Bon Voyage

Vacations never last long enough - we can't skip around Paris at midnight while munching on pastries, or scuba dive in the Indian Ocean in perfect turquoise waters, or watch lions nap lazily under a tree while their latest kill sits 10 feet away, endlessly everyday. Who knows, those things might become mundane if they happened all the time?

Not a chance!

We just returned from a most stellar holiday abroad. Because we took hundreds of photos we'll post them chronologically in multiple blogs - so as not to overwhelm. In order to fly to Africa, you fly through Europe, so we broke up the trip by staying in Paris for two days and London for one. We hadn't been back to Paris since our honeymoon (8 + years ago) and found we loved it even more than we remembered. Despite the reputation the French were nothing but warm to us, not even just polite but outright friendly. A ton was crammed into those two days - we walked a lot, went to the Louvre, the Decorative Arts Museum, waited in line at the catacombs - but left in order to make our lunch reservation at Guy Savoy's L'Atelier, and much more. A fabulous time was had by all!

We arrived in the evening the first day and took to the streets, hence the mood lighting. Matt clearly has a real love for Petit Dejeuner, it's quite dear to his heart.
While this moment was happening the music from Amelie was playing in the background, literally.


Our sweet, contemporary hotel located in Bastille
Pledging his love to the boar. He managed to find every boar in the Louvre - a divine mission really.
delicious + hip + traditional meets modern = L'Atelier

embracing the column, he's not partial - be it corinthian, doric, or ionic he's in love
I was a little chilly and grabbed Matt's coat on my way out the door - hence the over sized get-up and obvious bravado.

Then we took the train to London - where we stayed at St. Martin's Lane, a sister hotel of Philippe Starck's Clift hotel in San Fran (with the giant chairs that we posted a picture of a couple of blogs ago). Killer location and such a beautiful hotel. We maximized our one day in London by cruising to the Tower of London for several hours, having dinner at this adorable Chinese restaurant located in the bowels of the earth - really (we only saw the store front, and we kept going down and down and down to where there was this extensive beautiful restaurant behind a small facade). We then topped the night off by getting lost on our way to see Peter Pan in the park (it was a HUGE park!!).

All three of the above were taken in the lobby of our hipster hotel. The first being my fav, very Alice in Wonderland.
Ahhh, room service at midnight - a fabulous idea consisting of mexican donuts, pineapple cake, and ice cold milk
Matt and the beef eater comparing guns at the Tower of London. We had just finished attending a Henry VIII exhibit titled dressed to kill, highlighting his armor. It was super well done, and really engaging. We're in line here to see the crown jewels.
I'm a little tall for the space. Fat guy in a little coat.
We took the beef eater tour that was really interesting! In this very square many people had been beheaded. They kept political and religious prisoners here.