City of Love

Brian was supposed to go out of town over Valentine's Day weekend, but at the last minute his trip was canceled! YAY! So, he came with me and two of our friends, Christine and Alexis, to Paris! Ah, Paris...

Our first day was a little foggy, snowy, and COLD, but we were so excited to be there! And we didn't take a sightseeing tour, although this picture would you lead you to believe otherwise : )

Every trip to Paris needs to start with the Eiffel Tower, right? We thought so!


After walking around the tower, it started to snow, so we thought it was time for coffee and crepes!! After recovering feeling in our toes, we walked to Napoleon's tomb. The building was HUGE and very ornate.

As we walked from Napoleon's tomb to Notre Dame, Brian and I found a street vendor selling artwork that we loved! I'm really excited about the paintings we bought from him; I think they'll look really good in our apartment when we get them framed.

For lunch, we ate at a restaurant in the Latin Quarter that was completely decorated for Valentine's Day. I loved the heart hanging over the bar : ) The food was so delicious! We had the "Traditional Beef Stew" that was so tender and so tasty! The waiters were hilarious - they danced around all the tables and almost lit the Valentine decorations on fire with roman candles that came in one of the desserts.

Next was Notre Dame!

The inside of Notre Dame was very impressive. The stained glass was very detailed, and the arched ceilings were overwhelmingly magnificent.


The flying buttresses and the detail on the exterior were unbelievable.

Later in the evening, we saw Notre Dame at night. I loved the way it was lit up and how the lights reflected on the river.

That night we went to the Aux Trois Maillet for a cabaret show. From salsa music to Frank Sinatra covers, the live music was phenomenal! We were lucky enough to sit with the owner's son, so we got plenty of free champagne!

I loved the neon lights in Paris

The next day, Valentine's Day, had beautiful weather! It was so wonderful to see the sun - Frankfurt has been quite cloudy lately. First we went to the Louvre - what an amazing museum!

Hallway after hallway were full of paintings, sculptures, and famous pieces of art!

Me and Mona Lisa

The crowd checking out Mona - and this was "down season"! I can't imagine what it would be like in the summer


Venus de Milo

Winged Victory of Samothrace

What a gorgeous day!

After the Louvre, we had another delicious lunch, and then we headed to the Eiffel Tower to go to the top! We had tickets just in time for the sun set on Valentine's Day!

View from the top!

Happy Valentine's Day!! I was one happy girl!

After we watched the sun set, we watched the Eiffel Tower light up.

For dinner, we all went to a really quirky restaurant. It had bras, panties, and business cards on the walls for decoration. Despite the really odd decorations, the food was great! Each of us had a different three course meal, and we were all extremely happy with the food!

On our last day, we went to Montmartre, which is a hill in Paris that has a great view of the city!


On the hill, there was a small plaza where artists gathered to paint and sell their work.

Our friend, Alexis, bought paintings from this artist

One last lunch in Paris - more crepes and creme brulee!

Basilica of the Sacré Cœur is also on the hill, and it is really cool how it towers over the city! My mom would love this place because we had to climb a TON of stairs to get to it.

It houses the largest mosaic in the world!

We had a great trip and really enjoyed traveling with our friends!

Happy Groundhog Day!

And Happy 27th Birthday, Brian! Brian's birthday was Tuesday, so we had a day full of birthday fun! For dinner we went to this really wonderful restaurant called Volkswirt and had some DELISH steaks that came with these awesome potatoes and roasted veggies. The restaurant was really nice, too! They had a "wine cave" that was heated with these two brick fireplaces. Very nice for a VERY snowy evening!

After dinner, we came home to enjoy Brian's favorite dessert - Derby Pie! The birthday miracle, however, was the accompanying ice cream. I had picked up some ice cream at the local grocery store to go along with the pie (our first German ice cream purchase), and I had decided to be adventurous and try the bourbon vanilla instead of just plain vanilla. Oh my GOODNESS is it good. Seriously, it is now a crucial ingredient to Derby Pie - we call it the Kentucky Special. Yum....

Happy Birthday, Bri!

The restaurant was so toasty!

I loved the piano and candles

The Birthday Bri

I know it's generic brand (ja!), but Texans, it's as creamy as Blue Bell!! Seriously.

The killer combo...

Snow in Frankfurt!!

When we first moved here, everyone said, "Frankfurt doesn't get ANY snow - EVER!" This winter apparently has been record-breaking in snowfall, though! It's been a lot of fun to go on walks in the snow and to just watch it fall from our windows. Check out these pictures of massive snowflakes! Well, maybe you need to click on the pictures to get the full effect. As a Texan, this is all VERY exciting : )

Zermatt, Switzerland

Our favorite vacation so far has been Zermatt! It's a tiny, ski town in the Alps, and it's most popular for being at the base of the Matterhorn.

Here's a picture Bri took of Zermatt while we were snowboarding.

We stayed in a small hotel, seen in the middle of the picture below, just behind the little wooden shacks.

We enjoyed the hotel for a couple of reasons: 1) Our room had a great balcony with an excellent view and 2) The breakfast in the morning was delicious, and the breakfast room was very cool. It had huge windows where you could watch the sun rise.

This was our view when we opened the curtains every morning. Doesn't it just make you want to go snowboarding?? I loved how the sunrise made the Matterhorn turn pink.

The first three days we were there, we snowboarded all day and then enjoyed the town in the evening. The snow could have been better, but we had great weather. As a Texan used to Colorado skiing and snowboarding, I was thankful for the weather : ) One really cool thing about Zermatt was how most of the lifts were nice gondolas or cable cars! It was nice to be out of the wind while you were on your way up the mountain. Even the chair lifts had these cool bubble things that you could pull over your head to protect you from the wind!

One of my favorite runs that we did started from the highest point you can ski from in Europe. They had an observation deck at the top that gave you a breathtaking view of the Alps. Check it out!!

I swear Brian didn't cut and paste me into this picture

Glaciers!! Enjoying the view!

Creating a slight breach of etiquette, I triple-dog-dared Brian to put his eye up to that frozen lookout thing (you know, from the movie The Christmas Story? - love this video)

So this was the beginning of that run from the top of the mountain. The view was so awesome, I literally stopped snowboarding just to look around every 200 yards. In this picture, I think those little yellow flags say something about crevices. I don't think that little rope would save me if I snowboarded over the edge - yikes!

So on our way down from the very top, we didn't realize that we could ski into Italy. Whoops. It was a gorgeous run, and we were so preoccupied with it that we didn't realize how we stopped seeing people for awhile. When we started to get close to the base of the mountain, we saw a town that definitely was not Zermatt. And our lift passes were only good in Switzerland - not Italy. Whoops. We had to buy a one-time Italy lift pass to get back to the right country - I guess suckers like us make this mistake a lot! Here we are with our passes!

Second time's a charm - back in Switzerland, hooray! They didn't have a sign like this when we entered Italy, although it would have been useful!

The view from the gondolas was awesome - every ride was like a scenic tour of the Alps.
And the way those cable cars worked was incredible! Look at the climb this one makes - it looks like we came out of the clouds or something!
On our way down the mountain, we made a couple of cool discoveries! For example, there was an igloo hotel where people were hanging out and drinking.
The inside of the igloo was freakin' cool! There was a bar made of ice, and booths built from snow!

Another time, we were snowboarding along...

And we found puppies! With a whiskey barrel! And the Matterhorn! Their names were Mini and Nana, and they were SO cute! I think we played with them on the mountain for at least 15 minutes. The one on the right was only 5 months old! She's gonna be a big girl!
The nights in Zermatt were so fun. After snowboarding, it was nice to come back to the hotel to clean up, enjoy happy hour in our room, and then walk the sidewalks of the city. Even though it was quite cold, the city looked really warm when it was all lit up at night.
After a full day of snowboarding, going to a bar on the mountain was always a good choice! This one had a really great view.

I love this town!

Another night we enjoyed some DELICIOUS fondu! We couldn't decide if we wanted cheese or meat fondu - soooo...we got both. One night, we explored our hotel and found this really cool wine cellar!
On our last full day in Switzerland, we decided to go on a hike. As we were walking along a beautiful trail on the mountain, Brian found a smaller (more snowcovered) trail that led down into a ravine. The trail was so cool because it had a lot of snowy bridges that had beautiful views. It was kind of funny though - we saw part of this trail from one of the gondolas when we were snowboarding on a previous day, and it looked SO rickety. I had pointed it out to Brian and said, "That looks SO scary!" And then...there we were...haha! Bri is great - he's so patient with me and helps me expand my risk boundaries.

The steps leading down into the ravine. Bri cleared them off for me on his way down - thanks, B!

If you enlarge the picture below, you can really see the wooden trail winding along the left side of the rock wall.

This part was kind of scary because there were holes in the wood! Yikes!

At the end of the hike, we walked on top of the river. I had never experienced walking on ice and hearing a rushing river flowing below me! Very cool.

Ice fishing, anyone?

The next day, our train ride home was gorgeous. We rode through many Swiss towns that were on lakes like this one.
We had a great time in Zermatt - I'd really love to go back again for snowboarding or to see it during summertime!