Family Visit: Paris - Versailles

Paris has so many sites to see it can be really hard to choose, especially when you only have a few days. Visiting Versailles takes the better part of a day, but is so worth the investment. It's an amazing palace.

This is the chapel of the palace. King Louis didn't spare any expense on this place!

I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo, but this is a series of rooms pretty much identical, but in different colors. They all hold various art objects now, but were receiving rooms and parlors at the time. The wallpaper alone is impressive.

And the famous hall of mirrors. It's so hard to get a photo because the place was mobbed with people. We had buy ahead tickets and still waiting in line outside for over an hour - and we arrived relatively early. Luckily, it was a lovely sunny day and the people watching kept us entertained.

Just a random, boring staircase. 

But the real beauty of Versailles is the gardens and their fountains. A huge expanse with trees, grassy areas, walkways and lots of fountains. Just think of the engineering required at that time to pull all this off.

2017 was unfortunately a dry summer for Paris so they were rationing water, which meant only a few fountains were running and only for a very short period of time. We missed a few, but captured my favorite in the photo below.

This is one of the main and probably most well known of the fountains. Just amazing!

Family Visit: Paris - The Eiffel Tower

Our next adventure was an organized tour of the Eiffel Tower. We met our guide just outside the grounds and were able to skip the lines with our guide who provided information about Paris' most iconic monument. Did you know the Eiffel Tower was originally red? And that the citizen's of Paris hated it because it interrupted the skyline and was red?

View from the top. And we were happy to have the guide and skip the line. The place was packed with people and the lines were really long.

So long in fact that we decided to take the stairs down for the last level. And while down was probably a whole lot easier than up, our legs were shaking by the time we reached the ground.

We had some dinner and then came back so we could get some night shots. Such a beautiful structure - there is just nothing else like it.

Family Visit: Paris - Notre Dame Cathedral

Well, I didn't plan to take such a break from the blog, but sometimes life is just too fun to interrupt with blog posting. ;) I can't promise I'll be very regular, but will do my best.

Last August, we jetted off to Paris for a couple of days to meet up with my brother and his partner who were doing a big tour of Europe. We decided to meet them in Paris (ahhhh, Paris) and had a lovely time seeing some of the highlights.

Our first stop was Notre Dame Cathedral. Busy, even with an overcast and rainy day and a few sets of what looked like military police (you can see them in the background of the photo below. So sad that things have come to this.

Notre Dame is beautiful and when you travel with my brother, you end up with stunning photos like the one below. Never would have even thought to capture it like this. Thanks Kev!

The 'boys' climbed the 300+ stairs to the top and captured some nice views of the Seine.

Sunday Road Trip: Weston-Super-Mare

Back in July, we decided our Sunday road trip should take us to Weston-Super-Mare where they were hosting a sand sculpture competition. The weather was a bit hit and miss, but we did get a few moments of sun during our adventure.

They have a long boardwalk area with arcade games and amusement rides. We didn't bother as it was rainy and blustery at that point, but we did like the ferris wheel.

We preferred the gardens we stumbled across while walking around - very pretty area.

Road Trip: York, England

Our final stop on our July roadtrip was York, England. A beautiful old town with lots of history. The main attraction is the York Minster (Cathedral) which was quite nice, but expensive! I tell you, the Brits definitely know how to make money on tourism. :)

This was actually a random Abbey we ran across when we stopped for lunch and missed our turn! Couldn't go in to explore, but it was beautiful from the outside. And our first bright sunny day of the trip!

 A bit of York.

 A bit more - and a random Yorker who photobombed my picture!

This was just outside a cute little wine bar we found on TripAdvisor. Nice tapas, good wine and a super friendly owner who "loved our accent".

Old town York and the original gates into the city.

A couple of views of the cathedral.

A bit of the city walls and the tourist trap, err, I mean train that rides around part of the city.

And that was it - we headed back to Bristol with a few more miles on the car and a bunch of new UK adventure under our belts.

Road Trip: Glasgow, Scotland

The next stop on our road trip was Glasgow, Scotland. We'd been to Edinburgh a few years prior so decided to explore Glasgow this time. I have to say I do prefer Edinburgh, but Glasgow was a great adventure too.

Beautiful architecture.

One of our waiters suggested we check out the top of The Lighthouse, which is an art gallery tucked away down a side street, but with one of the best views of Glasgow. We never would have found it without his tip.

We ended our day in Glasgow at the Botanical gardens. You can see it was another rainy overcast day, but the colours of the garden sure lightened the mood.

Road Trip: Keswick Lake District

I promise we do actually work most weeks, but that's not very interesting to blog about so here goes another few posts about our July adventure. We decided it was time for a multi-day road trip so planned a 5-day excursion north through England's Lake district, up through Glasgow, Scotland and back down again through York. It was a beautiful road trip - although a bit longer driving than expected due to traffic.

Our first night was spent in Keswick (pronounced kessick) which is a quaint little town in the English Lake District. Due to heavy traffic, we had a lot less time here than planned, which was disappointing. We'll just have to go back, I guess!

This is a little walking path I found the following morning while out and about. Cuts through a farmer's sheep pasture. It was a rainy and overcast morning, but that didn't detract from the gorgeous countryside.

I love the contrast here of the old building with the new truck out front - that really sums up a lot of England for me. Such rich history surrounding my modern day comforts.

I think much of the reason the rainy weather doesn't bother me much is because the result is this green, green, green almost all year long. I never get tired of it.

Cut little church.

Definitely need more time to explore the little villages and winding roads.

We stayed at a country inn, complete with multiple sitting rooms - every on with a fireplace, full made to order breakfast, and really nice people. On this rainy day, we would have been happy to plonk down here and laze the day away, but we had adventures to chase so got back on the road.