Borough Market and Paris!

The third day of our Eurotrip was pretty dang awesome. We woke up early ready to hit up Borough Market before getting on a train to Paris.

We decided to head to the train station first and drop off our bags so we wouldn't have to carry them around. This was a little bit annoying but totally worth it. Once the bags were dropped it was off to the market!

Excited on the tube!

Borough Market was AMAZING and I'm so happy numerous friends told me it was an absolute must visit while in London. The market is located on Southwark and Borough High Street right by a cute little church. It's not really known how long it's been around -- the market was first "mentioned" in 1276 but the market itself claims to have existed since 1014 and "probably much earlier." Pretty cool if ya ask me. Also, apparently a part of the market served as the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron in  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban...even cooler!!!!

The market is pretty large and packed with various food stalls. We probably could have spent 12 hours wandering through the market but we unfortunately had a train to catch in a few hours. The best way to describe the market is with photos, so here we go!

Turkish treats. I got a giant bag of dried apricots from here!

Cheese...mmm

Sausage! In the top right corner is blood sausage which we both bravely tried -- I don't think it really tasted like blood... but I guess I don't know what blood tastes like.

Happy in the market!

Bread

Olives

Delicious cured meats

Attempted photo with my panini!

Butchers

The market was so awesome, and like I said we could have spent ages there. After a few hours we said "see you later" to London and headed to St. Pancras Station for our train. While we were there a really weird thing happened: a young girl was arguing with a police officer, and next thing we knew he was chasing her at full speed through the station. She ended up trying to go up the down escalator and they both got caught in a weird cartoonish way. It was very strange to watch...and it reminded me of Hugo getting chased by that crazy train officer!

Eventually we got on the train and were on our way to Paris!

The trains were really comfortable and SO fast...it only took us about 2 hours to get to Paris. Crazy!

We arrived!

Arriving in Paris was the first confusing moment of the trip. We didn't really plan ahead on figuring out how to get to our hotel and had some trouble in the train station. Since we've been back people keep asking me if Parisians are really as rude as we think they are. We didn't do too much interacting in Paris, but I can say that when we first arrived at the train station and Tom asked the guy at the information desk if he spoke English, he replied (in English) with, "no, I speak French." Bordering on rude but nothing too bad :)

By the time we made it to our hotel it was getting dark, so we dropped off our bags and headed off to see the Eiffel Tower! The train system in Paris was also pretty confusing. In addition to the metro are several commuter lines that run through the city -- one being the RER. We couldn't ever tell when we were getting on the RER as opposed to the subway. It was strange but we made it!

And the first Eiffel Tower sighting went to....me!! TKO I hope you know I will forever remember that :)

The Tower through the trees!

As we got closer I was totally overwhelmed by how magnificent the tower was. It was really beautiful and I just felt so happy to be there and in Paris!

We were saving going up the actual tower for the next day, so after spending a bit of time admiring and taking photos we headed to dinner. I had done some research for less touristy dinner options in the area and found Au Bon Accueil. It was very cute and definitely felt less touristy than most of the places in the area. We were given a menu in French and thought it would be fun to try to order by just identifying a few words for each description.

They first brought over some delicious olives in a martini glass. So cute! We snacked on these while sipping on some wine and perusing the menu.

For our starters, I ended up with salmon over cucumber "tagliatelle" and Tom got a celery soup with bacon and croutons which he'll tell you was probably the best thing he ate in Paris!

For our entrees, Tom got pork (I think!) and I got braised veal with mushrooms. I've never eaten veal before but this was delicious!

And finally dessert -- I have no clue what either of us got!

And a little extra treat while Tom drank his espresso:

Dinner was really great, but what happened after was even better! The restaurant had a great view of the Eiffel Tower, and when we stepped outside it immediately started sparkling! I had no clue the Tower did that and was in total shock. It was an incredibly romantic moment perfect for a little side street in Paris :)

It was pretty late at this point so we waked back to the Metro to head to the hotel. Of course we took tons more photos on the way over:

I LOVE this photo

This was the last moment of normalcy before the unfortunate time period Tom and I are calling "the walking dead" began. More on that later...

London Day 2!

So I'm sucking at Europe posts! These posts will just come as quickly as I can get them. Last week I had a crazy busy week at work and then spent the weekend in NY. I can't believe my best and very first friend is heading off to Mongolia for 2 years! She is joining the Peace Corps and I am beyond proud of her. I'm also pretty jealous! These are the types of emotions that make me want to quit my job and move to Tanzania. I'm currently re-looking into Birthright. I wish the trips were a little shorter so I didn't have to take off so many days from work. Ughh!

Okay, so Europe! We started our second day in London a little later because I had a weirdly ill night (this unfortunately was not my only illness of the trip, but more on that later). We left our hotel and planned to follow our "day 2 walking tour" that Maja made for us. We started at Westminster, crossed over the bridge and walked along the South Bank, then crossed the river for more exploring.

The first stop was seeing Big Ben and Westminster up close!

The perfect London photo with the red double decker and Big Ben!

Crossing Westminster Bridge

The view from Westminster Bridge

The walk along South Bank was great. It was pretty touristy near the London Eye but it was great just to walk along the river. Here's just some of what we passed while walking along the bank:

South bank skate park

A cute little alley filled with shops and restaurants

Shakespeare's Globe Theater!

We stumbled upon Borough Market (aka foodie heaven), which I'll go into more in my next post!

Of course we had to stop for a few oysters on the way

Lunch!

The writing on the bathroom door of the bar! Loved it. 

The coolest sparkley toilet ever...hah!

And stopped for a photo with the famous Tower Bridge!

The gorgeous Westminster Abbey from the other side of the Thames

The first thing we did once we crossed over the river was go to "The Monument".

The Monument was built to commemorate the Great Fire which devastated the city in 1666. It is 202 feet high and is the tallest isolated stone column in the world! Of course it offered some great views of the city, our pictures don't do it justice!

At the top of the Monument!

And of course, there was not an elevator in the Monument so you have to walk up 311 steps to get to the top.

Clinging on for life in the tiny spiral staircase!

After the Monument we spent some time walking through "the city" aka the financial district of London. It was around 6:30 at this point so it was fairly deserted. It reminded me a lot of Boston's financial district at that time.

And for the most random event of the trip, while walking through the city we ran into Tom's family friend standing outside of a bar! He lives in London and just so happened to be drinking his pint outside of the bar we walked by. SO weird. We stopped inside to have a drink and get some tips from him and his friend. 

After the run in we continued our walk in search of the beautiful St. Paul's Cathedral. From the outside the cathedral is just stunning and I wish we got to go inside!

Maja recommended going over to Madison Rooftop bar for cocktails and more stunning views. Unfortunately it was raining pretty hard (the most rain we had on our trip) by the time we got there so we checked out the view then split.

We then headed over to Fleet Street for dinner. We stopped in at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. The pub had an interesting gloomy charm to it (we ate in a dungeon-feeling basement) and had some pretty neat history. Apparently a pub has sat in that location since 1538 and a lot of famous literary figures were frequents of the bar -- like Mark Twain and Charles Dickens (who alluded to the pub in A Tale of Two Cities!).

I ordered a burger and Tom got a steak pie. Obviously he was eating more traditional London fare than I.

Here he is posing with the famous slideshow!

That's about it for our second day in London! Hopefully will have some more posts up soon :)