Le Gai Paris

One of the wonderful things about living in London is access to the rest of Europe. Rumour has it that you can pop down to Paris and back for dinner, and while that might be a stretch, it's definitely an easy weekend trip.

David and I spent last weekend in Paris. We took the Eurostar there, which goes under the English Channel to Paris in just over two hours. I'm pretty sure it took us about two hours to get from Santa Monica to Hollywood on a Friday evening once when we were living in LA, so this is amazing.

We had a fabulous time eating, drinking and exploring. We didn't do a ton of touristy stuff, but we did climb the Eiffel tower (about 400 steps up, and then back down) to have a glass of champagne at the very top.

We did walk around and see many of the big hitters (which we had seen before when we were students, but that was long before Instagram!).

Pompidou

Arc de Triomphe

Notre Dame

David's future car (basically a glorified golf cart).

And what trip to Paris is complete without some escargot? We had a delicious dinner at Le Coupe Chou. Paris, we will definitely see you again soon!

A Royal Birthday Indeed

Royals. What an interesting topic as an American. They are something we really haven't grown up with, and have only watched with fascination from afar. I can remember thinking that the Brits sure do get a lot of bank holidays for things like weddings and such. But now, we have actually experienced it ourselves.

For those of you who don't know, this year was the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. She's been on the thrown for 60 years. In celebration and recognition of this, the people of the UK were given not just one, but two days off. The four day weekend was filled with events such as a river floatilla where 1000 boats paddled down the river (in the pouring rain I might add). There were street parties, church services, parades, and all sorts of fun.

This also happened to coincide with David's and my birthday on Monday, June 4. And what a party it turned out to be! On that day we attended a street party our friends were throwing. It was a blast. There were probably 100 people, over 200 bottles of champagne, and a table full of cupcakes. It was epic to say the least. We couldn't help but get into the spirit. Check out some pictures from the weekend below.

Samira at the river front for the floatilla.

Floatilla happenings. Note the jumbo screens. They were playing movies of the queen when we were there.

The streets were all decked out.

Even Mattie got into the Jubilee spirit (against her will really).

We'd like to think all of this champagne was for our birthday. 

Let them eat cake!

Getting into the spirit!

The street party.