A Magical End to Spring Break

Hello again!

As promised, here is the England post to wrap-up both Spring Break and Mackenzie's time in Europe! Sunday, April 13th through Wednesday, April 16th, I had to be back in Bath in order to go to class (ugh, the studying part of studying abroad is getting in the way of the greater goal here... traveling!). But, on the 17th we set off for Manchester to see one of my favorite music groups, "The Piano Guys," play in concert. The very next day we traveled back to London and stayed there until I had to drop Mackenzie off at Heathrow Airport on Easter. Without further ado, Mackenzie's experience of England in a nutshell...

Mackenzie at the Roman Baths. The audio tour was great and both of us thoroughly enjoyed ourselves using up the last of our euros by throwing them into one of the pools (totally permissible, don't worry!) But, Mackenzie's favorite part just had to be tasting the water... psych. You are allowed to taste the water at the end of the tour from a fountain that spouts out a purified version, but its chocked full of minerals and luke-warm... needless to say she practically gagged and immediately spit it out much to my amusement. :)

I had never been to Roman Baths before since I was waiting to go with Mackenzie, so this was my first time seeing it as well. Very cool historical site, I definitely recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the Roman era. 

Mackenzie about to devour a cinnamon-butter Sally Lunn bun. I've mentioned Sally Lunn's in my blog before when I went there myself for the first time, but basically Sally Lunn's is one of the oldest buildings in Bath and it doubles as a tea room. A Sally Lunn Bun is hard to describe...it's part cake, part bread and utterly delicious. I think it took Mackenzie all of about three minutes to down the whole thing.

On Mackenzie's last day in Bath, I decided to take her up to the top of Bath Abbey on a tower tour. It ended up being a private tour with just the two of us since we were there first thing in the morning. Mackenzie made it though! All 212 stairs up and down; and now she has officially had her fill of spiral staircases and never wants to climb another ever again :)

At the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester for the Piano Guys concert! I had a blast; Mackenzie, on the other hand, was not so thrilled to be going to a concert with two guys playing the piano and the cello. Oh well, money for a ticket to this concert was one of my Christmas presents so I was not missing this! In case you have never heard of the Piano Guys, they are four dads from Utah that have managed to rack up 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube by playing covers of pop and classical mash-ups. Check out one of my favorite videos of theirs if you get the chance: their cover of David Guetta and Usher's "Without You":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfRtPbBFoGg

On Mackenzie's first full day in London, we all took a tour around the city on the iconic double decker buses and saw everything from Big Ben and Parliament Square to the Tower of London and Scotland Yard. By the end of the two hours though, we were more than ready to get off we were so frozen from the cold. At least everyone had a wonderful laugh at my expense over the wind-blown state of my bangs that resembled an unintentional mohawk. :)

And now for quite possibly the best day of my life... Our Harry Potter Day!!!

Of course we ventured over to King's Cross Station for our Platform 9 3/4 picture!!! Mackenzie is sporting her Gryffindor colors, maroon and gold... 

...and I've got Ravenclaw, blue and silver!! After King's Cross, we took a "London Walks" Harry Potter tour to show us a bunch of the film locations around the city. Mackenzie and I will definitely be looking for those the next time we marathon all the Harry Potter movies. 

And the anticipation only built throughout the day as we not-so-patiently waited for the Warner Bros. Harry Potter Studio Tour :D

Mackenzie at the set of the Gryffindor common room with the costumes and set-up for the third movie, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

One of my favorite parts was seeing all the special effects that happen in order for the actors to play quidditch!

Mackenzie with some of the handmade props, like newspapers, Hogwarts textbooks, and letters... we are both still waiting on our Hogwarts letters... they're just a tad late. Most likely lost in the mail :)

In front of the fireplaces used in the Ministry of Magic!

Poor Dobby!

On board the Knight Bus in the exterior sets backlot!

On the Hogwarts bridge... I know it looks like Mackenzie is taller than me, but rest assured, it was just the slant of the bridge :)

In front of James and Lily Potter's home, destroyed by Voldemort.

At No. 4 Privet Drive, posing with one of the four snowy owls that were trained to play Hedwig in the films!!

DIAGON ALLEY!! 

Mackenzie's face quite literally lit up upon seeing....

...the Hogwarts Castle model room. My life is officially complete. 

I'll post again with more on my last four weeks in Bath (Ahhh!) sometime soon. I think it's just about time for a post on all of the differences between the British and American lingo...

Cheers!

"Je t'aime Paris: La Deuxième Partie"

Bonjour!

I have been back in Bath now for some time since my last post, but with three papers due this week, I haven't had the time to update the blog. On Easter, Mackenzie arrived safely back in the States and I expect she is now suffering through the homework catch-up process just as I am. As I am looking back through these pictures, all I want to do is hop on the next flight to Paris...

Our second day in Paris after our excursion to Bayeux mainly centered around all things Eiffel Tower. We decided to spend the whole afternoon there, moseying around the gardens at the base, eating lunch on the first floor, and even taking the lift up to the very top to get a panoramic view of the city.

Our picnic lunch at 58 Restaurant on the first floor. The food was surprising very good and didn't cost an arm and a leg! We even had our picture taken by the professional roaming the restaurant and bought a few copies as a memento of the wonderful time we spent in the City of Light!

The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower... of all the views that we saw from atop huge buildings (the Colosseum, St. Peter's Basilica, the Notre Dame...) the Eiffel Tower had to be the best; perhaps, because it was by far the highest. All of the people looked like little ants running around and the cars seemed about the size of a Matchbox car :)

After our climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower, we walked up to the Arc de Triomphe and then down along the Champs Elysees past all the multitudes of shops. Of course, Mackenzie and I had already seen both of these at night... we took a taxi to get to our hotel on the first night we were in Paris because it was almost 11pm and we didn't feel like trying to navigate the French metro when we were both exhausted; unfortunately, our taxi driver took us for the naive travelers that we were and completely ripped us off by driving all over the city to rack up the meter. We didn't realize it until the 7 minute taxi ride (what I had mapped out and planned for) had taken over 20 minutes and ended up costing around 40 euros... by far the most expensive taxi ride I will ever take in my life. 

The Champs Elysees! Mackenzie had a grand ole' time using her French skills while we were in Paris, whereas I just kinda nodded and smiled a lot :) I found that most people assumed we were English tourists anyway and would speak to us in English first before saying anything in French.

The Eiffel Tower at night was absolutely mesmerizing. For the first five minutes at the start of every hour once the sun has set the Eiffel Tower will do the glittering light show, which was definitely one of my favorite sights of the day. 

We also were able to see a bunch of the Parisian sights at night all lit up, including the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame, and the Louvre to name a few, by taking a Seine River boat ride, Mackenzie's brilliant idea :)

Melanie and my obligatory traveling picture at the train station on the way back to Bath. Melanie joined Mackenzie and I for the last day of Paris and the journey back to England by way of the Chunnel. Mackenzie thought the Chunnel was a bit underwhelming, but hey... she can now say that she traveled from France to England underwater!

One of the other major aspects of all our traveling was the food! I thought the Italian food beat out French food hands down, and all the delicacies that we sampled, namely Italian gelato and French chocolate croissants and crepes, will forever be ruined because nothing in the States could ever compare. I realize this was a bit of a shorter post, so be sure to check in tomorrow to see the second half of our extended spring break spent in Bath, Manchester, and London!

Au revoir!

"06-06-1944"

Hello again!

On Friday, Mackenzie and I were taken on a guided tour of Normandy's famed D-Day historical sites and Mackenzie was put to the test trying to remember her World War II history from last year. Our tour, booked through Overlord Tours, specifically emphasized the American involvement in the invasion of mainland Europe and looked at several of the actual battle grounds depicted in the HBO mini-series, "Band of Brothers." Overall, the tour was incredibly informative and fascinating, despite being quite long with us touring all over Bayeux from 8:30am to 5:30pm. Some of the highlights of the tour were...

The bunkers that were still intact from the 1940s, which we were able to go inside and climb around. These bunkers were found everywhere the fighting took place, but they were pretty hard to spot of the cliffs of Omaha beach; there they were tucked away so that the Allies couldn't locate them from the sun glinting off the metal in the daylight.

Omaha Beach, one of the two American beach heads established on D-Day; the others were nicknamed Sword (British), Juno (Canadian), Gold (British), and Utah (American). It was heartbreaking to hear about the awful odds that the first waves of soldiers faced when they reached the beach with an intact German defense raining rounds of ammunitions down on them. 

After touring Omaha beach, we headed up to the top of the bluff overlooking the beach, which is now where the American Cemetery is located. The entire monument consists of a reflection pool (symbolizing the English Channel) facing a semi-circle of stone pillars that have inscriptions of the movements of all the regiments on D-Day (symbolizing the . The statue in the middle is a man rising up out of the waves of the Channel, representing the American spirit of the men who gave their lives on that day in combat.

Around 40% of the men who died at Normandy were buried in the American Cemetery, as per request by their next of kin. The grave markers were unusual, in the fact that they only gave the name of the soldier, their company, their hometown, and their death date...President Eisenhower, when he commissioned the building of the Cemetery and the reburial of all the soldiers from their mass graves down on the beach, claimed that he didn't want to look out on a sea of dead young men, therefore the birth dates on all the graves was never added so that you wouldn't be able to tell the man's age when he died.

The coastline of the Pointe du Hoc, the only place where men had to climb up the huge bluffs. This was also one of the most intense combat scenes on D-Day. 

The view of the English Channel from the inside of a German Command Station at the top of the Pointe du Hoc.

The top of the Pointe du Hoc was riddled with craters from shells exploding in the attempt to blow up the German guns stationed there. It was hard to imagine that the land used to be flat before World War II.

Mackenzie and I down in the middle of one of the shell craters just to show how deep they still were after all this time.

After visiting the Pointe du Hoc, we traveled over to Sainte Mére- Église to see the Musée Airborne. Both Mackenzie and I liked looking at all the different insignias and medals that the men wore on their uniforms; seeing the inside of the gliders was pretty amazing too.

The town's church, complete with a fake paratrooper stuck up on one of the spires, representing the actual event of paratrooper, John Steele, getting stuck on the church during his landing and watching the fighting from up above for two hours before he was discovered by the Germans. 

Brécourt Manor, one of the locations for a battle scene in the second episode of "Band of Brothers" when Easy Company, under the command of Major Dick Winters, took out four German guns that were shelling Utah beach while Americans were still trying to land ashore.

A memorial specifically dedicated to Major Dick Winters, who passed away now three years ago. He wouldn't allow for any monuments to be commissioned while he was alive, so this monument is quite new to the scene. Our tour guide said that Normandy erects about 20 new monuments every year to commemorate various companies or persons in action.

One of the new stained glass windows in a church that served as a medical camp during the Battle of Normandy, headed by two American medics, Kenneth Moore and Robert Wright.

A street renamed after Easy Company's training camp in Georgia. The street was located right outside the aforementioned church.

The American monument in Carentan (which was our last stop of the day), dedicated to all the soldiers who fought and died in the Battle of Normandy. It was pretty cool to see old pictures taken at the time of the dedication ceremony and compare them to the modern looks of the town, which still has many of the same buildings intact.

That completes our day in Bayeux and Saturday we headed back to Paris for one more day of Spring Break bliss before we traveled back to Bath for my classes that start up again on today!

Au revoir!

"Je t'aime Paris": La Première Partie

Hello all!

Today's post is all about Mackenzie's new favorite place in the world, Paris! She swears that later on in life when she is rich ("when" not "if"), she is going to have a chateau overlooking the city, preferably next to the Eiffel Tower :) I, on the other hand, was not expecting to love Paris as much as I did, after everything that I have heard about Paris being overrated... well, it wasn't. It was wonderful. I am extremely excited to go back in a couple days and meet up with my roommate, Melanie, after she has been spending her spring break with her sister in Monaco. Mackenzie is excited to go back too; both of us have not seen nearly enough of Paris for our liking :)

Le Pont Archeveche (aka one of the two "Lock Bridges" in Paris) with the Notre Dame in the backdrop. The two famous "lock bridges" are adorned with millions of locks that people have placed there over the years... the story goes, that you are supposed to lock a padlock onto the bridge and throw one of two keys into the Seine River, then at the end of your life, you should come back with the other key and unlock your padlock from the bridge. 

So of course Mackenzie and I bought our own lock and added it to the bridge! We even got to engrave it ourselves (the scratches looked like the handwriting of a kindergartener...haha). We wrote "MEV" on one side (both of our initials) and put a heart with the date on the back side (the heart we thought was appropriate to depict our feelings about Paris as well as our last name). 

Mackenzie locking our padlock smack dab onto the middle of the bridge.

After we crossed le Pont Archeveche, we headed over to the Notre Dame and proceeded to wait in line for over an hour in order to go up to the top of the towers. We made the time pass by eating some French crêpes (mine had nutella and banana, Mackenzie's had just chocolate). But I have no qualms about eating all this junk food because we immediately worked it all off by walking up 422 steps to the very top of the Notre Dame to see the panoramic views out over the city of Paris!

Mackenzie's picture captures one of the best views of Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in the center of the background.

We were allowed to go into the Notre Dame as well and I was absolutely floored by all of the stained glass windows. Some of the prettiest that I have ever seen, hands down.

After the Notre Dame, we took the metro over to the Eiffel Tower to eat lunch... unfortunately, we missed the end of the lunch period for the only restaurant that we can afford because the ticket machine in the metro station was broken and we had to take a later train than the one we were originally planning on. But we will try again on Saturday!! This is definitely one thing on both of our bucket lists: to eat on the Eiffel Tower! We ended up eating at a cute restaurant down the street, which was ultimately the best thing we could have done because Mackenzie picked up some fabulous posters for her room at the best price we saw all day. 

Our next stop took us to the Louvre! The glass pyramid in the background is actually the entrance to the Louvre. We were pretty beat by this point, so we didn't have much time in the Louvre, but we did manage to see...

...this pretty girl. Of course we stopped off in the Greek Antiquities room to see the Venus de Milo as she is one of the star attractions.

And we were able to elbow our way up to the front of the room to get a picture of the Mona Lisa photobombing us. It's amazing how small the painting actually is, especially compared to the ceiling-to-floor portrait that was placed on the opposite wall that covered at least 400 sq. feet. 

This morning before we checked out of our hotel and headed off to Bayeux, we strolled around the Luxembourg Gardens, situated just a 5 minute walk from where we were staying. The gardens were beautiful...

...and the palace was absolutely massive. We are counting our blessings that we have gotten 4 days of sunny skies... standing on the top of the Notre Dame would not be nearly as much fun if we were getting soaked simultaneously. Rome was almost too nice in the sense that it was a good 80 degrees, but all we brought with us clothing-wise is sweaters and boots. 

To commemorate the first half of our visit to Paris, we decided to buy a box of French macaroons. I don't think that box is going to last until tomorrow...

Although we arrived in Bayeux, France earlier today, the real sight-seeing begins tomorrow on our full-day tour of the D-Day Invasion of Normandy. Our tour revolves around many of the scenes found in the mini-series "Band of Brothers," which was directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. So more pictures to come!

Au revoir!