Paris

This was at a flower market in Paris. There are so many flowers in this city!!
This store is one that I have ordered products from in the US. You can only get their products via catalog so I was really surprised when I saw the actual store in Paris. I guess it makes sense because its a french company.
More flowers :)
It was a really nice day when we saw the Eiffel Tower so we decided to have lunch in the grass near it. It was still a little cool but the sun was out and there were not many clouds.

Some more shots with the Eiffel Tower
This is the inverted pyramid at the Louvre. Sorry my pictures are not all organized together. There are more Louvre pictures in the next post.
This was a display at the Louvre...I don't really know what it is but each little box in the middle is like a little story from the life of Christ. Its kind of cool.
Ouch.
And this is the famous Mona Lisa. Its very small. I was a little disappointed about that, and they put it on this huge wall with nothing else so it makes it look even smaller. I don't know what the reasoning behind that is. I wasn't that impressed though.

Here is a picture of the Arc of Triumph. I didn't really get what the point of building it was, but it is something about remembering soldiers. At the top there is a museum and there is a memorial to the unknown soldier, like what we have in D.C. There is also an eternal flame burning on the ground under the arch.
A farther away shot. There were a lot of people and this picture kind of makes it look small. Believe me...it is huge and there is a muesum at the top...so try to imagine that.
Here is the Moulin Rouge, for all of you who have seen the movie. We took a special trip to see this and all we did was walk off the metro, take a couple pictures, and walked right back on the metro. :) It looks nicer in the movies.

I like this picture. We were walking down a kind of small street and this was a street that crossed the one we were on. I looked down this street at the intersection and it just looked so picturesque :) See all the people sitting by the little outdoor cafes on the left? That is also a really common thing, in Spain too. For more, see the next post.

More Paris

From the top of the Arc of Triumph

Notre Dame from a bridge.
Ahh here is the best dessert I have ever had. Look at how big those raspberries are!! And the outside is like a grahm cracker like crust and there is cream under the fruit. Yummm!!
This is from the top of the Arch of Triumph. Its a good view of the whole city but I wish those bars weren't there...but then i guess we would fall off. :) You can kind of see the Eiffel Tower through the bars.

This is a nice little park with a pond that people just chill out at. Its such a european thing and I love it. It makes me think about our parks at home and how people don't go there just to sit and relax and talk to other people. We just go to the park for like the 4th of July or some special function. Its too bad. So I hope you go to the park after reading this now!This is the pond at that park and there were lots of little sail boats that people were playing with. They had sticks to push them the right way and it was cool to watch them. I was trying to think of how many Americans I know that would go to a park just to watch something like this? Would any of you?? We are good at saying Carpe Diem, but we never do it. Here I am by some flowers :) There are so many flowers in Paris! Maybe because we were there in the spring so it was the right season, but it was so beautiful!!

This is Notre Dame
Here I am with Amanda in front of Notre Dame. We walked through it but couldn't figure out how to go up in one of the towers. There were a lot of places where you can buy a candle and light it, like what Catholics do. So that created a lot of confusion because there were lines everywhere for that. Maybe we missed the line. It was really cool to just go inside it though. The next picture is from the inside, one of the beautiful windows.

More from inside Notre Dame

This is another side of Notre Dame
Here is a nice little old car :) I think its a mini cooper from quite a few years ago. :)
Some more pretty flowers!!

Here I am eating another one of those raspberry cake things. They were so good and I wish I could have taken some home with me. The raspberries were huge!

This is, I think, the Hotel Deville. Its like one of the most famous hotels in Paris and its really big and old like most famous things in europe. And this is a carousel next to the hotel.
This was at a restaurant the last night we were there. I got salmon and rice and it was very very good. That was a typical restaurant in Paris and it was actually pretty cheap for the average. As you can see, its still pretty fancy.
This is the building where Napoleon is buried. His casket is right under that big gold dome. We didn't go in because it was closed when we got there, but its ok. I don't really care about Napoleon that much; He wasn't a very nice guy. The dome is pretty though.
This the opposite view from that dome. It faces the city and skyscrapers :)

Note

Hello Everyone,

Well, this has been a really fun trip and I've been to a lot of places and shared with you as much as I could. I don't have any more trips planned until I come home so I just wanted to let you all know that I probably won't be posting anymore. I'll be home in a month and you can see all my pictures and me then.
I hope you all have enjoyed my blog.

Alecia

Paris

This is the side of the Louvre museum. We walked through those arches and that is where the glass pyramid is as you will see.

Here is the famous glass pyramid and it is the entrance to the museum. You go in one side and down an escalator to the lobby and the hallways branch off from there and go up. This is the biggest museum I have ever been to and we spent almost 4 hours there. We didn't even see everything and I would have like to stay longer, but it was enough what we saw.

This was just a view from walking along the river.

A roman style building. I just took it because it had a flag on the top and I like flag pictures :)

This was just a big cool building. I really like the french style architecture. Its a lot nicer than the spanish style, in my opinion.

Here I am with the Eiffel Tower. This is like the best place to take a full shot of the tower because you can get everything and its a raised area. I just wish it wasn't so cold when we were there.

This is another view of the river. There were a lot of tour boats and we thought about taking a tour but we had a lot of other things to do too. So there are a few shots from Paris. I have a lot more but I can't decide which ones to put here and so I think its better for me to just show you when I get home. That way I can explain them better too.

Paris Preview

Bon Jour!! Well these three pictures are all that my internet will let me post right now and I don't have time to fight with it so this will just be a preview of more to come. I went to Paris last weekend as you can see and these pictures are from the Eiffel Tower. This was the nicest day that we were there and the other days were very cold and rainy. I don't know why, but I expected Paris to be warmer.

Everything in Paris was beautiful as you will see in my next post. Amanda and I were told that Paris is really dirty but we found that it was nice. Maybe if you go out of the touristy areas and into the worse parts of the city it gets dirty. But where we were was really nice. There were tulips everywhere and we felt like we were back home except for when we looked up and saw the Eiffel Tower.

So I will try to get the rest of my pictures up here very soon and sorry about the internet problems. I'll be home in 6 weeks so its not too long to wait for the rest of my pictures :)

Romania

Hello everyone and sorry that I haven't posted in awhile. Just to keep you updated, after i got back from Greece I had exams and then I went to Romania for 5 days to visit some friends I have there. For those of you who know, I stayed with Ovidiu and his family. This first picture is of the airport in Bucharest. After arriving there I had to take a bus and then the metro to the train station and then take a train for 6 hours to Medias.

The first night I was there I played Uno with the family and another game that I don't remember the name of. It was really fun and I think this game is like universal because I have played it in Sain, Romania and the US.

This is at church on sunday. I sat with Paula so she could translate for me. Paula is the girl that I stayed with the first time I went to Romania in 2003. It was nice to see her again and talk to her for awhile.

This is from the second day I was in Romania and we went to Sibiu. This is the center of the city and I was really inpressed because its so nice.

These are the mountains near Subiu. I didn't know that Romania had such big mountains, but now I do :)

Oh and here I was helping with dinner :) Cutting cabbage. This was on sunday after church.

And here is a picture of Paula and me at church. She is married now and was living in Alabama for a couple years. They just came back to Medias in january so I'm glad I got to see her.

And here we are in Sibiu. After seeing the center we went to a mall and walked around a little and got some icecream. Ovidiu goes to school in Sibiu so he knew some good places to see.

This is also in the center at Sibiu and its kind of like what I saw in Bilbao and San Sebastian. I like these kind of fountains.

An nice building in the center.

This was on the way back to Bucharest and the airport yesterday. It was a really nice day and the view was amazing. When I got there it was dark so I couldn't see where we were going but when I left to go back to madrid I saw the mountains and stuff.

This was in a McDonalds in Bucharest at the train station. Its pretty fancy and the lady at the table next to me was american so I talked to her a little. I think the only time I ever go to McDonalds is when I'm in europe :) Ha. Well that is all for now and I will be leaving for paris this afternoon so I will have more pictures soon.