Things seen in Budapest

Apologies for the poor picture a moving Metro car and my phone do not make the best combination,  but if you look at the guys lap on left, that is a some sort of attack falcon or some other such bird of prey. I'm so glad we were not taking Midnight on the Metro to bring her to one of the parks, it could have gotten really ugly.

The Louvre - Paris

We feel really luck to have been able to go to the Vatican see the museum there, the Sistine Chapel and everything else there and and now to follow that up by seeing the Louvre in Paris is amazing.  I know I must sound like a broken record but go for the tour on this one as well.  If you are like me you probably do not really know what you are looking at, and if you know what you want to see finding it is another story.  Our guide was great, she kept us moving along and got us to all of the highlights.  Some of the highlights pictured below that we saw included, the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory, and Venus de Milo.

There she is, it's good to be tall  if you want to get a look at her.

The Mona Lisa is there somewhere.

The Winged Victory

Venus de Milo - Even she has to look out for pickpokets!

 The treasures in the Louvre aren't the only things to look at, the building itself is amazing. 

Eiffel Tower - Paris

 

The Eiffel tower has to be one of the most famous landmarks in Paris if not the world and I can see why.  It is completely mesmerizing, particularly at night when it is all lit up.  Almost anywhere we were in the city I'd find myself drawn to it.  

The first thing we did when we got to Paris was take a tour of the Eiffel Tower which I would highly recommend.  If you've been reading along this will not come as a surprise but make sure to do a skip the line tour, there is so much to do and see it's so worth it.  The great thing about the tour or our tour guide specifically is that she took us up to the second deck and not only told us about the tower but took us to each side of the tower and explained what we were looking at and interesting things to do later.  It really helped us understand how the city was layed out and gave us some places to go and see.  

Some of the interesting things she mentioned about the tower (and I don't know if they are all true but since you are now reading it on the internet it must be!) are:

• It was built for the world's fair and was supposed to only be up for twenty years.  People hated it and property value around it went down because they did not like it and they were afraid it would fall over on them. Eventually they decided they liked it and made it permanent.
• It was not actually designed by Eiffel but by two people working for him, but since he was the boss and footing the bill he called it whatever he wanted.
• Remarkably no one died building it.  One guy went back after work climbed up with a bottle of wine got drunk and fell off and killed himself but that didn't count because it was after work hours.
• The Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas is half the size but took the same amount of time to build, about two years.
• Every hour on the hour at night there is a light show that was supposed to be a temporary thing for the Millennium but they liked it so much they kept, just like the tower itself.

There is much more and I'd highly recommend a tour if you are there.  Here are a few pictures of and from the tower for now

The Arc de Triomphe

Paris

Eiffel Tower Paris

It's been a while so what better way to get caught up is with our trip to Paris.  We went with my parents over New Years and had an amazing time.  What a great city Paris is, we really need to go back as there is so much to see.  In our stay we managed to do a Seine dinner cruise, Eiffel tower tour, Louvre tour, hop on hop off tour, saw Napoleon Tomb in the Eglise du Dome Church (a sight in itself), went to Notre Dame and much more.  Also the food and wine is amazing!  Anyway I will have much more later but just a few pictures for now.

Notre Dame Paris

The Louvre Paris

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!
As we think about all the wonderful experiences we have had this year living in Budapest and traveling, we are very thankful for our opportunities.  We are also thankful our parents have been able to visit us and share our experiences, and that through technology we have been able to stay in touch with family and friends back home.  We wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and hope you are able to share it with those you love.  After the big thanksgiving meal, we'll all probably be looking like these pictures of our pets.  Enjoy!

Pantheon - Rome

The Pantheon was another amazing place to visit.  You don't need to pay to get in and there wasn't a line to get in but someone came up and asked us if we wanted to join a tour and our previous had gone so well we figured why not. Again we learned so much more about the history and architecture than we would have on our own so it really was money well spent.

It's a cool building and as you can see in the pictures below there is hole in the top of the dome to let in the sun and the rain, it's always open.  The pattern around the dome is not just cool looking but it's also functional, have those shapes cut out made the dome weigh less.  Something else that was very clever was that instead of just using scaffolding to get the higher areas they just filled the Pantheon up with dirt.  The clever part was that the left gold and other valuables in the dirt and then the people of the city would go in and take out as much dirt as they could hoping there would be money in there.

The Vatican

One of the many cool things about visiting Rome is that you can also very easily visit the smallest independent state in the world both by area and population, Vatican City.  Of course the Vatican is home to the Pope and Catholicism but you don't have to be Catholic to appreciate it.  The seco
nd largest museum behind the Louvre in Paris is there, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. The lines there are crazy so like we did at the Colosseum we joined a tour that allowed us to skip the lines and have a tour of the museum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's.  Even without skipping the line the tour would have been worth it to hear the history, especially to hear about Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel and the Last Judgement. It's a pretty crazy store and let us know different things we should look for, sadly no pictures were allowed in the Sistine Chapel.