Back in the US!

So, after a wonderful time in Paris with Kristen and a day in Loch Lomond with Kristen, I am back home. Paris was absolutely amazing. The Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Moulin Rouge, Pantheon, The Opera, Luxembourg Garden, Notre Dame, Arc du Triumphe, Catacombs, etc. We did so much while in Paris, and Paris truly is a romantic place. We had several picnics in the gardens, which consisted of wine, fruit, chocolate, and bread. Was such a relaxing time in Paris. The Eiffel Tower was great and was even more amazing at night when the tower glowed with the thousands of lights that lined it. Aside from the thousands of people that nagged you for money, it was a great experience. The Louvre was amazing and seeing the Mona Lisa and the statue of Venus de Milo. It was so relaxing outside of the Louvre sitting next to the fountains and relaxing. We enjoyed the Louvre so much that we returned two more times after the first visit just to sit by the fountains and relax. However, before reaching the Louvre, we walked through the park for fresh sorbet. I had the best mango sorbet ever! The catacombs were eery and very disturbing. Apparently, in Paris, the cemeteries became full and there was no more room for new burial sites. So, to buffer this, the city exhumed all of the bodies in the cemeteries and moved them below ground in the catacombs. There were literally thousands of bones and skulls all stacked up on top of each other. There are a few photos that I took. The most disgusting part of the whole catacomb visit was that at the end of the 45 min walk, they would check your bags to make sure you didn't steal any bones. How disgusting is that? Why would you want to steal human bones? There were two skulls that the man had already confiscated from other tourists. Down right disgusting is my only comment about that. We went back to the Louvre after the catacombs and relaxed by the beautiful fountains that surround the triangular structure that is the main building.

We walked around a bit more and planned for our last day in Paris for the next day. We figured that we would do some more exploring and see the Pantheon and have a nice meal at a restaurant. We first sat down at this bar and had a beer each and enjoyed the sunshine. Directly across from this bar was a nice little quaint restaurant where we decided to have our nice meal. Since we were in Paris, I felt that I had to try Escargot. I ordered six of them and they came with a garlic-butter sauce, which was very good. However, once is enough for escargot (for me at least). I then had steak with a peppercorn sauce and Kristen had the leg of duck. She had brown onion soup, which we Americans call 'French Onion Soup'. We finished our meal and then decided to finish our romantic day by heading over to the Eiffel Tower and looking at it at night while drinking wine and eating crepes. We had our wine and crepes below the beautifully-lit tower and headed back home around 11pm. We set our alarms for 4am. We woke up at 4am and I happened to look at our receipt and had figured it out that we had an entire day left in Paris. We had it figured all wrong for when we were leaving. Oh well, it was quite exciting that we had an extra day. We ended up going to the Opera (where the original story for the Phantom of the Opera took place) and where several major classical music composers performed (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.). We had delicious baguettes at this little shop that had desserts galore. The baguettes were delicious! It started raining quite hard, so we ate under the cover of a store's little awning and waited until the rain calmed down a bit. We then walked around a bit and went back to the Louvre and relaxed by the fountains one last time. We ended our trip and went back to our hotel and set our alarms for our "real" departure that was the next morning. We have about 1,500 pictures combined from this trip! I will upload some as soon as I can, when I have free time since it takes quite a while to upload photos.

Paris ici nous venir!

Paris here we come (what title says)! I have finally finished all of my exams and am free to start the summer! Edinburgh has provided a MUCH deserved break from the bad weather, as it has been sun and blue sky for a few days now. Yesterday evening and today all day has been rainy and dark. Yesterday Kristen and I took a trip to North Berwick because it was so nice out. We decided to make it a day at the beach. We picked up blueberries and strawberry wine and sat on the beach for a few hours. Was absolutely beautiful out and I managed to regain some of my AZ tan back! Woohoo! So I won't be too white for when I come back home. We leave for Paris on Thursday at 6am and will then have to take a bus to the city center since Ryanair (cheap airliner) is flying us to a smaller airport away from the city. We will be there for five days and will have PLENTY of pictures between the two of us, so you can expect those to show up in the photo albums. I get back on the 15th and then leave for AZ on the 17th. I will have many flights on the 17th to get back home. First I fly from Edinburgh to Paris, then I fly Paris to Atlanta and finally I will fly Atlanta to Phoenix. Should be a fun travel... Hey, it was the cheapest flight I could find.

I've also been following the oil spill and wow, it has gotten way out of control! I cannot believe the devastation that this spill has been causing to the coastline. I would really like to volunteer and go down to help with the animals being affected by the spill. I saw one picture of a bird and it looked like a mud creature, it was so covered with oil. It was an extremely sad picture to see. Maybe deep sea oil wells are a bad idea? You think? Here's my proposed idea, FIND AN ALTERNATIVE TO OIL! I wish, unfortunately we use oil for so many things that, economically, it would not be wise to eliminate oil. Maybe we shouldn't be drilling deep sea oil wells since we don't have the technology for catastrophes such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico currently going on. I was very disappointed and angered when I heard that BP had put forward 50 million GBP (almost 100 million US dollars) in an ad campaign to improve their image in the eyes of the public. Wow, what good did that do? It only angered the public when they found out. Nice going BP... Good news though, apparently they are finally siphoning 10,000 gallons a day from the spewing hole. That's only half of what is coming out of the broken well. At one point, I heard that an idea for a nuclear warhead to be sent to the oil well was proposed. Apparently the Russians have done this 4/5 times and it has successfully worked. Can you imagine exploding a nuclear warhead? What kind of mad idea is that? Especially so close to the coast... There would be such an environmental impact if that idea was implemented. Unfortunately the Obama Administration has failed HORRIBLY to try and resolve this crisis. When the BP oil rig first exploded and several attempts to seal the oil well went awry, Obama did no more than to publicly criticize BP and did little else. Now, failed attempt after failed attempt, Obama is FINALLY getting on BP and has put forward increased manpower to prevent the oil spill from spreading too fast. In my opinion, the Obama Administration has been far too lax in this crisis and Obama's ability to handle a catastrophic environmental disaster such as this is beyond poor. Maybe this will spark an idea in that little head of Obama's to create a special team to handle disasters such as this. For many of those that feel Bush's response to Katrina was bad, Obama's response to this oil crisis far exceed that of Bush's. The federal government authorizes all offshore drilling and it is the responsibility of the federal government to manage any major catastrophe's involving offshore drilling. This is just one of the many reasons that I hope people realize that Obama is not fit for the job as president and is far more concerned with changing Washington than dealing with the problems at hand. Well, that is the extent of my political ranting. Sorry for the long post, but I am truly upset over this oil spill and it churns my stomach every day that I read that the spill has not been contained. Well, hopefully this crisis will be resolved soon, because there is going to be a LONG duration of cleaning the shorelines and clearing the ocean from this disaster, and BP is going to have to take care of all the expenses. For the manpower being put forth by the Obama Administration, I hope BP is planning on reimbursing the US for our efforts to cleanup their mess.

Anyway, time to call it a day. In the following days, I will be planning the Paris trip (touristy things) and organizing my luggage for when I head back to AZ. Hope everyone had a great weekend and have a grand week! Cheers!