Eastbound & Up

So as I have alluded to previously, dearest Bucket has acquired a mini passport for herself this summer- 2 of the 3 stamps courtesy of Mama's job.  The first was in early June with a week long jaunt to Finland and the second was in late July with a week long trip to London.  I neglected to post about either of these trips for a multi-part reason: 1) well, you see how grossly behind this blog has been and 2) I generally don't post about work.  However, because my job isn't one that historically has required a lot of travel and now that Ryan and I have started this little zoo family, I foresee my travel plummeting for the near future.  I decided that it was okay to post some pictures of some of the extracurricular, non-worky things we did on each trip.  I'll save you the snoozefest that was the purpose of our trips as I assume most of you aren't accountants and thus don't get amped up about things like "spreadsheets," "rates," and "site visits."  I personally was very excited and felt fortunate to be able to go on each trip- I really have some amazing co-workers/bosses.

First up, Finland.  This was my second time to travel to this charming little nordic land.  It was mainly as I remembered it- chalk full of light headed people with a strong affinity for fish and potatoes.  The difference was that this time we went in the summer rather than in the winter.  This meant that the daylight lasted like... all day.  Seriously.  I kept waking up and seeing the sun coming through the curtains of my hotel room and having a mini-panic attack that I'd overslept only to look at the clock and see 4:00 am.  It was weird.  Fate did not mean for me to be Finnish and I'm comfortable with that.  I'll perform narration of our trip through photographic commentary.  Isn't that everyone's favorite anyway?

Because seeing people in PPE never gets old.  The men are definitely rocking it better than yours truly.

 The yard HSE coordinator was a Houston expat and he took us to dinner on this little boat.

I'm looking very travel-worn but this serves as photographic evidence that we indeed ate on a boat.  I had... wait for it... fish.

On another day the same week our awesome expat tour guide took us to lunch at this little place on the water.  The fare?  You guessed it- fish.

Preeeeeeetty jazzed about our fish.  Actually, one night this week the guys took me to Chef Jani's restaurant, Bucco, and it. was. amazing.  I did not eat fish... I ate scallops.  It's too bad I was busy stuffing my face and didn't take any pics.  If you ever find yourself in Pori you should definitely go visit him.

Did you know that Angry Birds was created in Finland?  No?  Then you clearly haven't visited Finland.

The last day of work my boss made us be rebels by stopping off at the Yyteri beach on the way to work.  It took us about 20 mins to find the beach down this rickety walkway clearly not made for a pregnant woman in wedges, but it was well worth it.

On a totally unrelated note, it's hard to get sand out of wedges.

Because Pori is so small, we had to fly to Helsinki, stay the night and then fly out to the states the following morning.  While in Helsinki our last evening, Chef Jani recommended a restaurant for us to go to called Bronda.  It was heavenly.  Like seriously maybe the best meal of my life but certainly top 5.  I'm not a photographer of food, but I'm going to subject you all to these so I never forget it.  I don't remember what much of this was other than delicious though.

Scallops.

Osso bucco and something else that was also amazing.

Dessert.  Equally as out of this world.

While wandering around the city trying to walk off some of our fantastic dinner we happened upon a car show in the middle of the city which apparently takes place the first Friday of each month.  It was funny to me to see so many American cars.  There were lots of 1997ish mustangs like Jen had.  Oddly none of them were headed to Sonic like we usually were though.

Good to know that some of America's obnoxious bumper stickers have made it across the pond.

Old Ford.  That's about as technically savvy as I get when it comes to cars.

Uspenski Cathedral.  We walked by it, I took this picture and had no idea what it was until I just googled it.  #besttouristever

Really awesome old ship.

Everyone else had a beer and pretzel in the United Lounge pre-flight out.  This was my pregnant lady substitute.

Next up- London!  I have also traveled to London a time or two for both work and for fun.  It was just as I remembered it- chalk full of people with intelligent sounding accents, snappy dress socks and a strong affinity for beer.  The difference in this trip was that the office that we were going to visit had changed locations to right by St. Paul's.  So we got to know a new 'hood, which was fun.  Unfortunately the self-proclaimed photographer of our previous trip did not make this one, so I fear that I have less visual proof that this trip took place.  I'll see what I can find in my photostream for you though.

We ate dinner over at the Cinnamon Club one evening and got to walk by Westminster Abbey.  Delish food- highly recommend.

We also went to see Jersey Boys and I took zero pics (who's shocked?)  So I hijacked this one from the interwebs.  It's hard to say whether I enjoyed the performance by the actors or the performance by the several older women in the audience who were singing and dancing in the aisles.  Either way- it was definitely a win in my book.

Here's a view of St. Paul's after walking out the doors of the office we were working from.  Did you know this is where Diana and Charles tied the knot?  My boss' wife did.

My boss and I snuck over here during work hours for the quickest tour ever on the last day we were in town.  Shot of the ceiling.  I wasn't supposed to take this picture.  Please don't report me!

The building in the forefront between the two towers is where we were working.

We climbed all the way to the top.  They put this little hole in the floor at one point just so you can see how quickly your blood pressure can rise.  This is a view of the very bottom floor.

London Eye, the Thames, etc.

View of the office we were working out of from the highest observation deck.

Ta-da!  The front.  We were so lucky to have such gorgeous weather while we were there.

And that, my friends, about sums up the fun touristy parts of my two work trips this summer.  I hope you have enjoyed this short break from my pregnancy catch up tour as much as I enjoyed these jaunts across the pond.  Oh, and OF COURSE, a huge shout out to my Baby Daddy (plus Nonnie & Pawpaw for their assistance) who took such incredible care of our princess for two whole weeks so Mama could play career woman.  Sure I picked her up from school in pajamas one Friday upon my return but overall, he could not have been more successful.  I don't know what I did to get so lucky, but I sure am glad I did it.  Thank you, love!

Pretty amped up about her impromptu jammie day at school.

(April 27, Geneva): The Last Supper

Friday morning we woke up bright and early to catch our cab to Gare de Lyon to get back to good ol' Geneva.  In yet another small world moment (or perhaps the 2nd time this trip the heavens tried  to tell us that Texas is taking over the planet), Ryan & I wound up sitting across from a couple visiting Paris from Dallas.  They very nearly ruined American Idol for us, but luckily they caught themselves and did not, thus they remained in our good graces.

The train ride back was fairly uneventful except for the last 15 minutes when poor Jake got very restless.  After all, the camel's back had already been broken the day before so homeboy was ready to be HOME already.  He was doing a little bit of fussing.  I should point out that Jake was a model traveller for the bulk of the 3 hour train ride, unlike a fellow train rider in our car who fussed for the most of the trip.  About 2 minutes into Jake's fussing a helpful lady stuck her head up over her seat, looked at Melanie and started speaking to her in French.  Jonathan asked if she spoke Inglesias and she said (and I quote), "have you tried PLAYING with the baby?"  I was so proud of Melanie & Jonathan for not hoping seats to deck her.  Melanie averted her eyes and Jonathan just said "okay."  Thank heavens for helpful people in the world who remind you to do things you've already tried.  Particularly with only 15 minutes left in a train ride.  That good deed surely lasted her a week rather than just for the day.  (Please note extreme sarcasm font for the last 7 sentences).

We spent the afternoon at Chateau McClain unpacking, reminscing and just generally relaxing.  Melanie arranged a sitter for the evening so that we could have our last supper while Jake enjoyed being back in the comfort of his own house - finally!  As soon as the sitter arrived we set out to grab a pre-dinner cocktail.  We stopped at a cool outdoor place where lost of people were grabbing post-work beverages. 

Our view walking to drinks.  Man I miss those mountains! 

Last McMartin toast.  Thankfully this time there were no pink beers.

Mama Mel.  *sigh* I miss her too!  (More than the mountains, for the record).

After a round of drinks it was time to head to din din.  Melanie made reservations at a Thai place Jonathan recommended called the Wooden Hut for the Last Supper.  Jonathan's co-worker, Jean-Marc, and his girlfriend, Meredith, joined us.  The food was delcious and it was really awesome to meet Jean-Marc & Meredith.  They were fabulous and it's nice to know that the dear McClains are in good friend-hands in Geneva. 

The best Inglesias-speakers I know.

Me & my more moutard-y half.

Once we finished dinner we decided to grab a few post-dinner drinks and continue the conversation.  Meredith mentioned castles and some research she had done on how expensive some of them were.  Who am I to turn down an opportunity to wax philosophic over fictional chateau investments?  The locals chose a place called Riverside Cafe.  I'm sure you are shocked to find out that it is right on a river. 

It wound up being the perfect place to end our trip.  Fabulous company, picturesque setting and lots of laughs and conversation.  It was most definitely a summation of our entire trip in an hour or so. 

The view.

Jean-Marc, Meredith, Mel, Ryan, Me & Jonathan. 

And THAT, my friends is a wrap for McMartin family vacation.  You never thought this day would come, did you?  As I'm sure the multitude of words and posts prior to this demonstrate, this was most assuredly one of the best vacations of my life.  I can not thank Melanie, Jonathan & Jake enough for sharing their home, lives and way too many travel adventures with us.  Thank you also to my parents for watching our whiskery child so that we could do this.   And thank YOU, readers, for all of your kind comments, texts and sweet sentiments.  It makes writing this all down worthwhile. 

You can look forward to tales of a birthday, a wedding and some house updates this side of the pond once my wrists stop cramping.

(April 26, Paris): Skip to the Louvre, my Darling

If any of us had put half as much effort into our SATs as we did into jam-packing day 2 of Paris-ism (Paris + tourism) as chock-full of sight-seeing as we could manage then perhaps we would have all gotten 1600s**.  We planned to start at Notre Dame, head to the Louvre, walk through the Louvre gardens, go check out the Arc de Triomphe, have with crepes on the Eiffel Tower lawn and wrap up the day with a trip up the Eiffel Tower.  If you're laughing at us undertaking this ambitious of a plan- you probably did get a 1600.  What is it they say about the best laid plans?  That you wind up getting lost and only doing half of those things instead?  I think it's something like that.

So, we started the day off enjoying Ryan's "comped" breakfast.  I'm pretty sure watching Ryan & Jonathan tear through their croissants and fried eggs made the hotel staff consider increasing the price of said breakfast so as not to end up in the red, but that is neither here nor there.  After acquiring sufficient nutella fuel, we hit the streets en route to Notre Dame.  Although the weather forecast promised us a prettier day than Wednesday, they really didn't go above and beyond.  It was slightly less windy and still pretty cloudy.  Luckily since we stayed a few blocks from the Louvre, the walk to Notre Dame wasn't too bad.  Particularly for the half of the sight seeing tour that discussed the intricacies of their Apple stock the entire way.

A shot of the edge of the Louvre on our walk to Notre Dame.  When your options are joining in on stock talk or taking random photos- I believe the choice is obvious.

 

We couldn't figure out what this building was- even with the assistance of a map.  That won't stop me from posting a picture of it though.  Don't you worry!

Once we arrived at Notre Dame, Jake celebrated by dropping his binky on the ground.  Looking back upon this moment, I believe this is what my highschool English teacher was trying to teach me to call "foreshadowing."  Binky is to 17 month old as "other other shoe" is to the adult world.  Up to this moment (excluding a portion of our time in Musee D'Orsay), Jake had been the picture of a perfect little traveller.  All other travelling mothers probably would have looked at their own 17 month olds and said "why can't you be more like Jake?"   Day 4 of getting toted around in foreign lands was where he drew the line.  Who could blame him?  We were definitely pushing the envelope.  

Notre Dame is such an overwhelmingly impressive cathedral.  The ceilings, architecture, stained glass and history are second to none, in my opinion.  You should certainly swing by if given the opportunity.   My favorite part, of course, we was the stained glass.  I think Jake's was exiting the building.

 

Ryan, sa dame (his lady) & Notre Dame (our lady).

I can only imagine how long it took to carve even 1 of those 28 statues in the gallery of kings.  Longer than an episode of House Hunters which is about the extent of my attention span.

Oh, did you think we'd make it through a cathedral without a shot of the ceiling arches?  Wrong again, my friends- wrong a-gain.

 

Love.

 

Love even more.

After we stepped back into the sunlight Jake-y started to feel a little bit better.  Maybe he just doesn't like French Gothic architecture?  Everyone is entitled to their opinion, after all.  Since he seemed to be in better spirits, and since none of my travel compadres had been there before, we decided to continue on to the Louvre in keeping with our plan.  We stopped by a couple of pet stores on the way that were not included in the plan.  Who doesn't like to look at animals though?!  Thankfully transporting a dog back to the US sounds hard or Ryan & I might have come home with a French Bulldog as a souvenir rather than just wine.

 

Ryan & I looking in-Seine-ly touristy.  (Ohhh I went there).

 

Louvre courtyard.  Did you know the Louvre used to be a palace?  Thats why it's so ginormous.

 

Sadly the pyramid always makes me think of the Da Vinci code.  What?  Pop culture saturates my life?  Nooooooo.

Once we made it inside, we made a beeline for the wing with the Venus de Milo & the Mona Lisa.  If you aren't a super duper art fanatic (ahem, me), just the size of the Louvre is incredibly intimidating.  Making it through 1 of the 4 wings sounds like a serious accomplishment.  So we decided since Venus & Mona were in the same wing that would be the best bang for our buck.

I think Jake found the plethora of naked, marble folk a little offensive.  He started informing us as such through throwing a code red fit.  After seeing the Venus de Milo Melanie decided that she should take Jake back to the hotel to try to calm him down. 

 

Venus striking a pose.  Nevermind Twiggy, I think this was the original supermodel.

 

 Ryan & I insisted that Melanie come check out the Mona Lisa since she was so close that you could almost taste it. So we tried to run (pretty literally) over to the Mona Lisa while Jonathan sat with Jake on a bench.   Melanie turned around before we made it to the Mona Lisa and promised to send Jonathan to Ryan & I after she retrieved Jake from him. So the plan was for Ryan & I to hang out and chat with Mona while waiting for Jonathan to meet us.  Sounds easy  enough, right?  Well, all of us failed to take into account the Jonathan's "feel" factor.  Ryan & I wandered around the room that the Mona Lisa was in for about 35 minutes and never found Jonathan.  

At this point I was feeling a little panicked since we didn't have a phone and thus no way to get a hold of anyone.  (How did people do it before cell phones?!)  So Ryan back tracked to where we left him while I held guard from a bench just outide the room.  Both of us came up empty handed.  We decided that since Ryan had never been to the Louvre and it was the thing he was most excited about that we should go ahead and check it out.  We crossed our fingers that Jonathan's feel would lead him back to the hotel and continued playing art historians.

 

Mona.  I find it so comical that she's in a room surrounded by HUGE paintings that dwarf her, yet she's the biggest star.  Good things come in small packages, I suppose.

 

After we scoured the wing with the Greek statues and Italian paintings, we decided to check out the wing with the Egyptian artifacts.  As you may recall if you read Boarman family Euro-trip 2010, I fell in love with Egypt when we went to Cairo.  I was bummed Ryan wasn't there to share in it at the time, so it was cool to get to see some pieces of Egypt here with him.  Here's a Sphinx (sphink-us to you, Mom & Julie) reproduction.

 

Sarcophogus.  They had a TON of these.

Post Egyptian artifact-ing, Ryan & I decided we should probably head back to the hotel to check on the other half of our travelling circus.  By this time it was around 3 and we were starved, so we committed the cardinal tourist sin for the 2nd time on this vacation and swung by McDonald's.  DOH.  Although, to our credit Ryan really embraced the local culture by ordering something called (I swear I didn't make this up) the McBaguette.

When we made it back to the hotel we found the McClains safe, sound and happy as clams.  We all jointly made the executive decision that a little nap might be in everyone's best interest.  They had arranged a sitter for Jake for the evening.  So we decided free time was in order until 6 of so when the sitter arrived.  Ryan & I napped, iPaded and enjoyed some more BBC.  At 6 we met down in the hotel lobby for a drink and then set out for the Eiffel Tower.

So maybe we didn't get an up close and personal view of the Arc de Triomphe, we did see it on our walk.  Does this count as sticking to the plan?

 

The beginning of my photographic love affair with the Eiffel Tower.  We'll call this Eiffel Tower + Seine.

 

This one = Eiffel Tower + Foliage.

 

Oh look!  I took a little break for a moment in our walk of taking pictures of the Eiffel Tower.  Isn't this wall awesome?  Those are all real plants.  (I touched them to make sure- duh.)

 

Melanie and I obviously belong in a musical.

 

Eiffel Tower + Husband channeling a Chorus Line?

 

Eiffel Tower does Britney.

 

We walked up to the Eiffel Tower to see how long the lines were and determine if we wanted to try to go up to the top.  After taking one look at how long the line was, and how many tour groups from Junior Highs it included, we decided that a cocktail sounded much more appealing.  (Ryan & I have both been to the top before - so this was not as much of a tourism fail as I'm sure you're imagining).

A block or so from the tower, we found a street with a bunch of sidewalk cafes.  We selected 1 with an excellent looking menu and a really nice hostess.  The weather was so nice that it would have been criminal not to eat outside.  Dinner and drinks with a side of Euro people-watching?  Yes, please.

 

Melanie was adventurous and ordered escargot.  She & I both sampled it and decided it was not something we would order again, BUT kudos to her for making us try something new.  The boys were pansies and wouldn't give it a shot.

 

Ryan ordered Croque Madame.  Again.  The boys shoveled moutard into their mouths.  Again.

The better half of the McMartins.

C'est bon.

Once we got our fill of delicious food and euro-mullet, we decided to call it a day and go back to the hotel to relieve the sitter.  Well, Melanie and I did.  The boys went out for a night cap and accidentally wound up at an Ivy League happy hour at an Irish Bar.  A&M is the Yale of the College Station area, right? 

Last one, I promise.

While the day didn't go EXACTLY according to our over-achieving plan, I would still classify it as pretty darn perfect.  Much love to my fellow travellers for making it that way.

NEXT UP:  Our LAST day and thus my LAST post about this trip.  Crazaaaaay!

** for the youth of America who now take SATs with like 50,000 as a possible score - 1600 used to be a perfect score in my day.  That is today's history lesson.