Paris

Dates and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary in Paris this past weekend. It was such an amazing trip! We took the Eurostar train from London straight to Paris on Friday morning, and saw as much as we could in two days. We loved Paris so much and consider ourselves very lucky to have had the opportunity to spend our anniversary in such a great city. Here are a few of the highlights...

Hotel room window/balcony.

A few blocks from our hotel. We opted for climbing the stairs instead of taking the elevator to the top-it was a hike!

View from the first level of the Eiffel Tour. 

View from first level.

River view from first level.

Carousel

View from second level

Second level

After our long stair climb!

The weather was really cold the whole weekend (low was around 18 degrees!), but absolutely gorgeous. 

We ate lunch and had some drinks outside of this cafe. Great people watching! 

Pretty day.

While walking down Champs Elysees, I noticed a familiar smell-kind of smelled like walking through the mall. Then I saw this...It is Abercrombie and Fitch (sign on the right side of the gate). Somehow they managed to surround the street with the overwhelming smell of their cologne like they do at the malls in the U.S. How fancy is this Abercrombie?

Arc de Triomphe

Dates and his map. He spent a lot of the trip like this.

Ferris Wheel

Lobby of our little hotel.

Day 2-need a new map! 

Took this one for my mom and my aunts. They love Palais Royal.

Musee du Lourve

The Lourve

The Lourve

The Lourve

Inside the pyramid.

Mona Lisa

Such a pretty day.

I loved all of the architecture. The buildings were so pretty.

Notre Dame Cathedral

Notre Dame

The altar-sorry for the bad picture...you can't use flash while inside.

Altar

Pretty stained glass

Gotta check the map!

Notre Dame

Pretty buildings

Moulin Rouge! We went to Moulin Rouge for our anniversary 'dinner'. It was awesome!

Moulin Rouge

Crowd waiting to get in the show.

Entrance to the show-right before they took my camera away :( 

Waiting for a taxi outside the hotel. Au Revoir Paris!

We had such a fun weekend! 

I am flying home tomorrow to celebrate Mardi Gras Galveston! Can't wait! 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hampton Court Palace and SNOW!

A few weekends back we went to Henry VIII's famous palace-Hampton Court Palace. One of Dates' coworkers took us and showed us around. It was beautiful and full of history. We really enjoyed it! Here's a few pictures from our tour...

The Great Hall

Henry stopped by to say hello.

King Dates

The Wine Cellar

Henry's kitchens.

The Garden

Garden

Front view of the palace

Leaving the palace. We were only able to see Henry VIII's side of the palace. There is another part that William III and Mary II built. The place was massive and we will need to go back to see the rest of it. We plan to go back in the spring so we can see the flowers in bloom in the many gardens.

Dates' Dad, Mike, came in town last week for work. We were able to spend a lot of time with him and it was so nice having him here! We did a short river cruise on the Thames one day. A few pictures I took while cruising...

Tower Bridge

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

And this past Saturday night, it snowed! Dates had been claiming it was going to snow for a few weeks...and it finally did. They predicted 3 inches. I don't think it was actually that much, but it was enough to get these Texans excited! Especially Nola! We played in it on Saturday night when we got home from the pub. On Sunday we rode with some of our friends (who are the owners of the pub and have a black lab named Jade) to Battersea Park to let the dogs play. Nola is still tired! 

Our back porch

Nola was very curious about it all.

Street view from our front door.

So excited!

Nola, Dusty and Jade in the back of the car headed to the park.

Nola and her London BFF, Jade.

The park was full of people sledding and building snowmen.

You can see Nola coming in from the left side here...she literally ran for 2 1/2 hours straight.

That's all for now! We are spending this week getting ready for our anniversary trip to Paris! We leave Friday!