Paris and Thanksgiving

I'm sorry that I am becoming more and more behind in my blogs.  Work has gotten pretty busy with all of the preparation for the end of the year and my French classes have kept me busy too!  I'm not ready to start writing my blog in French ;) but I am learning quite a lot and I hope to be able to make some sense very soon!

Also - Jay helped me add a calendar to the blog so you can see our scheduled trips and it will be easier for our visitors to plan! :) Thanks Jay!

Two weekends ago, Jay and I took the Thalys high speed train for a weekend getaway to Paris.  It is amazing to us how many places we can go that are within 1-2 hours of Brussels.  The trip to Paris brought back some nice memories.  My first trip to Europe was back in high school when my dad took my family to France to visit him on one of his business trips.  My fondest memories were so simple, me and my sister watching European MTV (score!) and running outside in the mornings to get the pastries, oh and I remember we shopped, and shopped and shopped. 

When Jay and I arrived, we took the Metro to our hotel.  Our hotel was in the 6th arr, St Germain (Paris is split up into different arrondisements, neighborhoods) which ended up working out perfectly for us.  We checked into our hotel room and went out to find a restaurant closeby.  We ended up finding a very casual but very cool French restaurant right down the street.  It was paper tablecloth, sit on a long table with a bunch of people, not intimate at all but the experience was great and the food was amazing.  I of course had to try something "very French" and had my first escargot experience.  Gotta say, I'm now hooked!  For dinner I had duck confit, also to die for... I don't even remember dessert I doubt I was very hungry for it!  Jay was a little less adventorous but did try everything! From there we walked down the street and were in the thick of the nightlife, there were tons of young people out sitting at the outdoor patios, having drinks and sitting by the heating lamps.  We walked down a little further and hit the Seine which was a beautiful view!  From there we went to a lounge/club had some champagne and then decided to head home so we could have a full day to explore the next day.

That morning we woke up and it was bright and sunny - finally - a beautiful day to tour a city in!  We headed over from our hotel to the Notre Dame Cathedral which was beautiful and then continued our journey on to the Louvre.  We were thrilled because the museum had almost no line so we made our way in.  Jay took us on the "highlights tour" and ran us all over the musuem so we could see the highlights in a few hours.  I have to say, we walked through the entire museum and saw more than I would have ever tried to see on my own and it was worth it, the highlight of our visit!

From there we walked through the Jardin des Tuileries.  It was so nice out that we stopped in the park and had lunch at an outdoor cafe, probably one of our last for the season.  From there we headed to the Champs Elysses and it just so happened to be holding a huge Christmas market!  The Christmas market in Paris was unique because it didn't necessarly specialize in French goods, but had unique gifts, foods, drinks from all over Europe.  Little did I know, but one of the coolest events over here in the winter is the Christmas markets - so much fun, so many people having a great time out in the streets, shopping, eating, drinking. Our favorite was the Russian tasting - cavier and vodka, yum! 

By that time our feet had enough, but there was so much more to see - we headed up the rest of the Champs Elysses to see the Arch de Triomphe and then took the Metro to make our way over to the Eiffel Tower.  When we arrived it was beautiful, but what was disapointing were the huge lines to get up to see the view.  We ended up passing on that and heading out the other way, only to find a handful of people pulling up their cars to a "secret location".  They made us stay another 5 minutes so that we could see the light show - which was definitely worth it.

From there we needed some rest time for the hooves.  We relaxed a little bit by the hotel and headed out for a late dinner.  We found a nice place again by the hotel with a prix-fixe three course meal.  The food was great but unfortunately we had made it out a little too late for dinner so they were definitely ready for us to eat and get out...  we then headed to a cool bar down the street and finished our night in Paris there.

The next day we woke up to ... more rain!  We're getting used to that here for "late fall weather".  We walked from our hotel to the local Sunday street market and then had some brunch, where I fell in love with Croque Madame, take a Croque Monsieur, fry an egg over it and you get Croque Madame.  (Jay made it earlier this week, pictures soon to come on his version).  We then took the tram over to the Montmartes neighborhood.  I have to say it was much more overrun by tourists than what I remembered from 10 years ago.  It was still very cute and the view of the Sacre Coeur is still knock your socks off.  We then wandered down to see the outside of the Moulin Rouge (not worth it) and then headed our way back to the hotel so we could grab our bags and hit the train station.

I have to say out of all the trips we've taken, Paris was not our favorite.  There were so many tourists and its such a big city, its hard to really try to see all the sites and still capture the essence of Paris and France. 

In Paris Jay grabbed a really neat cookbook that included market fresh recipes, so we've been trying them out.  Jay made an awesome casserole from the cookbook when we returned from Paris.

So I was really jealous of everyone during Thanksgiving since you all had the time off - but Jay actually ended up finding a really cool event for us Thanksgiving evening.  His local bar where he normally watches Sunday football had a Thanksgiving feast served while we watched the Pats play (Jay said to make sure I said, WIN)!  It was awesome, although it didn't compare to being at home, but it was as close as we were going to get in Brussels.  We had the full on Turkey dinner and I had two slices of my fav - pecan pie!

Last weekend we checked a new neighborhood in Brussels Friday night, the Saint Gery neighborhood.  They were just starting to set up for the Brussels Christmas market, we hit up a local restaurant and Irish pub and called it a night.  The next morning we rushed (we're not good at early mornings on the weekends) to catch the morning train to Jurbise to hang out with Melissa, Taylor and Maddie.  We saw their beautiful house, right next to the train station - literally! Then they took us to SHAPE (the NATO base) where Melissa works and we went to their local Norwegian Christmas market and the German Christmas market.  It was a great taste of what we would see on our actual trip to Germany.

That night Melissa was kind enough to invite us to a Thanksgiving party at her coworker's home.  It was such a nice night!  We had more than enough of the regular Turkey dinner feast and some local Belgian style food too and celebrated Thanksgiving with some new friends!  I also witnessed my first fried turkey - gotta say - it is definitely the way to cook the turkey :)  On Sunday Jay and I both relaxed and caught up on some much needed sleep.

December has come way too quick!  I cannot believe that we've been here since October and that pretty soon we'll be heading home for the holidays.  I'm really looking forward to coming home and spending some time with the fam, friends and Ginger.  We miss everyone and will look forward to the time we spend at home.

I promise to catch up sooner than later this week with our trip that we just got back from - the German Christmas markets.  It was by far, our favorite trip yet!