I’m writing this while watching the sun set behind the cathedral and listening to some drunk guy singing in Italian on the street below. It’s a very strange combination.

Today was a bus day. After breakfast, we walked over to the Louvre and caught a tour bus. They handed out cheap little headphones to plug into boxes beside our seats. Then you chose your language from one of eight. English (represented with a British flag which threw me for a second), French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, German, and what we think was Arabic. We spent the next few hours being driven through the crazy traffic of Paris, seeing the main sights, and completely losing track of all the dates of when things were built, added onto, commissioned by this king or that one,  built by which architect, burned down, moved, or changed into a palace, museum, or prison.

I said it before, but I’ll say it again. The amount of history here is overwhelming.

We drove past Notre Dame (which we went back to- more later), that bridge covered in padlocks , a lot of ancient palaces-turned-something else, the big university, the Concorde where Marie Antoinette was beheaded (along with a bunch of other people) and up the Champs Elysees to the Arc d’Triumph. The Champs Elysees is a huge street lined with the highest of the highest end stores. Louis Vuitton, Mercedes Benz, Cartier, Tiffany, dozens of Parisian couture stores, and a McDonalds. Yes, McDonalds- right smack in the middle of it all.

At the end of the road was the famous Arc d’Triumph-

Pictures don’t convey the scale of it. From the other end of the road, you could see it over the tops of all the 5-6 story buildings. People have flown planes through the middle of it. And the carvings on it are spectacular. Intricately carved people fight battles in scenes the size of movie theater screens.

The traffic around it is nothing like I’ve ever seen before either. Busses cut through the cars and scooters like giant whales in an ocean. Everyone just lets them go where they need to go. The cars drift in whatever direction they need to go, weaving across each other’s paths in some places. And the scooters just dart wherever, making up their path as they go along. It’s a scary-looking hierarchy but amidst the toot tooting of horns, it seems to work. Another fun thing was the Ferraris and Lamborghinis parked everywhere with “Drive Me!” plastered on their sides. Tempting, but not in the crowded center of Paris.

Oh, and we also saw this slightly famous thing-

From the other side of the city, it’s like “Oh, there it is. Doesn’t look any bigger than the Space Needle.” From the bus nearby, it looks pretty big. But standing underneath it….

It’s massive. Huge. Pick your adjective. I would guess that about 12,000 people could stand underneath it, if they squished together a little.

But in all honesty, I was more impressed with Notre Dame. That thing is big and beautiful beyond belief.

I’ve never seen such amazing architecture. Every single bit of that building is made intricately. In some places it looks as delicate as a butterfly wing while others are adorned with massive gargoyles and statues of saints. We’re actually going to go inside it tomorrow to ogle at the stained glass and ornamentation in there, which we’re all really excited about.

We’re also going into the Louvre tomorrow-

That building is both the biggest and the richest art museum in the world. It stretches for three or four city blocks long and a least two across.

One the biggest things that struck me today (beside the beauty of everything) was the diversity. So many cultures, races, styles… Oregon really is an isolated part of the world. I couldn’t tell you how many different languages I heard today. I really enjoyed seeing all the different people staring at the same beautiful things. There’s probably a deeper meaning there but this isn’t English class and I’m too tired. Despite all the diversity, everyone was really kind about bumping into each other, avoiding each other’s photos, and just being generally cheerful. It was awesome.

A few random bits:

Sentence I Never Thought I’d Say: “No! I’m not going to walk to Notre Dame. I will walk to the Louvre though.”

(Our apartment is only a few blocks away)

Here’s a little bit more of our apartment, by the way. These beams are at least a hundred years old-

And this is our hilariously small kitchen with a six foot tall dad for reference-

All the doorways here are about six feet, one inch tall too. Never have I been more glad to be short. I can reach all the shelves too!

Mom’s Note: All the cathedrals we’ve seen so far are built with carved stone as opposed to Italian architecture, where everything’s built with colorful mosaics and intricate facades.

Mom’s Note 2: The cheese is delicious.

I’ve been working on this for way too long now. But before I go, here’s a picture of the cathedral all lit up now that it’s well and truly dark-

Bye!

Paris certainly lives up to its reputation. Around the airport and outskirts of the city, it looks like just any other city. Freeways, concrete buildings, billboards everywhere. But once you get into the center… Oh man.

But before I rave about the architecture and food, let me back up for just a minute.

Our two flights — one to Minneapolis and second to Paris — went about as well as you can expect when you spend 11 hours on full airplanes. They left and arrived on time, the hostesses spoke French and English, and the food was surprisingly good… and surprisingly familiar.

We had a chauffeur pick us up from the airport and drive us to our apartment, which was really easy and convenient.

But back to Paris itself. I haven’t had a chance to really get pictures of it, but every single building has wrought iron across the windows and carvings everywhere. Unfortunately, I don’t know any of the architectural terms to describe anything, but needless to say it’s beautiful.

Here’s a building we saw on our way back from dinner-

And here’s the amazing view out our 4th floor apartment window-

Yes, that’s a cathedral. From the 1500’s. Wasn’t even mentioned in the information we got about the place. And the dome is where people went to sell grain in the late 1800’s. The stairs we climb up to get here are stone and worn down unevenly. They have hooks driven into them to hold rods which hold carpet in place. Everything here has so much history. Anything build after the 1800’s looks strangely out of place.

The single meal we’ve had here was amazing. Most of us jumped straight into the strange new food and were not disappointed. Dad’s appetizer was some sort of salad guacamole with raw salmon and mine was goat cheese on toast with honey. And then we ordered rabbit, calf head, and duck. Here’s the rabbit-

Hey, when in Rome. Or Paris. It was all delicious. There was some distinct cultural differences though. We spent two hours at dinner, even though most of it was just waiting. And that was the norm. Everyone just sat and talked, ordering tea or coffee when they were done eating and sitting around for another half hour. Because of that, you have to ask the waiter to bring your check- they don’t just bring it when you’re done eating like in America. We realized that after maybe half an hour.

We’ve only been here ten hours, but Paris has been amazing so far. Tomorrow we have hop on, hop off bus passes, so we’ll see most of the main sights. Look for those pictures tomorrow!

Tomorrow morning our plane leaves for our five weeks abroad. None of us can quite believe it. This trip has been years in the making, and to have it actually happen is really strange. However, we’re all very excited. Who wouldn’t be?

The last two weeks have been a bit chaotic as we gathered together everything we needed to spend five week abroad. Only one of our phones is new enough to work overseas, so after opening that one up to global calling, we bought a burn phone so we can keep in touch with each other. We’ve got phones full of music and backpacks full of books. We have a handful of SD cards for our cameras and about three handfuls of batteries. We notified the bank that we were traveling internationally so they wouldn’t cry “Fraud!” and lock our cards, traded dollars for euros, made sure everyone had enough clothes, travel-sized bathroom supplies, power adapters, plug adapters, appropriate walking shoes, and luggage tags. For the last two days, we’ve been cramming everything into four carry-on suitcases and a four backpacks.

We’ve also spent a lot of time cleaning the house for our house-sitters and cataloguing everything they need to do to take care of the small zoo of animals we have.

Add in a surprise root canal and a minor horse injury you have our last two weeks.

Fortunately, with 18 hours until our flight leaves, everything is ready to go. There won’t be a post tomorrow night as we’ll still be on a plane, but we’ll see you in Paris on Sunday!

Au revoir!

Hello!

I should probably put it out there that I’ve never blogged before, so you’ll have to bear with me. Nevertheless, welcome to my travel blog! I’ll be posting daily while me and my family (hang on, we’ll get to them) are in Europe for five weeks starting June 21st. We’ll be in Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Sälen (in Sweden) and London.

Convenient map minus London! Google maps wouldn’t let me show the route in flights (which we will be doing because, fun fact, it’s cheaper than driving or taking the train) and adding London into the driving route takes you back through Amsterdam and stuff. Long story short: it looked weird. And everyone knows where London is.

Here is my family, whom I will probably just refer to as “we” most of the time. Unfortunately, we haven’t taken a family photo recently, so there will be a couple pictures.

Apparently my parents don’t take nice photos together very often, since this one from a couple years ago was the most recent one I could find. In case it wasn’t obvious, my mom is on the left and my dad is on the right.

Fortunately, my parents take pictures of us more frequently – this one is from last week. The tall, blonde boy on the left is my little brother Michael and I (Maggie) am the short, blonde one on the right.

Now that you know who all is going on the trip, let me give you a quick rundown of what we’ve done so far.

Not much.

Well, all of our rooms, planes, and several of our passes/ tours are booked, but in terms of packing, we haven’t started.

In March, Michael and I applied to have our passports renewed and oh boy, wasn’t that fun. Michael got his within a month, but I only got mine a week ago. A couple weeks after Michael got his passport and papers back, I got a letter listing all the things that could possibly be wrong with my passport application. After taking with our city hall, they decided the only thing that could actually be wrong was the photo, so they re-took it for me and sent it in again. About a week later, we got another letter – the exact same letter – telling us that something (who knows what) was wrong. After much frustration and long hold times, my mom talked to someone who said that, even though their website stated that you didn’t need parental permission to apply for a passport if you were over 16, the age was in fact 18. So we filled out all the appropriate paperwork and sent it back in to them. Three days after I turned 18, my passport started being processed for the third time, over three weeks after we sent in the final corrections. That was the middle of May, and I received my passport at the beginning of June. As of June 9th, almost exactly three months after we sent in the first application, I have not got my birth certificate or other papers back yet.

Pro travel tips from an 18 year old: renew your passport as early as possible.

But other than that struggle, it’s been fairly smooth sailing. Booking a small apartment in Paris was a bit of an ordeal, but we found a solid place after only a couple flaky owners.

So when I said not much has happened, I guess that was a bit of a lie. The real push begins this week though, now that we’ve survived my high school graduation and Michael’s 8th grade promotion. I’ll make another post before we leave letting you know what we get up to in the next two weeks, but until then, I hope you have a great week and I look forward to sharing our adventures with you!

Maggie