Paris

Today we finally got to Paris, my cousin Cristiana was already waiting for us at the airport and we started our journey to where we are staying. After we dropped off all our bags we then went to downtown Paris. First thing we saw was the Eiffel Tower, beautiful and breathtaking, a dream come true. I am also pretty excited with the fact I can understand quite a bit of French... Pretty surprising... We saw a lot more things and unfortunately I will have to keep this post short since I have been up for 23 hours and can barely think straight...

A busy day in London

Today we walked a lot. We left the apartment at 9:30, took a taxi since the tubes are on strike today, got to Westminster Abbey with a sunny day ahead of us, that is until 2:30 when it started raining. We saw the Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, London Eye, Westminster Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Picccadilly Circus, St. Paul's Cathedral, and we ended the day at the Tower of London. We had lunch at a nice Turkish cafe, and dinner at a pub where I had the traditional "fish and chips". It rained most of the afternoon but it wasn't too cold. Ben took over 100 pictures and we really enjoyed the day together... We do miss our boys and it was fun to hear laughter and the little voices of the kids that would walk by... Tomorrow we are going to Paris, we can hardly wait...

First outing

We got up from our nap and after eating a delicious pizza that our host Syl left for us in the freezer, we decided to go for a walk in the neighborhood... There was a lot of excitement around the Thames River, police everywhere, boats in the water searching for something, lots of sirens too... It was a nice walk and we only got one picture of a church. St. Mary's Church...

Weather

Even though it is supposed to rain it is not too bad...

Keys

Ok, so traveling with me is always something interesting, I always make it for the best stories... Well, we arrived at the London Heathrow Airport on time, go through the UK border pretty quickly, the taxi driver was waiting for us with a sign and everything. It was raining quite a bit but we made it to the Syl's apartment with no problems... Then things started going downhill, it was not quite 8 in the morning, very dark and cold. We found the envelope with the keys and could not get the door open, we tried everything with all the keys that were together. I proceeded to try to get in touch with Syl via Internet since my phone does not work in a different country, grrrr. We were getting ready to call a taxi and find a hotel since there was no way we were going to get in when Syl responded to my messages, she told us to use the tiny key on the top lock and that went awry, the key broke in the lock... By now, I have already tried to find one of her neighbors and nothing since it is Christmas Day. Well, Syl was able to call a Locksmith which we knew was going to cost an arm and a leg. We continued trying to open the door but no such luck, when he arrived, he gave us the options and finally around 10:30 we got in the apartment. I was freezing by now since we had been standing outside this whole time. It ended up costing us a lot of money but as we would say in Brazil, "Quem entra na chuva e pra se molhar." I feel horrible about the whole thing but now it is done. We took our showers to warm up and slept for a few hours to try to catch up on our sleep.

Santa and Mrs. Claus

So while we were waiting at the Atlanta Airport, we had the visit of Santa and Mrs. Claus... Of course Ben didn't want to be in the picture but here I am with them... Merry Christmas to everyone! We will be spending Christmas Eve in the plane... :)

Leaving

We are sitting at the Omaha airport waiting for our first flight... So far so good and no delays... Ben looks a little bored but we are very excited... The wait is always boring. We will spend the night in Atlanta and leave to London from there tomorrow evening. The goodbyes were bitter sweet since Lucas said he did not want us to leave. I know they will be fine but it is always hard to say goodbye.