Textbook Pictures into Reality

This is one of those weird little posts that had never actually occurred to me to write and then something came up and metaphorically smacked me right in the face and so I knew right then and there I had to write about it.

So here it is: 

Bear with me, ok? 

Until I married Steve, I had never really thought of myself as the traveling "type". My parents weren't really big travelers and our family vacations mostly centered around visiting family (who all lived relatively close to home, I might add). So other than a trip to Disney World the Spring after I turned 4, we really didn't do much traveling. Looking back on it now, traveling was never really something I ever considered, but I guess as the old saying goes, "You can't miss what you don't have..."

In the 1st or 2nd grade, I can distinctly remember reading a short story in my Language Arts book about a little dog in Pompeii just before Mt. Vesuvius. It was a fictional story, of coarse, but at the end of the story there were really photos of Pompeii and I remember being FASCINATED with it. And I can remember hearing about the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia on the news and thinking that place was as far away from me as the moon.

When my (much loved and wonderfully awesome) cousins Frank and Joyce came this summer for a visit and we rode in a gondola in Venice, I understood perfectly the tears in their eyes and wonder in their voice when they said repeatedly to us, "I never thought I'd see this".  I get that. And I think it everyday. 

Steve, on the other had, grew up in a family who did do a lot of traveling. His father worked civil service for the Air Force and they spent a great deal of time living overseas. As a child, Steve went to places I didn't even know to dream of. He talks of listening to the 1985 Iron Bowl on a friend's car radio while skiing the Alps in Switzerland and he has a shoebox of communist momentos he picked up on a school trip in 1987 to the then USSR. I remember flipping through family photo albums of his and seeing pictures of Steve in front of places I had only read about. My personal favorite is one of him looking bored and miserable posed in front of The David in Florence, a typical teenager of the 1980's--rock t-shirt, Walkman (tape not CD), zit faced, braces, and oh-so-lovely mullet haircut. (Steve, not David)

Steve caught the travel bug early in life and when the time was right, he wanted to share that opportunity with our kids. 

So here we are today, in Greece--our 11th country we visited in 2013, the 3rd in just the month of December alone. Yep. We caught that bug. 

Which brings us to that smack in the face part of the story I mentioned a million words ago at the beginning of what has turned into a long-winded post. 

We were boarding the plane in Athens today to fly home to Greece and I was walking down the jetway and I happened to look up and see this advertisement on the wall:

Bravo, MasterCard. My sentiments exactly. 

We've gotten to see so many awesome places in the 2 years we've lived here. And I'm so thankful to have memories to go along with those schoolbook picture. 

Wordless Wednesday

I frequently think about how we are all forever changed by the opportunity we've been given to live and travel overseas.  I am so thankful.

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The Mona Lisa (and a little Blog Hop!)

At the end of this fab post on our visit with Mona, My friend Casey is hosting a Fresh Face Blog Hop!  Be sure to link up, friends!

And now on to the Mona Lisa. Seriously, she's the size of a postage stamp.  Ok not *really*.  But honestly, it's really quite small.  I was surprise.  She seemed SO much bigger in The Da Vinci Code, which, in all honesty, I actually re-watched SEVERAL times before our visit to Paris, just so that I'd be that much more prepared for the Louvre. But Sophie and Robert got it SO wrong.  The actual Mona Lisa is so much smaller than they make her out to be, although I did totally recognize exactly where I was in the Grand Gallery because of the Parquet floors. When I saw the sign that said Grand Gallery, I totally wanted to run to the first painting that I saw to look for hidden messages written on priceless works of art with the black light I had strategically placed in my purse, or to look for hidden keys behind the paintings.  I could be Sophie and Steve could be Robert, right?!? But, sigh, Steve wouldn’t let me.  I swear, he ruins all the fun. And keeps me from getting arrested I suppose.  Maybe when we retire to Paris is a few years, I get a job giving Da Vinci Code tours in the Louvre.  I’m sure they’d LOVE that….

 See! She's tiny!  Impressive, but tiny.  I texted my dad a this picture of us and he said he was surprised that the room with the Mona Lisa wasn't more crowded--so I sent him this one from the back of the room.

Tory and Jackson with the Mona Lisa.  Jackson was less than thrilled since he wants to be an artist when he grows up and we told him we were taking him to see the most famous painting in the world.  He couldn't figure out why "some painting of some lady" was so famous.

See that smiling and happy momma above standing in that field of sunflowers? That's ME!  I'm so happy that you decided to stop by today and to visit my little blog about our family's adventures as a military family stationed in Italy.  We've got some great stories to tell you about and some even more awesome places to share with you, so please join us in our adventure by following my blog.  I love followers :) And you just never know when I'll decide to have a little give away for them.  And while you're here, please click on that little picture of that other tiny momma below.  Your click will count as a vote for me for Top Momma Blog! Thanks and see you real soon!

Welcome to the

FRESH FACE FRIDAY BLOG HOP!

No prompt, just fun!

Hosted by: Casey @ We Took the Road Less Traveled

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See that blue link up there?  The one that says "An InLinkz Linkup"?  You have to click it to join the blog hop (sorry...just wanted to make sure everyone saw it....I'm old....I need directions, too!!!)

The Eiffel Tower, Some Tips

So, it's time to tell you about our visit to the Eiffel Tower.  I could start by telling you lots of important info about the tower itself--how it was built by Gustave Eiffel in 1889 for the World's Fair, it's still the tallest building in Paris, and millions of people visit it each year., but I don't want to waste your time with a bunch of facts by sounding like a tour guide.  You can google the rest, just like I did.

I'll be honest, I was a little disappointed in the tower. (I know, many of you are shocked and I've ruined your dream.  Sorry.) It's not that it wasn't beautiful, because it was. And it's the icoinc sight in Paris, and I'm nothing if I'm not a landmark groupie. I cannot tell you how many times I have said to the brats,  "Here stand in front of _________ (insert name of famous landmark here) and let me take your picture....stop wiggling and smile!  Lord, y'all are driving me crazy!!!! You'll appreciate this one day!!"

It's hard to describe being disappointed when seeing one of the most iconic landmarks in the world, certainly in Paris, but I was.  I saw a movie once where the main character walked around in Paris looking everywhere for the ET but kept missing it.  Impossible.  The tower was everywhere. 

It is everywhere and completely impossible to miss.  We made a big deal about buying the tickets to climb the tower.  Everything, literally everyone I talked to and everything I read said BUY YOUR TICKETS TO CLIMB THE TOWER AHEAD OF TIME AND ONLINE.  So I did. When everyone tends to tell me to do something, I tend to just do it.  I'm a follower that way. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason when they were put on sale and so my friend Shannon just continued to look at the website.  Finally the company that manages the tower released the block of tickets for the time period when were would be there and we bought ours.  That time period was literally sold out in a day. So my advice to you is, if climbing to the top of the tower is a must, BUY YOUR TICKETS TO CLIMB THE TOWER AHEAD OF TIME AND ONLINE--EARLY. Stalk the website. Here it is, by the way. 

Sorry, I digress.  When you pre-buy your ET tickets online, you're given a time to climb.  They are pretty strict about it, too, because we actually arrived 15 minutes early and they wouldn't *think* about letting us get in line until it was our time.  The cool thing (literally and figuratively) about the prebought tickets is that you get to take the elevator up.  I suppose you can skip the line and climb the stairs if you wanted to....you crazy person... We just took the elevator; we are smart that way.

The view from the top was nice.  Just nice.  It was a hazy and cloudy day, so everything was hazy and cloudy.  Meh.  I remember thinking, "I should be impressed.  I should be more excited!" But I just wasn't.  Climbing the tower was ok.  The view from the ET was ok, but honestly, the view from the Arc was just SO MUCH BETTER because it included the ET, I was less than impressed.  Would I do it again?  Probably not.

Once is enough. 

Here's some pictures: 

View of the tower from our apartment in Paris 

Oh my God, There it is!!

Under the tower: long lines of people waiting to climb to the top

Views from the top

Everything was just starting to bloom...

See that cute picture of the smiling momma below?  Would you do me a favor and just click on it.   By clicking on it, you'll vote for my blog as top mommy blog.  What do I win...nothing.  But it helps bring more readers to my blog and I'd appreciate that.  Thanks!

Notre Dame--Quasimodo's House With Delilah

This is Delilah.

 If you haven't had the pleasure of meeting her, she's my beautiful but precocious three year old.  Trouble and naughtiness seems to find her like flies find....honey. :)  Imagine Olivia the Pig, but with curly hair.

In preparation for Paris, we had the little brats watch a dozen DVDs set in Paris.  The Hunchback of Notre Dame was a easy favorite for them.  I'm not sure why, but Quasimodo was an instant hero to Delilah.  We promised her over and over that we'd get to see Quasimodo's house when we got to Paris. And so before we went, we watched The Hunchback (One and Two) at least 1,000,000 times before we left for our trip, and then we loaded both copies onto the iPad and took them with us to Paris for more Parisian Hunchback viewing.  

Steve and I were feeling pretty good with ourselves.  We had prepared the kids for Paris.  We had all watched the videos and read the books. THEY were ready.  WE were ready. And prepared people are happy people, right?

Let me say, it wasn't entirely our fault...

The day that Notre Dame found its way onto our agenda was a crappy Parisian weather day.  There was a steady rain and the temperature hovered around 50 degrees.  It was in the middle of the week and traffic was bad.  And regardless of how much we LOVED the ease and speed of the Paris Metro, there was still some above ground walking involved.  In the rain. And in the cold. With the brats.

We arrived to Notre Dame just after lunch and naturally there was a line to get into the church.  It was raining pretty hard at this point but the kids were in good spirits, and so we opened our giant umbrellas (we had brought them, thankfully) and essentially followed the "grin and bear it" method of dealing with things while we waited in line. The kids were excited--and we were excited that the kids were excited.  You just never know with these things...

The line was long but it moved fast. While we were outside, I tried taking a few pictures of the front of the cathedral, but keep in mind, it's on a ISLAND and there's this strange stage set up in front of it, so it was impossible to stand back far enough to get a good picture that showed the entire cathedral.

Paris Point of Zero--the point from which all distances are measured in Paris

I guess no one wanted to hang out in the pouring rain anymore than we did, so we were inside within just a few minutes.

Keep in mind:

*It's dark inside

*It's fairly crowded

*We have a lot of brats

*It's quiet inside because, 1. It's a church, and 2. There are people inside telling you to "SHHHH" loudly, the entire time. 

Imagine our surprise when we looked over and Delilah had dragged a chair to the wall and was yelling, "LOOK!  It's Ariel's shell", LOUDLY, while she was playing in the Holy Water. Inside Notre Dame. The man Did Not tell her to, "SHHHH".  I honestly think he was too stunned.  He probably fainted after we left....

Blurry pictures of the chair and Ariel's shell...They are blurry because we were basically running to get out of there at this point...

SIGH

And then to top it all off, Delilah and Jackson proceeded to walk around and happily announce to ANYONE near them that this was Quasimodo's house.  Loudly. In a singsong voice.  Needless to say, we got the heck out of there pretty quickly...

 St. Dennis lost his head...

Joan of Arc

A good view of the island...see that bridge?

It's covered with tons (literally) of locks! Read about the Pont de'l'Archeveche' bridge and the story of the locks HERE.

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