Summertime in London and Paris

Last Saturday I picked up one of my Carolina friend from the airport and we headed to London. Summer and I have been friends since the third grade and she decided to come visit me for her spring break. So we planned to go to London with some other people from my study abroad program.We stayed in a Marriott hotel right on Park Lane, right by Hyde Park. It was a really nice place and it felt very classy to be staying there in London. While in London we took one of the bus tours around the city. I had never been on a double decker before so that was an experience to be able to ride on the top. We walked around Buckingham Palace a bit. We of course took tons of pictures. We also saw Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the London Eye, Parliament, etc.
It really wasn't as awe-inspiring as I thought it would be. I thought that Big Ben was rather small. It was still cool to see all of that stuff though. It started raining really hard about half-way through the day so it kept us from walking around a whole lot. We took a boat ride down the river to Grenwich, where the Prime Meridian is. That was nice just so that we were out of the cold wet weather. To get around London, we used the underground. I thought that their system was a bit more complicated than it had to be but it was still pretty easy to find your way around. there were just tons of stairs. That was annoying when we were dragging our luggage as we arrived and left. It was nice to be in a place where people spoke English again though.
As soon as we got back to Brussels from London, we left for Paris.



















Paris was where Summer really wanted to go so we fit that trip in before my second session of classes started. In Paris we stayed at a Marriott on the Champs Elysees. It was even more fancy than the hotel in London and it was right in the middle of everything. We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, visited Notre Dame, and walked around the city some. The full day we had in Paris happened to be a Tuesday. Unfortunately, this was the one day that the Louvre is always closed. So we had to go early in the morning before leaving Paris the next day. the Louvre was absolutely huge and amazing. Of course we only saw a small part of it. I would love to go back one day and explore more. I think my favorite parts of Paris were Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower at night. The tower at night is gorgeous.
This is the Nike ad that was all over the metro in Paris. Summer is actually the one that pointed it out to me. We found it weird that they didn't use the "Just do it" slogan. Also, the "V" thing is different, I've never seen that before and I couldn't find anything about it on the American Nike website. I also took apicture of a warning sign on the metro in Paris. I just thought it was so random that they used a rabbit to warm people about getting their hands caught in the door. In Brussels they use stick figures with very little detail to convey similar messages.