What we've been up to...

Well, it's been a whirlwind 2 weeks, I tell ya! It started here:

Boy that living room looks big now, even with all that stuff EVERYWHERE. Jordan was the moving champ, and packed pretty much half of our house up and all our luggage besides my clothes. He finished up his finals on like Tuesday, while I had them through about Thursday and then was trying to grade about 20 20-page papers before taking off. Oh yea, and my family was in town (awesome!). So it was a little bit crazy, but it was a good week. We both did aaaaalright with our finals, so that's the first good news.

The second good news is that we made it to Geneva safe and sound! I already talked about the minor passing out incident on the plane here, but other than that we've been completely without trouble! Unless you count getting lost, in which case we have had lots of that kind of trouble. Just today we wandered around on bikes for about an hour longer than necessary trying to find a French grocery store (we're right on the border).... dang. It was a lot of uphill and maybe a couple #$%* slipped out (guess who? yea, it wasn't Jordan). Ha jk... sort of. Anyway we finally found our way and groceries really are much cheaper across the border (go figure, it's true everywhere) so looks like we'll be shopping in France baby!

Speaking of France... we went to Paris the day right after we arrived in Geneva! Took a 3 hour train to get there around 1 in the afternoon...

Our first stop was the Notre Dam, which really is as beautiful and massive as I imagined! This lovely woman named Julietta helped us find the right bus and everything. I guess we looked pretty overwhelmed, bless her. And good for her, because she eliminated our expectations of French snobbery right from the get go!

Then we wandered around Paris basically, along the river and saw this sprawling building... thought "What could that be?" Turns out it was the Louvre. Ha! So we just "happened" upon the Louvre....

Next we wandered through this lovely park... you can see the Arc di Triomphe in the background, if you look hard!

Then we found the Eiffel Tower, and laid down for a rest (it was a LOT of walking around with heavy backpacks by the time we got there. Well, for me at least. Jord was doin great but let's be honest, I can't compete with that crazy boy).

I sketched a little bit...

Then we kissed a little bit for good measure :)

After that we headed out of central Paris to get "checked in" at our little place, which we found through AirBnB. I LOVE this company, seriously. I was going out of my mind trying to find a place for us to stay in Paris where we didn't have to sell our left leg, but also wouldn't have to put up with bed bugs, vomiting/drunk travelers, or paper-thin walls through which you would hear... well you get the picture. My friend tipped me off to Airbnb and so instead we stayed in THIS adorable place:

 

It was a really lovely studio flat, with nice thick walls ;) all to ourselves. Pretty centrally located on a great metro line, with the full kitchen and everything. Amazing. Anyway I'm like the new unpaid spokeswoman for airbnb....

 

Next day we decided to just go on and get the Louvre out of the way cuz we knew that would be a big deal (or ordeal, in Jordan's case. Just kidding, he was a champ).

In fact, he was even a champ when I found the Nike of Samothrace and tried to fly away like her...

And then sat there for about an hour and tried to draw her....

He was even a champ after we saw about a bajillion naked, marble ladies....

So I rewarded him with a big smooch that put Cupid an Psyche to shame. So there. 

Anyway the Mona Lisa really is as small as everyone says she is, and the room really is as massive as they say as well. See her way back there? Yep, I shoved my way all the way to the front, thank you very much. And she still felt small, lol.

After about 5 hours we were pretty tuckered out, but we persevered.

This was really the only rainy day while we were there, so it was lucky we were inside most the day!

The next day we headed to Versailles, where we waited in a line to get in for like, an hour and a half...! But we chatted it up with our British line-neighbors, which was really fun. They had taken a holiday to get out of the London crazy during the royal wedding... which was taking place pretty much while took this picture! (yes, I watched the whole wedding online that night)

Jord really liked this bit of marble work

The inside of Versailles really was amazing, but we liked the gardens much better.

Pretty much the further from Versailles castle we got, the more we liked it. This is in the garden of the little summer home that Marie Antoinette used.

Next was Marie Antoinette's "Chalet" which was like her little cottage/village where she'd take her children to get away from the craziness of the palace. We were diggin her style much more...

Then we headed back and the setting sunlight really was stunning on the grounds!

Then we went back to Paris where we spent basically 3 hours getting up the Eiffel Tower. We met our awesome Chinese buddy up there, who took our picture, hung out for a bit, and is now our Facebook friend. Ha... awesome!!

It was cool up top, but I liked it better from the ground view (which was free too, the best price).

Every hour it would light up like the 4th of July, it was amazing!

On the last day... we dropped by the Arc real quick

Then the Pantheon, where we saw the grave of the Curies-- I'm obviously a fan of Marie, and Jord was excited because he studied their work in his Chem class or something...

I loved the paintings inside the Pantheon, they were really, really beautiful.

After that we went to Musee D'Orsay and saw us some Van Gogh, Money, Manet, etc. Pretty good stuff. Then we wandered around downtown Paris for awhile, which was fun until I pretty much started crying because my feet had turned into giant aching chunks of lead after walking pretty much non-stop for four days. Jord took pity and we stopped in at a really delicious pastry shop, where we picked up some goodies and then headed back to our cute place to enjoy dessert together on the balcony "petit":

Pretty much romantic, right?

So we really enjoyed Paris. We decided it was great for visiting, but we're glad we don't live there. It was BIG time city, and we're a little bit more quiet than that. More like this garden here:

Which happens to be the lovely location of our new place in Geneva! The owners' son is a landscaper, so he is always out in the yard making everything beautiful. In fact, the dad just got injured pretty badly while he was in the yard working and has been at the hospital for a few days recovering from the terrible cut he got on his thigh. He's going to be okay, and we're glad because a) of course you're glad when someone is okay and b) because we actually think he is rad. Especially Jordan, because they both can talk about climbing, running, mountaineering, hiking.... etc etc all day long. We really couldn't wish for cooler neighbors!

So that's the house, and on the left bottom you can see a little fence that marks the stairs that lead down to our basement flat. You can see them below...

The cute galley kitchen... actually not a bad size...

Fun size bathroom!

Everyone has crazy, happy tiles here :)

The ladder to our "bedroom loft" aka tiny bunk with a double bed on the floor. It's really fun :)

See what I'm talking about? But it's soooo comfortable.

A well-deserved nap.

Well, I think that's probably enough for one day. If you're not exhausted, it's a miracle. Cuz I sure am. Anyway we still need to talk about getting oriented, staying with Martine (the amazing, eccentric, wonderful neighbor that hosted us for 4 days before we could move in. I LOVE her), starting my new internship, Jordan's personal rock climbing/bouldering gym, attending the English ward, etc. etc. Stay tuned! :)