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...