Tag: Traveling

French Friday

Okay, okay, fine. I won’t be one of those people with the themed day of the week posts. Mostly because I’m not disciplined enough to post consistently on certain days of the week, plus, what if I want to write about something else next Friday?

Anyway, it’s time for a stroll down memory lane. The first time I visited France was with my French class in 2005. It started out with a few-days long tour of the Loire valley, including 2 or 3 castles, and then I had a week-long homestay with my French family, finished up with a day or two in Paris. My memory (of how many days things took and such) is really hazy! Must be getting old.

Here is a very young Staci in front of my favorite castle, Chenonceau. It’s hard to pick a favorite castle because… well… they are castles, and by definition, awesome. I really liked Versailles too, of course… isn’t that technically a palace? So Chenonceau is my favorite castle and Versailles is my favorite palace. Speaking of Versailles, note below: the hall of mirrors. Very blurry (my trusty old 2004/2005 fujifilm camera did not have image stabilization, but overall seems to have done okay). Also, the tops of my host family’s heads.

This is Da Vinci’s house. Very cool!! Filled with art and cool furniture. I saw the bed where he died! The grounds were filled with cool Da Vinci inventions, like this one (below) created for battle. It spun inside with a mechanism like Disney’s tea cup ride. Note my wallet chain. I was extremely cool (and thin, apparently!) in high school.

Aha, here is a shot of the Eiffel Tower. I climbed it to get the full experience, even though it was cold and windy and I was wearing high heels. We were dressed nicely because we had dinner in the fancy Eiffel Tower restaurant! That thing you see attached to the front of it says “Paris 2012.” Paris was trying to get chosen to host the 2012 Olympics, which at the time seemed EXTREMELY far in the future!

Well, that was fun. I’m also a little worried because the CD these pictures are on did not have any photos of Chambord, another castle I saw, or the inside of the Louvre. Maybe I didn’t take any? What was my 17 year old self thinking!

Another fun fact about the trip: I bought my first iPod for the overseas flight. A white one with no color screen or video capabilities. We have come so far.

St Louis (Early Anniversary Trip)

Our anniversary is coming up on the 20th, but due to the anticipated arrival of Doug’s co-worker’s baby, we decided to take the week before off so as not to cause drama at the lab.

We tried to save pennies by staying closer to home (7 hours is not that far) but ended up splurging for a boutique hotel (the Moonrise Hotel) that I found online and couldn’t resist. We did score a deal by buying two nights and getting one free. The third night (the free one) I probably slept better than I ever have! Haha.

The Moonrise Hotel exterior at dusk.

The first day we were there, we shopped the street the Moonrise is located on–the Delmar Loop. The street really isn’t a loop but with interesting stores and restaurants on both sides, it’s easy to walk up to one end and loop down on the other side. Our area reminded me of Hillcrest in San Diego and had lots of ethnic restaurants; something impossible to find in our town. At one of a few resale stores, I scored a pair of Coach tennis shoes for $24! Actually, it was perfect because I had forgotten a pair of good walking shoes. Providence!! At another store, Doug scored some retro swim trunks because the ones he had last summer seem to have mysteriously disappeared.

The shorts. Actually, he has a v-neck in each of these colors except orange. They go with everything!

The following day we slept in as long as possible–we ended up getting up around 10. We went over to downtown to see the Gateway Arch, but since I had ridden up in it as a child and Doug had done it in 2009, we decided not to spend our money in that way.

At the Arch. Shiny!

Instead, we found out that while the team is away, Busch Stadium offers tours! At first I was skeptical of the $10 cost–not cheap, especially considering that there are two of us, but the tour actually turned out to be one of our favorite parts of the trip. We learned some insider info, including that there’s a buffet section! They offer tickets that include a great seat and access to an all-you-can-eat buffet. The price depends on how popular the Cardinals’ opponent is and what day of the week the game is.

The buffet area was set up for a baseball-themed wedding reception. Cool!

During the tour we got to go in the radio press box, in the fancy area where the players eat after the game, on the field (had to stay off the grass) and in the dugout!! It was very cool, Doug was in sports heaven, and our tour guide was very funny.

On the field! It looks bigger from the stands.

Sunday, we went to the St Louis Zoo (free!) in the morning and drove a couple hours to my Grandma’s in Illinois for the afternoon and evening. Some of my other relatives were there and it was so good to spend time with the lesser-seen side of my family.

Monday, yesterday, sadly, was the day to make the 7 hour drive back home. Unfortunately due to hauling a couch gifted by my grandmother (she got a replacement and this one was lonely in her garage) we drove the truck, a manual shift. This means that poor Doug had to drive the whole time and it was my job to keep him in high spirits. Fortunately, even though it was raining through Missouri, everyone and everything made it back in great condition and we even shaved 30 minutes off the estimated trip time (according to TomTom).

It was so great to get away for an extra-long weekend.

One Day in Kansas City

Kansas City. Unless you’re from the area, you probably aren’t familiar with the wonders to be experienced here. It probably doesn’t register on most people’s radar as “Major US City” (it is near the bottom of the 40 largest list) but 500,000 people can’t be wrong, it’s a good place to live. Missouri must like to share, because like its other major city (St Louis), it bleeds across the state border into Kansas (especially when you take into account some of Kansas City’s nicer suburbs like Lenexa and Overland Park, which lie southwest of the city).

One of my favorite parts of KC is the Plaza, which holds several good memories for me, including the lighting of the city’s Christmas Lights the day after Thanksgiving 2005, some really good dates, and in my opinion the best Urban Outfitters clearance section I’ve ever shopped. The plaza has some of the region’s only locations for stores like Banana Republic, Restoration Hardware, and American Apparel, and restaurants like PF Chang’s. Sometimes its nice for a city slicker like me to spend a day among retail affluence (although I can’t really afford to shop in these kinds of places anyway)–its a nice break from the small-town life I now lead.

However, one interesting thing about this city (and other cities too, naturally), is how abruptly one goes from “good” neighborhood to “bad” neighborhood, back to “good” while driving in one direction without changing roads. On our way to The Plaza we experienced this shift at least five times in only a few miles.

The last thing I want to rave about is the City Market and the adjacent Steamboat Arabia museum. I was shown the City Market once on a tour but as it was the tail end of winter, it wasn’t open–all I got to see was the location and the empty stalls. Before our trip, however, I did a little more research, confirmed that it was open, and we had lunch at an Arabic restaurant. Mmmmm, schwarma ;) In addition to the Arabic restaurant and connected Arabic store and sidewalk market, there were Italian and African grocery stores and across the street two Asian Groceries (we did not make it to the Asian stores). The whole world in one city block!

The Steamboat museum came highly recommended by Doug’s parents and, contrary to my initial skepticism, it was amazing!! The story behind it was that in the 1830s a steamboat sunk and the boat and all its cargo were preserved underneath the claylike mud. Now that its been excavated, much of the cargo (an astonishing amount of stuff) is still like new! Very, very, interesting and indicative of pioneer life–literally everything that would have been sold in a fronteir general store was on this boat and has been preserved as a snapshot.