Our time in Paris... with the Flu

Yep, you read that title right. Our Paris vacation was taken over by the flu.

Needless to say, it was not quite what we were hoping for out of Kevin's much needed break and vacation. We had a ton planned: a bus tour, bike rentals, trying French cuisine, meeting Kev's teammate and family from Hannover's team, shopping on the Avenue de Champs Elysees, seeing the Eiffel tower and the many beautiful parks and churches all around the city. We did get to see the Eiffel tower, do a little shopping, take almost all of the bus tour, meet the Chamberlains for dinner ... and not much else. We spent the majority of our trip lying in bed going back and forth from having the chills to hot sweats from our fevers and aches and pains everywhere. At first we thought it was food poisoning from some duck we ate Thursday night, but after some consultation with Gale when we got back, the flu it was.

It all started Thursday night with Kev having a fever after dinner (luckily we got in a little shopping and a trip to the Eiffel tower before then). Friday we woke up to bad headaches, but thought we would try to venture out a bit. We took some of the bus tour and were back in bed with fevers by 3 p.m. where we stayed until that time the next day. Saturday we met the Chamberlains for dinner and headed back for one last look at the Eiffel tower at night. I think even if we were healthly the whole time, I would have asked Kev to take me back to the Eiffel tower every night, so beautiful all lit up! Sunday we were relieved to come home and be back to our own beds. I never thought I would be so happy to hear and see German words again, but my was it comforting!!

However, the parts of Paris that we did see were absolutely beautiful and we will just keep it on the list of locations for another time! It was great to be able to muster up some energy and meet the Chamberlains for dinner, even though at that point we were still set on the food poisoning idea and were a bit paranoid about what we ate. So much for branching out and trying new French foods! The architechture on the different churches and museums that we saw from the bus were absolutely amazing and made for some great pictures! Check out the video at the end to really see how they illuminate the Eiffel Tower at night, bear with the fact that you have to watch it with your head on your side!

We stopped to watch some breakdancing on the first night

too foggy to see the whole thing!

Still too foggy the next morning

Notre Dame church

Galeries Lafayette, 6 floors of shopping available

view of city from top of the Galeries Lafayette

Saturday was much nicer and no fog!

The nice weather on the weekend made the lines ridiculous!

So beautiful!

The Chamberlains! So great to see you guys!

On the hour, every hour at night they illuminate the Eiffel tower

In other news, we are almost back to feeling 100%. Kevin has been back to practice already yesterday, and I got back to work Thursday. We have visitors coming again, Horst and Gale fly in Friday morning! Just in time too, on my way to class today I saw them setting up the Christmas Markets downtown! Even though they make me so excited for Christmas there will be no decorations in this apartment until after next Thursday, American Thanksgiving!!! That's all for now, check out the lit up Eiffel tower video below! Tschüss!

Oh, and HAPPY 25th BIRTHDAY to my brother, Thayne!

Random Wednesday!

There isn't much to update on as we have been just getting the last bits organized for our trip to PARIS tomorrow! EEEEEEKKKK!! We are so excited! We had dinner at the Scherenbergs on Monday and they hooked us up with a map and told us about all the must see places. We plan to rent bikes while we are there to get around the city easier! So seeing as we've been Paris, Paris, Paris all week, there isn't much else to talk about. So this is about to be one very random filled post!

*Hans has become pretty obsessed with Kevin lately. If asking me almost daily where he is and what he's doing isn't enough, our Play-doh time the other day was taken over by his love for Kevin. It started out simply wanting to make an "eishockey schneemann."

However, it soon turned into wanting to make a hockey player, and then a Freezer, and then just "I want to make Kevin!" So here it is, ladies and gents... Kevin in play-doh! Forget the fact that Kev has red hair and green limbs, we only had so many Play-doh colors to work with.

*We went and saw Toby Keith play on the Reeperbahn last night. He put on a good show but we were slightly disappointed that he only played a little over an hour and didn't come back for an encore. Good thing we were lucky enough to get free tickets because if we had paid 50 Euros like the rest of the crowd, we would have been whistling in anger with the rest of the Germans in the building! There were definitely some other Americans at the concert because I saw some people waving American flags!

*Before the concert, Kevin had to attend an autograph signing session downtown in the big indoor shopping complex called the Europa Passage. Kevin said that there were a good number of people there for autographs and the promotion should help for the next game also because they were selling tickets for only 10 Euro. The Freezers are still in 2nd place heading into the break this weekend.

*We found our beer and liquor store in this city! There is basically a warehouse nearby with a ton of different beers and a lot of liquors we don't find at other places. Horst and Gale, we already picked you up a bottle of Absolut! And my dad will be pleased to know if I'm really feeling homesick I can turn to a bottle of MGD!

*I got a haircut! Not just a trim either, went back to my chin like I had a few years ago.

Have a great weekend, and we'll have many pictures and things to write about after this weekend! Tschüss!