Brugge Christmas Markets

After dropping Dad off at the airport, we left Ryan at home with Kevin and Charles and headed up to Brugge. The Christmas market had started a couple days before making the main square very picturesque.  The market itself was not that awesome.  It was missing all the homemade items you'd see at German Christmas markets.  If you're looking for nice hats and scarves this would be a good one to go to.  Brugge is a nice town on its own, but the market booths, lights and Christmas music made it magical.  We had some food (bratwursts, frites and churros) and did a walking tour on the way back to the car.

Paris

We drove to Paris the day after returning from the cruise.  Aside from me, it was every ones first time there so I did my best to play tour guide.  Our first stop was the Arc de Triumph.  Pretty impressive with a massive roundabout surrounding it.  Dad was the only one who wanted to climb it so he ran up and enjoyed the views while the rest wandered and I waited.  We met up at the best meeting place...McDonald's.  From here we walked down part of the Champ Elysee then made our way via side roads to the Trocadero Gardens which has the best view of the tower.  On the walked we saw a bunch of scooters chained to the fence.  A pretty funny site, but that is apparently how kids get to and from school.

Some great picture to go with a fun (but cold and rainy) day.  As we were taking pictures, Guillaume wanted to take one of himself holding the Eiffel tower between his fingers.  I had to take the pictures below to help explain it wasn't possible.  Good times.

I had never actually been up the Eiffel Tower so I was excited when we decided to climb it.  There was a huge line for the elevator, but none for the stair (plus the stairs are less expensive). 

I had though from here we could walk over to an area I knew of that had a lot of little restaurants.  We ended up taking the bus instead and it's a good thing we did.  In a pretty direct route on the bus it took about 20 minute to get there.  That would have been a long walk.

We found some interesting place to eat, but settled on a corner creperie that had covered tables outside and heating posts.  I don't love savory crepe, but every now and again they hit the spot...especially when you're in the city of crepes.  However, I would say I still like sandwiches more...mom's was delicious.

We started our last walking tour across the river at the Notre Dame Cathedral.  From here we worked our way over to the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation which is a memorial to the 200,000 people deported from Vichy France to Nazi Concentration Camps during the Second World War.

As we continued the walk Guillaume decided to give feeding birds a try and it worked.  We walked pass some lock bridges (couple lock their love there and throw away the key).

With all our traveling I have gotten pretty good with catching some good pictures.  I think my favorite is Dad's Mary Poppins type jump with the umbrella and all.

 That was the end of our Paris trip.  After Guillaume used his smooth talking French to get us into some nice hotel bathrooms with keypads we took the metro back out to our car and headed home.

Cruise General Info

Before moving to Europe, I didn't think I'd ever go on a cruise.  Now that I've done 3 (1 with kids, 2 without), I'm sold on them.  Some cruise lines are better than other (MSC is cheap and kids were free, but definitely not up to par with RC or Norwegian).  This cruise was on the Norwegian Jade. The first day aboard, I kept thinking this would be an awesome boat for kids.  They had a great teens area, little kids area, numerous activities for under 2's (in Jan the age to leave kids will bump up to 3 but they will have stuff each day for the kids that aren't old enough to be left), an area with kids size tables in the cafeteria, and a contained kiddie pool area.  I would love to take the kids on this ship.

For us, we bought they actual cruise through Costco Travel and it came with wine (we traded out for soda), chocolate covered strawberries and $150 on board credit.  It was until after we bought it that we learned about Bountiful Travel so we contacted them and were allowed to pay a fee to be added to their group (enabled us to attend on board seminars and purchase their shore excursions).  Even with paying the speaker fee, their shore excursions were so much cheaper (plus had an LDS perspective and we saw more sites than the ships excursions) that we were saving money.  Pretty sweet deal.

On board the ship we went down the slide at the pool, went hot tubbing, attended most of the night time performances, visited the bridge room, at lots of soft serve ice cream and even worked out.  My goal this cruise was to workout twice (better than nothing right).  I ended up doing much more than that.  I found that I *might* actually enjoy belonging to the gym.  I can easily read my books while I bike, it's a tad bit more difficult on the elliptical and impossible on the treadmill.  I maxed out at 4 miles on the treadmill. I don't know how anyone can have that be their main way to run.  It is painfully boring even with watching TV or listening to music.  I don't love to run but if I'm going to do it, it needs to be outside.

We played basketball and used the shuffle board a couple times each, but didn't get around to golfing.  At night, we played a lot of Bonanza (the Bean game) with my parents.

For breakfast I lived of a bowl of blueberries topped with a scoop of muesli (so good).  Lunch we did a variety of things. Then dinner I preferred to eat in the main dinning room.  I thought the food was better there than the cafeteria style one and the waiter keep filling up the water glasses so I actually drank a lot.  On top of that, our tour group reserved dinner tables most nights so we were able to get to know the people in our group which we enjoyed....we just had us sit at a different table  than mom and dad since tables only seat 8.

Our room attendant was really nice too.  At night it was fun to come in and see what towel animal he had left for us.  We actually unpacked and put our luggage away then rearrange the room when we first got there.  It was an indoor room which has its perk of saying dark at all hours and being very soundproof. 

This was our last in port day with our tour group.  We thoroughly enjoyed our excursions and on board lectures and highly recommend taking a tour with Dave at Bountiful Travel if you are interested in doing a Holy Land or Book of Mormon cruise tour.  Having dinner with and getting to know the other people in our group was just icing on the cake.