All in All?

All together, Mike's visit was a success!  We were exhausted, and poor thing, he had to go to work right after he got back :(  I on the other hand, have been doing straight up homework since he left, literally.  Anette also came to me and said that she was going to back to Finland for good, so I had to send her off on Monday afternoon.  I miss having her right next door, but she will be back for exams, so that made me feel better.  But...I just wanted to reflect a bit on the whole visit:

-9 days can go ridiculously fast
-France is not that much cheaper than Norway (from my observations)
-I liked the Paris subway system because you never waited more than 5 minutes at any time of day.  In Oslo you can wait a long time, especially a low traffic times
-I am insanely sick of rain
-RyanAir cares only about the flight, not the passengers
-Shops were open so late in Paris, it sucked to come back where everything closes at 4 or 5
-French people are rude, just like everyone says.  Norwegian people are just shy.
-French sounds gross, it was nice to come back and hear Norwegian :)
-I am tired of museums/artwork for a while
-Being a tourist can get exhausting
-I am a clean person, but having our stuff in my room made it feel more homey, now it feels empty
-I still LOVE taking pictures
-Europe is way cooler than the US...sorry, Mt. Rushmore just doesn't measure up!
-I am so glad I pushed myself to go through with this experience, totally worth it

Home Sweet Norway

Lutefisk!

Thursday morning we had to get up really early, once again, to call a taxi to get to the coach park to ride back to the airport.  This airport (Beauvais, Paris) absolutely SUCKS.  I recommend not going there, ever.  It is small, the people are rude, and things are disorganized.  This is where the ATM wouldn't take either of our cards, the stupid guy made me put my purse in a suitcase because RyanAir only allows one bag (even though I took it out right after we walked past, obviously), the screens didn't tell you which gate to go to, they made you wait outside, and various other idiotic things.  Needless to say, by this point, all we wanted was to be back in OSLO.  That was too much to ask though, because our plane couldn't land, we got rerouted to a different airport, from which they decided to bus us to the original one.  CHAOS!  They didn't tell anyone where to go, when the buses would be there, how long it would take, ughhhh!!  Unluckily, we had bought a 2-way bus ticket when we left from Oslo, so we HAD to go to this other airport, otherwise we would have just left from there to get back to Oslo city.  Then when we got there, there were no buses to take us to Oslo, (even though they say that if your plane is delayed they will wait) so we had to wait for another plane to land and take THAT bus.  Complete idiocy, we were tired, hungry, and just wanted to be home.  We were supposed to be back at 12, and rolled in to my place at 6. 

Being that we lost a whole day, we just got groceries (I had none left...we have a food stealer and I didn't want to lose food while we were on our trip), made some food, and relaxed that evening.  Traveling is really exhausting!  We slept in the next day (Friday) before heading to Vigeland's Park to take some pictures, as well as City Hall, and the Opera house.  I have seen these multiple times now...but they're the big (FREE!) things that everyone should see in Oslo.  The next day we went to the Resistance Museum (about the occupation during WWII) which we both really enjoyed.  I also finally made it to the Munch Museum, everyone has been telling me to go there, and it was free this time of year!  He is most famous for "The Scream" and "Madonna".  I actually really enjoyed his artwork, he has a pretty unique style.  We saw more of his work when we went to the National Gallery...so now we have seen 2 versions of "The Scream" and "Madonna" with different medias.  They hurried us out of the National Gallery pretty fast at close, so we checked out the Royal Palace quick before we headed home. 

That was our last night together, and the next day was hard.  It was so nice being taken care of, not sleeping alone, and having a little bit of home here with me.  I tried to send a bunch of stuff home with Mike so that my packing will be *easier* when I leave here.  One of Mike's planes was delayed almost 5 hours, and we he got back he accidentally got the wrong luggage :(  I have BRIGHT GREEN luggage, and somehow, someone on his flight had the exact same stuff, I've never seen it before!  But luckily our luggage was waiting there when we went back the next day (good thing we only live like 10 minutes from the airport)!

Freee Day!

Wednesday was our last day to explore Paris.  Since our Museum Passes were no longer valid, we saved all of the free stuff for this day.  This was the only day it didn't rain.  We started out at the Carnivalet Museum, basically about the history of the city.  There were mainly paintings, art, old artifacts, nothing extremely special, but we enjoyed it.  They did have Napoleon's death mask and his suit of armor, pretty neat.  Then we headed to see the Eiffel Tower, up close and personal...Finally!  The thing is huge, Mike couldn't believe how big it was.  There were people trying to sell you stuff constantly, and it was all the same stuff!  Insanely annoying, but we managed.  We took lots of pictures, did a bit of people watching, and admired all the dogs at the dog park.  I know so many people have seen it, but it's pretty neat to think little-old-me has been to the Eiffel Tower :) 

We got a crepe with chocolate and chantilly and watched the carousel by the tower.  There were 2 couples taking wedding pictures, and they couldn't have looked less thrilled, it was really weird.  But we headed back and went to the Sacre Coeur to see the inside finally.  It looked really beautiful because it was dark by the time we got back.  We didn't know, but there was a service going on, so we got to listen to singing while we walked around, and we sat in the service for a while.  Pretty neat feeling, although we obviously couldn't understand anything.  We headed outside at 7pm to see the Eiffel Tower's "light show" where it gets all sparkly for 10 minutes at the top of every hour. 

That night we decided to hit up the Hard Rock Cafe, and apparently everyone else did too...at the same time.  We waited for about an hour, and didn't get out of there until after 11pm.  But our waiter was really funny, the burgers were good, and we got a free chocolate sundae to share for dessert.  It was a spendy bill, but now that's my 4th Hard Rock visit :)  Before we went home, we went to see the Moulin Rouge all lit up.  It looked really cool, and there were TONS of people outside.  We walked the block back home, absolutely exhausted, packed up, and got ready to get up super early to get our flight back to Norway. 

Tired Feet!

At Versailles

On Tuesday, I started the morning rough by putting hydrogen peroxide in my eye, ouch!  It was the travel contact solution Mike brought me, supposed to use a special case and I didn't so my eye was all red and extremely painful.  Anyway, we wanted to take advantage of the last day of our Museum Pass so we took the RER (train) out to see Versailles.  This place was HUGE!  King Louis XIV had it built, and he was definitely making a statement.  There were also paintings and statues of him everywhere, he was full of himself.  We spent several hours there and realized that the part you tour is only one little section of the palace.  There are also miles of garden and water features surrounding it.  Inside was filled with lots of art, old furniture, and "artifacts".  There was also a ridiculous art exhibit running through the whole castle, some Japanese artist...it totally ruined the feel, but oh well.  Audio-guides were free so we got to learn along the way while seeing some beautiful things.  It rained the whole time until we went outside :)  For lunch we ate some McDonalds...boring right?  NOPE!  I had my first BigMac, ever, and Mike had beer with his meal.  WEIRD!  We were so tired on the train ride back, but still had lots to see!

Place de la Concorde

We went to Place de la Concorde, where Marie Antoinette (we saw her escape door at the palace) and thousands of other people were guillotined.  There is a huge obelisk from Egypt there and some fountains, but mainly...the traffic was crazy!  There was also the Tuileries Garden, so we walked through that a bit and realized we were right across the river from the Museum d'Orsay, so we went there...which was the beginning of our over/under estimation of distances.  Everything looks really far away on maps, but really close in person, so we walked everywhere that night, and it ended up being a LOT, our feet and legs were dead by the end of this night.  But we were glad we went to that museum.  Van Gogh's famous self-portrait was there, and we also got to see some great Monet, as well as a bunch of pointillism and pastel paintings.  We also went to their exhibition of Gerome, who we had never heard of, but it was amazing!  His paintings were so realistic they looked like photographs, very different than the approach of many other older artists.  *No cameras though :(

The Arc de Triomphe

Mike at the top with the Eiffel Tower

We then headed to our final destination of the night, the Arc de Triomphe.  We walked all the way down Champs Elysees, a famous avenue with lots of expensive stores on it.  I got my first French crepe on the way, nutella...mmm so good!  Somehow I got chocolate EVERYWHERE, even inside my jacket, which we had a good laugh about pretty much all week.  We walked under the huge roundabout that surrounds it (chaos), and made it to the top after many more spiral stairs.  I used to think spiral staircases were cool, but after walking over 1,000 of them in a few days, they are no longer fun.  There is also a "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" under the arc, very neat considering I have laid a wreath on the one in the US at Arlington Cemetery. 

That night we had planned to eat a a French restaurant, but the homey ones were ridiculously small, the tables were too close for our American taste, so we found a much less crowded one with an English menu.  Mike finally got to try veal, but I felt awful when I tasted it, baby cow :(  I had a pizza that was AMAZING, which is strange because there was no meat on it.  It had eggplant, zucchini, and lots of other veggies, and it is now definitely in my top 5 favorite pizzas I've ever eaten, YUM!