationed under a cement slab pointing out towards the water.

The German WWII cemetary located in the Normandy region of France.

Point du Hoc- a landing point for the Allied Forces on D-Day.

Looking out from a German bunker over the channel at Point du Hoc.

I'm standing in one of the hundreds of craters that scatter the land from the explosions during D-Day.

Another underground bunker built to watch the English Channel, but to keep the German forces protected.

This is the memorial left overlooking Omaha beach.  The rest of the beach is a regular vacationing spot.  You can see the beach below the plaque.

The last stop on the tour was the American military cemetary overlooking the water in Normandy.  It was quite a powerful site to see the thousands of white crosses and stars of David set in perfectly manicured grounds overlooking the water with the Star Spangled Banner playing intermittenly with Taps.  What a beautifully, humbling site.  So many people who came to fight not only for our country, but for humanity and what was right for our world.  So many, young and old, who gave up their life during their service and now rest forever on American soil in France.  The tour was well worth the money and was the highlight of our trip to France.

After our tour, we again walked the city by night to take in all the sites we were unable to see during the day.  On Monday morning we got up to hit the rest of the spots on our list.  This included the Louvre to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa, although we had been warned by everyone that it is so small and quite disappointing.  We got to the museum around 10am to find a two hour line.  It was an easy decision to skip the famous museum without second thought and head over to the Luxembourg Gardens where we spent a good hour sitting, people watching, and taking in the beauty of the gardens and the comfortable sunshine.  By the afternoon I was exhausted, totally over walking another step, and dragging my bag back on the Underground, to head to the bus stop, to head to the airport, to finally make it back to Venice.  Phew...what a trip.  But when you only have a three day weekend, there's no time to lounge when there's so much to see!

We marked another city (and country) off the list and as often happens after visiting a city, it moved to the top (or close to the top) of favorite cities we've visited! 

I am currently laying in a hotel room by myself in Germany on Ramstein Air Base.  I am up here for a conference for work this week, so I am trying to take advantage of my evenings alone to catch up on my blogs since I'm so far behind.  So I will try to upload pictures later, but I wanted to at least document the trip, as I print my blogs into yearly books and keep them as an official journal.  So hopefully a few more posts will be coming in the next few days!

Good night, friends!