I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.: 30 days to 30: day 28

2009 was a huge, HUGE year for me. it was my first trip to europe. emphasis on first because i will be going back. krystal and i made a promise to each other that we would go once we graduated college. it took us a few years but we saved up our money and went. it's hard to sum up the trip in one blog post. i have lots of pictures on facebook. but mostly it is the memories and experiences that i had. i love to travel but being away in foreign countries definitely made me miss and appreciate home.

i kept a diary all along the way. here's an excerpt from an entry about paris, one of my very favorite cities from our tour.
7 july 2009 mercure hotel, la defense 5, paris
what an exciting and full day we had yesterday. we had a sight seeing drive around paris yesterday morning with our guide odil. she showed us lots of interesting places like the roman baths and roman wall--both in ruins of course. we saw the sorbonne--oldest university in paris and dedicated to humanities. the pantheon, the hotel des invalides where napoleon is buried and tons more.
then to the eiffel tower! what a grand structure. we rode the elevator to the second deck. we got to skip most of the lines a part of our tour group....
i loved to see the views from the tower. it's a different "perspective." that is what odil tells us is important in paris. how, for example, you can stand at the arc de triomphe and see all the way down the champs elysees to the place de la concorde and up to la defense arch. there are many of these beautiful perspectives throughout paris.
our tour covered so much and went by so quickly that i feel like i really only got a tiny sampling of most places. i will definitely be going back someday.

one picture from each country!