1000 miles driven and counting… 🙂

Our 6th stop was San Sebastián, Spain, which is a nice 2.5 hour drive from Bordeaux. When we were planning the trip, we noticed that almost every major interstate in Europe has tolls. Since we’ve used a toll transponder for every trip to Chicago, Ryan researched to see if transponders also existed in Europe. He found that you could rent transponders for a small fee so we took the plunge and had transponders for multiple countries sent to our hotel in Paris. The transponders have proved to be fantastic for France and Spain as they are saving us a lot of time versus waiting in every toll booth lineup up!

The lanes on the far left are for the transponders 🙂

July 28th was Ryan’s birthday so it worked perfectly to be in San Sebastián that day since the city is considered one of the dining capitals of the world. Ryan had several awesome options for dining out on his birthday. He chose Akelarre, a 3 Michelin Star restaurant with 270 degree views of the Atlantic Ocean! We had an 8 (!) course menu. It was fantastic!

A fun take on suckling pig (a Spain specialty) with the discrete little pig pork rind

We also visited two mountains that overlook San Sebastián. They both have fantastic views of the area and kind of remind us of our visits to Catalina and Rio de Janeiro (in a small way).

San Sebastián is also known for its fantastic beaches. We walked along the three major beaches on a beautiful 80-degree sunny day.

We finished off the day by going to the historical center of the city and sampled pintxo tapas. We weren’t super hungry after lunch so small plates were perfect. Unlike US Tapas restaurants we have visited, the San Sebastián restaurants set all dishes on plates on a table. You just walk in and pick up what you want and then pay. This is pretty neat as you could try tapas from several restaurants in a night.

We have never seen a street xylophone and accordion combo. Ryan said that this reminded him of middle school general music where there was always a marimba concert each year!

After leaving Paris we headed west to see the Normandy and Brittany Region (two days) and then Bordeaux (one day).

Omaha Beach/Utah Beach/American D-Day Cemetery:

We took a guided tour of Omaha Beach and the American D-Day cemetery. It was incredible to see the height of the cliffs that the Allied forces had to scale… particularly given the troops had just been awake all night, were seasick from rough seas, had 80 pounds of wet equipment on their backs, had wet ropes which prevented them from using their planned climbing equipment, and were being pummeled by German mortar from above. It certainly made us feel so incredibly thankful for our military forces. We had wonderful weather which made the cemetery and overlooks quite striking. After our tour ended, Emily and I toured Utah Beach ourselves at sunset (which is at 10 PM local time! Despite being south of England, this region is 1 hour ahead which means the sun goes down quite late here).

Normandy/Brittany:

On our second day in the region we toured several locations – each unique and interesting!

Mont Saint Michel
This is a fortified island in the Atlantic on the border of Normandy/Brittany. It was a monastery from around 700 – 1800 and a pilgrimage site for centuries. The site was so interesting given the density of the city compared to the countryside of the main land. Historically the site could only be accessed during low tide, but a permanent road has now been built.

St. Malo
This is a fully functioning walled off city also in the Atlantic. Due to its strategic port location, the city was mostly destroyed during WWII as the German forces took over France. It took over 30 years, but the city has been fully rebuilt and now contains many restaurants and stores.

Dinan
This is a Brittany town that survived WWII and contains historic wooden homes. While we were there, we stopped at a Creperie and also had gelato! A local bike race was occurring (complete with announcers and crowds) while we were in town which was very interesting to see!

Cort d’Rose
We headed even further west to see the red limestone and sunsets of this region. We got to the town just in time for sunset which was beautiful! There were trails all around the water so Emily had a blast running trails while watching the sunset.

Bordeaux

Driving from Brittany to Bordeaux took about 6 hours so most of our time was spent in the car. We have several books on our iPad that we want to read so we turned on the iPad’s Accessibility Feature so the iPad can read books to us through the car stereo system. The drive was beautiful as we passed by fields of sunflowers and vineyards.

One interesting thing that we have seen is that people seem to transport just about any trailer/camper with tiny cars. It’s the start of vacation time in France (which lasts 3-4 weeks in France) so we’ve seen lots and lots of families traveling to the beach.

While in Bordeaux we had a fantastic dinner at Le Bistro de Gabriel which overlooked the main square, fountain, and river. The restaurant gave us the best table in the restaurant overlooking all of this which was fantastic!

After dinner we took some pictures of the reflecting pool and then went on a city tour of Bordeaux. The tour was only supposed to be 1 hour, but somehow ended up being 1:45. It was a very good tour in both French and some English so we were able to figure out what we were seeing. 🙂 After the tour we took advantage of the fact that our hotel actually had a washer and dryer! We already have done laundry in the sink 2x, so we were happy to use a washing machine/dryer although they charged us $25 USD for the privilege. 😦

We helped contribute to the economic solvency of the Chunnel (remember that case Kellogg friends?) by taking the train from London to Paris. We had just one day in Paris but will be returning for 3 days at the end of our time in Europe.

We had an absolutely wonderful day thanks to a co-worker/friend Ryan worked with 7 years ago who took a day off work to show us the city. Not only did she take a day off work, she designed a whole walking tour around different foods we wanted to try and several key sites we wanted to see. Wow – it was amazing – thank you so so much Marie-Odile!!!

To help offset a portion of the calories we were about to consume, Ryan and I kicked off the morning with a walk/run in Tuileries Garden (a park right in front of the The Louvre that overlooks of the Eiffel Tower). It was beautiful!

Our taste of Paris during the day included:

-Macaroons from Laduree, the original maker of macroons – these were incredible!
-Cake from Pierre Herme, known for its chocolates and beautiful cakes

-Tea from a historic tea shop

-Local cakes from the Brittany region (cake used loosely… Really they were just butter and sugar :)) + carmels (fleur de sel)

-Chocolates from Jadis et Gourmande Choclats
-And finally we finished off the day with Gelato

Marie-Odile led us through so many beautiful back streets which had incredible architecture. We visited multiple famous sites including Sainte Chapelle, Isle de Cite, Notre Dame, and the Jewish Quarter. I love stained glass (and actually used to make stained glass pieces… until work and grad school :)) so I particularly enjoyed Sainte Chapelle as it is comprised entirely of windows showing major books of the Bible.

Saint Chapelle

Notre Dame

We finished our day with a wonderful dinner at Le Violin de Ingres, a Michelin 1 star restaurant by Chef Constant (for you foodies). They had a surprise tasting menu. The food was fantastic… and Ryan was excited that the surprise nature of the menu made me try some dishes I would have never ordered. This included Foie Gras and Pigeon which were both delicious. The meal finished off with an incredible cream pastry covered in salted carmel sauce. Wow!

Since the restaurant was near the Eiffel Tower, we strolled by for a look at the tower twinkling at night. What a great way to end a wonderful day!

The next morning we picked up our car for the next month, and the car is great! We are “leasing” the car from the car manufacturer Citroen so it’s a brand new car. The lease is like a traditional car rental to us but offers the car manufacturer a tax benefit when selling to car rental companies. We’re now on the road in the Normandy and Brittany region in France.

More to come from these areas soon!

London definitely didn’t live up to its cool, rainy reputation. London was going through one of its hottest streaks of the last few years while we were there. I was surprised at how many places didn’t have any air conditioning at all (I, Ryan, am new to Europe travel). One of the big concerts we attended was in an unairconditioned concert hall that was 95F+ inside! We definitely appreciated sun over rain, but the experience made us appreciate our AC at home! 🙂

Emily had spent time in London in college, but this was my first time in the city. I was excited to catch up on seeing the main sites. In case you are interested, here are some of the highlights (we promise not to bore you with every trip detail!):

Westminster Abbey: After our flight landed, we headed straight to the Sunday morning church service at Westminster Abbey (the travel pros say to hit the ground running, right?). The service was very interesting as was seeing the abbey itself and the famous black and white tile floor we’ve seen so many times in royal events.

Harrods: We explored Harrods department store which sells everything from dogs to food to clothes to musical instruments! We were most interested in the food hall. Of particular interest and fun is that the pastry counter puts lots of their amazing desserts on Buy One, Get One Free in the last hour before closing 🙂 We enjoyed finding a fun spot to eat these delicious pastries in Kensington Garden.

The Proms: For eight weeks during the summer, the BBC sponsors a daily concert in Royal Albert Hall that is very popular. We went to a great concert by the US National Youth Orchestra with guest soloist Josh Bell. I can only give the concert an A- though given the extent that I sweated during the concert! 🙂

Changing of the Guard & Tower of London: Having been in Ohio State’s Marching Band, I found the ceremony quite interesting and was surprised to hear the Royal Band playing pop songs! We rounded out our classic tour of London with a tour of the Tower of London and enjoyed looking at the Crown Jewels.

Les Miserables: Somehow we had managed to never see this popular musical (or the movie… I guess that’s what 3 years of grad school does!) so what better place to see it than the West End!?

English Tea: One must have a tea while in England, right? We had tea at the Orangerie at Kensington Palace. There were lots of media types hanging out hoping to see the Royal Family arrive home. In fact, William and Kate arrived the evening that we had visited.

The Royal Baby: We made an impromptu post given that people might find it interesting! It was quite a mob of people, but it was definitely an interesting local experience to see.

It was a quick tour of London, but we enjoyed it! We are now off to France to begin the main portion of our Europe trip.

We were really excited that William and Kate were able to follow our detailed itinerary to have the baby while we were in London for only three days.

After we heard of the birth, we stopped by around 11pm to see the announcing letter which is displayed on an easel at the main Buckingham Palace gate for the public to see. We waited in line (or a friendly mob?) during one of the hottest nights in London of the last six years and grabbed a few shots for those interested!

It was quite the party at Buckingham Palace!

We had to wade through this group to get the 2nd picture!