lady antebellum

I'm obsessed with this.
http://youtu.be/v_yTphvyiPU

Ultimate Ericksen European Vacation, week two

DAY SIX (MONDAY)--Groombridge Enchanted Forest
We started off our second week by going to the Groombridge Enchanted Forest in Tonbridge.  It was one of those places where the family had lots of land and didn't know what to do with it, so they spruced it up a bit and sold it to tourists.  My favorite part were the huge swings in the middle of the forest.  Pretty enchanting.  And there was this really funny storyteller guy that Syd and I found.
picture time!

{Zedonk! his name is Adam}

{walking through the vineyards}

Oh, and as we were driving away, I looked out the window and saw a house that looked just like the one that they used to film the Bennett's house in Pride and Prejudice.  But I was like, nahhh it couldn't be.  I looked it up, anyways, and it WAS!  Soooo basically finding the places where they filmed the recent "Pride and Prejudice" has become a new hobby of mine.  So far, I've seen Pemberley (Mr. Darcy's house), Apollo's Temple (where Darcy declares his love for her in the rain), and the Bennett's house.

DAY SEVEN (TUESDAY)--Dover

We drove to the southern costal town of Dover, where the cliffs of Dover are located and it's the closest point between England and France across the channel.  When we got here the night before, we walked along the beach and down a long pier.  Then we ate at an surprisingly authentic Italian place that's randomly in downtown Dover (Dover's a fairly small city).  I mean, the waiter didn't even speak English very well. 

{Syd on the rocky beaches of the Dover coast}

Tuesday, we went to the Secret Wartime Tunnels and Dover Castle.  The top of Dover castle's tower is still the coolest view ever.

{white cliffs and the castle}

{top of Dover castle's tower}

{spectacular view}

We drove back to London and I did some souvenir shopping at Tesco (to get my chocolates) and Primark (cuz, you know, it's Primark). The family ate at McDonald's so that we could compare it with American McDonald's. Verdict: It's pretty much the same, only the burgers are wider and shorter and the milkshakes are watery. That night, we stayed in the hottest hotel on the planet and didn't get much sleep.
Oh, and we went to Hogwarts for a little bit.

DAY EIGHT (WEDNESDAY)--Paris: Arc de Triomphe, Jardin di Tuileries, Musee du Louvre, dinner at Sainte Michele

On to our next adventure: Paris!! This was the chunnel trip that got me hooked on Angry Birds thanks to my mom's iPad hahaha. 
The first thing we tried to see was the Arc de Triomphe.  I say tried because we never actually ended up going up the Arc because the line was atrocious.  Seriously, Paris is SO crowded in the summertime and the lines are ridiculous everywhere you go. 
We hung out at the Jardins de Tuileries and walked down to the Louvre.  Sydney and I then broke off from the family and saw my favorites in Louvre for a few hours.
That night, we had a 3 course dinner at Sainte Michele in the Latin Quarter and it was so delicious! I had French onion soup, chicken with a thick mushroom sauce, and chocolate mousse.  We and the next table over of Americans braved escargot.  We chatted with the ladies from the other table and the woman said, "Yeah, we're visiting my daughter, here." Daughter: "I started teaching here a little bit ago and something made me stay."  Us: "What was that?" Daughter: "A Frenchman."  I guess people really do that in real life, not just in movies!

{Arc de Triomphe}

{Place de la Concorde--this is where they beheaded Marie Antionette and King Louis the somethingth and other political heads (no pun intended) during the French Revoution}

{Sainte Michele fountains}



DAY NINE (Thursday)--Tour de Eiffle, Musee du Rodin, Musee D'Orsay

I always forget how huge the Eiffle Tower is. We wanted to take a bike ride from the tower to our next destination, but the stupid rental bikes place was stupid which was stupid. 

So we walked through the back roads in Paris to the Musee du Rodin.  on the way, we looked at shops and the Dome des Invalides, where Napoleon is buried (talk about ego trip). 

After we went to Paris as a group during my study abroad last year, we had a pow wow with Brother Shuler about what we thought about Paris.  We started talking about the museums we liked and the historical points that were cool.  But Brothber Shuler kept saying: "But what about all of the making out?!?!"  We were a bit surprised and siad that we didn't really notice it.  Let me tell you, I noticed it this time.  It's probably because it's summertime and so more people were outside.  They were everywhere: in the parks, in the museums, in the restuarants, even the gardens of the Musee de Rodin.

We then spent a couple of hours in the Musee d'Orsay, which is one of my favorites.  They're all my favorites.

A new trend in Paris is to take pad locks and write a love note or the names of you and your lover and lock it to a bridge.  I thought this was the cutest idea and I plan on locking my name permantently in Paris with my lover someday.

{The Thinker in the gardens of Musee de Rodin}

{love lockdown}

DAY TEN (Friday)--Notre Dame, Latin Quarter, Sorbonne, Pantheon, Jardin du Luxemburg, Pere Lachaise, Parissian cafe

Have I mentioned how many pasteries and crepes that I ate on this trip?  A lot.

We waited in line (of course) for going up into Notre Dame.  It's worth the wait, my friends. 

After doing all of those stairs, we walked through the Latin Quarter and stopped in a little church when it started to rain.  Have you seen "Midnight in Paris"?  My favorite line from that movie is when Owen Wilson says, "There's nothing like Paris in the rain."  Amen, Owen, amen.

We visited Sorbonne, the university in Paris.

Then we walked up the hill more to Pantheon.  I wanted to go inside the last time I saw it because this building is the one that kicked-off the Neo-Classical architecture era in Europe that carried over to America (think our Capitol building and Jefferson's Monitcello).  Plus, it's where a bunch of famous people are buried, like Braille and Victor Hugo. Plus, it's really pretty.

We ate at McDonald's so that I could say that I ate French fries in France.

Then we hung out at the Jardins du Luxemburg.  Very pretty.

We quickly went over to the cimetiere du Pere Lachaise right before they were going to close.  This is the coolest cemetery that I've ever been in as well as the BIGGEST.  We saw Jim Morrison's grave (lead singer for The Doors), Chopin (Spencer, Sam and I touched it with our piano fingers so that we could get good piano playing vibes from my favorite composer), Oscar Wilde (weirdest tomb ever and people kissed it all over--ew).  We were deciding who else we wanted to see and I saw on the map that Pisarro was buried here and it was by a tomb that my mom wanted to see, so we started to walk back towards the entrance where we came since we passed it on the way inside.  Just when we started to walk, a security guard drove up and honked at all of the visitors yelling in French that we had to leave out the back entrance right away.  I guess they had issues with crazies in the past where they would try to stay in the cemetery after closing, so they were very adimant about getting us all out right at closing. After the guard drove away and the visitors started to head towards the back gate, I turned to my family and said, "I'll meet you at the metro station.  Pisarro is my favorite artist, dangit, and I want to see his grave."  And then I started to duck between the tombs away from gthe main road so that I wouldn't get caught.  My family followed me, without question.  This is why I love them.  I had made it to another main road, with my family in tow, and I peeked behind the bushes to see if there were any guards.  There was one down the road a ways, but his back was turned to me, so I book it across the road.  He turned around right as my little ducklings of my family followed me across the street and he started to yell at me in French.  I almost pretended to not hear him, since, you know, I don't speak French, but my brother and mom understood and started to ask why we couldn't go out the front, since it was closest to our metro stop.  He kept yelling at us to go out the back gate, so we obeyed and didn't get to see Pisarro's grave.  Oh well, it was a nice effort hahaha.

For dinner, we sat in the outdoor seating of the cafe by our hotel and ate bread and cheese like the Parissians do.  That was one of my favorite things to do in Paris.

{Notre Dame}

{southwest view from Notre Dame}

{Pantheon}

{Jardin du Luxemburg}

{ignore how awkward this picture is, please, but it's the only one of Chopin's grave that we took}

DAY ELEVEN (Saturday)--Catacombs, Musee L'Orangerie, Sacre Coeur/Montmarte

We waited in line for the catacombs for 3 hours. THREE HOURS.  But they were really cool and creepy.  There was one area that you could see for about 30 feet past the skulls where they put the rest of the body parts and it was at that point that I was like, wow that's a lot of dead people.  It was almost fake to me.

After trying 3 or 4 times before and always getting misled on the times they were open, we finally got to go to Musee L'Orangerie.  This is the one with Monet's Waterlilies in the infinity rooms and some of my favorite Reniors.

Next, we made the trek up to Montmarte to see Sacre Coeur.  It started to pour when we got up there, so tons of people were cramming their way into the church when we got there.  It was very pretty, though, and has the best views of Paris.

We walked took a bus around the back streets, ducking into stores to avoid the rain.  Mom and I really wanted to sit in a cafe in the outdoor section (under the cover, of course) in the rain and drink hot chocolate and people watch. So we did. And it was really fun.  We stopped at my favorite gelato place (seriously, my favorite gelato in literally the whole world) and walked down to see Moulin Rouge. 

{off with their heads}

{Monet's "Waterlilies"}

{Sacre Coeur}

{view from Sacre Coeur}

{people watching while drinking hot chocolate in the rain}

{Moulin Rouge}



DAY TWELVE (Sunday)--Versailles, Church, boat tour

We went to Sacrement Meeting in Versailles in a little church building in the middle of a neighborhood.  It was a really neat experience to hear the prayers and hymns and testimonies in French. 

We ate our cheeses and baguettes and pasteries for lunch, then went into the Chateau de Versailles.  we did the whole tour, anxious to get out into the beautiful gardens, when we hit another ticket line.  They were having a concert in the gardens and so you had to pay again in order to go into the gardens.  The gardens are the best part, so we were bummed since they didn't tell us about this concert dealio.  So we left Versailles and took a boat tour along the Seine.  This is one of my favorite things to do. We then went to see the Lady Diana memorial by the bridge where she crashed and died.  This is also the memorial to the Statue of Liberty in America that the French gave to us as a gift.  It was a replica of the Statue's flame.  Yay, America! 

{Versailles}

{inside Versailles--the hall of mirrors}

{from the boat tour--the bridge was a gift from Russia...recognize it from "Anastasia"?}

DAY THIRTEEN (Monday)--my own little architecture tour of Paris

My mom had left this day open so that we could do things that we ran out of time to do or things that we wanted to do on our own.  I decided that it was my day to just walk around Paris and enjoy the amazing architecture. 

{National Library--this has a courtyard in the middle of the L buildings that look like the cages for the velociraptors in "Jurassic Park"=freakyyy.  But the four L-shaped buildings are all offices and books. Cool.}

{George Pompidou Centre, aka the Modern Art Museum of Paris--All of the insides are on the outside.}

{Paris Opera House--this place has enough storage and stage space to have probably 20+ set changes. It was built to be extravagance for the upper middle class so they could feel like royalty.}

{I forget what this is called, but it marks the place where the battle of the Bastille took place.  It's fashioned after the other tall post that's in Rome that's a lot bigger and I forget the name of, also ha}

{The Madeline--this is built after the Parthenon in Italy}

We took the chunnel back to London so that we could catch the plane out of Heathrow in the morning.  We ate at Nando's for our last dinner, of course.  When we got back into town, the news was going crazy with the rioting.  We were just by Tottenham Court Road the week before, and when we were in Paris it was thrashed by the rioters.  So sad and scary.  But we were ok and it didn't hit any of the neighborhoods we were in. 

It was the greatest family vacation ever.  We saw and did so many awesome things and made so many good memories together.  I would go back in a heartbeat.

Truth and Tolerance

This CES fireside talk by Elder Dallin H. Oaks and his wife had me nodding and thinking.
What an appropriate discourse on 9/11/11!
http://bcove.me/fwfey36m

I want to show this to everyone I know

http://youtu.be/2Z4m4lnjxkY

Just a little Tuesday treat

Extravagant Ericksen European Family Vacay 2011

Did you miss me? I've been moving, starting school, working, meeting new people, spending time with said people, and everything inbetween.  Thus, the blogging drought.
I couldn't miss the opportunity to tell you about my vacation.  Since the details are plenty, I will instead throw a slew of pictures at you.

I first spent some time back home in Oregon for a week, which is just what I needed.  We zumba-ed, basketballed, ate a lot, celebrated my mama's birthday, and spent some time at the beach house.

{it was Petunia's first time ever to the beach!! I just adore this picture}

DAY ONE--tourist day in London

Then we rocked the full day of traveling through 3 different countries to end up at good ole Heathrow Airport.  I still don't believe I went back.  I never thought that I would, so it felt like I was just walking around in a dream.  My family had to tell me a couple of times to slow down so they could take pictures of things and I realized that I was just so used to this city that I forgot that they haven't seen the cool things, yet.  Being in London just felt good and comfortable, like a favorite pair of shoes.

{BYU London Centre, where I lived for 4 glorious months with 40 wonderful people}

{Kensington Palace and gardens}

{tourists}

{London Eye}

(yes, Annie, Kira, and Brittany, I instisted we did the 4D experience. It was just as great the second time around)

DAY TWO--Tower of London, Tower Bridge, British Museum, "39 Steps"

{beefeater at the Tower}

{Tower Bridge}

Then, the fastest tour of the highlights of the British Museum that you've ever seen.  Mummies, Rosetta Stone, Parthenon, oh my!

I went to see "39 Steps" on my birthday last time and loved it, so I'm glad that I got to take my family to that.

DAY THREE--Buckingham Palace, St. James' Park, Parliament tour, Westminster Cathedral, Trafalgar Square

{I didn't get to go inside of Buckingham the first time I went to London, so I LOVED being able to see something new.  Plus, it's where the queen lives.  Plus, it's really really pretty on the inside.}

Oh, and as we were rushing to our tour, we were stopped from crossing the street by a police man and some fast-moving important cars drove by and my parents looked at each other and said, "Was that Prince William?!"  And as I walked across the street, a local mumbled in as-a-matter-of-factly manner something about the Prime Minister.  I couldn't tell who it was, but, hey, probably someone famous.  I didn't get anywhere close to that during the 4 months I lived there!

Yes, William and Kate are still the hot topic there, with plates with their faces on them, postcards, etc.  As a part of our Buckingham tour, in the grand ballroom was a display of Kate's gorgeous dress and accessories for the wedding along with the very elaborate wedding cake.

{St. James' park}

When we got our passes for the Parliament tour, my mom decided to make a face in all of our pictures from behind us.  Hahaha oh mom...

{Westminster Cathedral}

{St. Martin's-in-the-field}

When we went to check out Trafalgar Square, they were having the year countdown kick-off for the olympics and it was crazy.  So we didn't get to see it, but got the full party-in-Trafalgar experience.  The Londoners are SO excited for the olympics next year. Talk about construction galore all over the city.

DAY FOUR--Portobello Market, St. Paul's, "All's Well That Ends Well" at the Globe, Borough Market, double decker ride through the city, Gelato Mio

{Portobello on a Saturday...}

{St. Paul's from the Millenium Bridge, south of the Thames}

{Shakespeare's Globe Theatre}

{we didn't have to stand...good thing since 3 people passed out in the heat}

{Borough is my favorite market ever ever--and those baklava guys are the best}

{my favorite gelato place in London, Gelato Mio}

DAY FIVE--Royal Tunbridge Wells, driving on the wrong side of the road, Guinea Butt, Great-Grandma's grave, swimming

Sunday morning, my father and I went to the airport to pick up a rental car to take down to Tunbridge Wells.  Do you know what that means? It means that my dad drove on the wrong side of the road in Europe in a little European car.  SCARY! and therefore fun.  The reason we ventured to Tunbridge Wells, Kent, was because of family history.  When my Grandma was 12, she jumped on a boat with her adopted mom to Canada, where 2 years later, they gained US visas and moved to California.  Before they moved to the State, however, they lived in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.  This last Christmas, my mom (who also got her degree in English) editied and printed her mom's adopted mom's autobiography and gave copies to all of the family. It was a very touching moment for my family.  So we thought it would be only appropriate to go visit Tunbridge Wells since it's only 30 minutes south of London and it's our family history spot.  My grandma couldn't remember the exact death date or where her mom was buried, but there is only one cemetery for the greater Sussex/Kent area, so we decided to start our search for great-grandma there.  After about 20 minutes of my family spread across the cemetery, brushing off headstones and looking for a familiar name, my dad said, "Hey, come down to this area where the rest of the family is, Michelle. There's nothing up there."  But I had found a section that had dates close to what my grandma had thought was her mom's death date and so I said that I was going to stay in that area.  He walked up to my area and said, "Oh, these are the dates we need."  So he joined my sweep.  After about 5 minutes, he exclaimed, "Found it!"  Mind you, this was a big cemetery and there were headstones dating back to the late 1800s/early 1900s.  So finding the headstone of great-grandma Rosamond Williamson and 3 of her sisters was a great experience for our family.

{Ericksen kiddos}

{why are you driving on that side of the car, dad?}

We ate fish and chips at a quaint little pub called Guinea Butt.  I'll leave it up to you to look up what that means.

I think that's a good dose for today.  Week two is on its way!!