The days past

Last week started off with a bang, had lots of travel, and has now fizzled out back in London for some R&R.

On Sunday Cyd, Ashley, and I went to the London Dungeons to learn the horrific history of the city in a most entertaining way. Cyd best described it as a "spooky Disneyland". We even bought plenty of scary souvenirs. Afterwards we wandered a different area of the city but with the cold and rain we decided to postpone our Jack the Ripper Whitechapel walk.

Monday was especially exciting! We went on a class visit to Prudence Millinery and it was truly inspiring. Having just taken up hat making as a hobby, but with no education, I really took in the studio space and every ounce of information. I really clicked with the advice of trying to keep positive and not worry about what other people are doing.

We left Tuesday morning for a trip on the Eurostar train for Paris. We took in another sight seeing tour via bus where we stopped at the Eiffel Tower and eventually wound up in our very tiny but nice hotel (I roomed with Ashley and Cydney). Finding vegetarian food was difficult enough, let alone vegan, and it was even harder to get by without a kitchen. We managed to eat though. Cyd and I return to the Eiffel Tower at night discovering the very dirty Metro lines of the city. Our initial thoughts on Paris were that it was dirtier than London, and while this kept up, it is true that the monuments are a lot prettier lit up at night.

Wednesday morning we attempted to visit the catacombs but the line was too long. For class we were treated quite wonderfully by the ladies and gentlemen at the Printemps luxury department store. They told us all about their company's history, architecture and also some of their internal workings. A tour of the flagship store as well as their subsidary Citadium was equally impressive. From all the department stores we've visited I felt most received here. They really catered to us and our educational needs. Checking out their rooftop cafeteria as well as VIP room was also pretty awesome. Before the meet Cyd, Ash, and I also had pro gratis apertifs (grape flavored champagne) at a cafe we had lunch for. It marked the first instance of politeness in Paris and luckily it lasted through the tour. After class the three of us went to see Notre Dame and I swore a lot about the dirt in my eye and the horrid smells from everywhere. Notre Dame was jawdroppingly beautiful. We spent a good while enjoying the street musicians and jugglers while snapping shots and just before we left in the evening the whole thing was lit up and we took some more photos. I think we tried to romanticize the feel of Paris with this night. We even caught a cute cat hanging out in a cafe window (the waiter told us that the cat was the boss, but later he said it was the boss's cat)

Thursday was an incredibly wearing day for team Cyd and Lainey. We woke up but our class plans sort of fell through. Some people had already left for travel plans. We went to Colette to see what was in store a.k.a. Nothing-I-can-afford-my-goodness-that's-over-priced. With the class dispersed we headed to the catacombs (the wait was much shorter despite the line being longer) and experienced the cavernous death halls that are below the city. We popped up above ground a ways down into the Catacombs gift shoppe and filled up on more haunting postcards and chilly nick-nacks. We ate some terrible food that was cold and barely vegetarian on our way back to the jewellery shops we found on our first night in. We discovered that the stores were wholesalers but luckily managed to get a few gifts at great prices. We also picked up maccaroons for my sisters who we were about to visit in Germany...

... we took the Eurostar back to London, and were so pleased to not be in Paris that we had a little song and dance to convey it all. Luckily the Pret a Manger joint across from the Underground station was open and we loaded up on tons of veg-friendly items so we could fake a meal since we had cleared everything out for our week away already. We repacked for Germany, refreshed, and made our way in the middle of the night to the Stansted Airport.