Snowy days in yet another language...

After New Year's Day, I still had over a week of vacation, so Ruben and I had planned a vacation away, since he could take some days off work as well. So on Tuesday the 6th, we caught a flight down to Madrid from Santander, and spent a few hours wandering the streets. We weren't sure what was going on here, but there were all these soldiers standing around, with some folks watching them....we stayed to watch for a bit but they didn't do anything exciting. =P

Later that afternoon, we caught another flight and arrived around 6pm that night in the land of lights, cheese, croissants, crepes........Paris, of course! :) We stayed in the area near this famous neon landmark:

The famous lights of the Moulin Rouge

We had found a studio for rent and decided that it was a good option rather than a hotel or hostel for the 5 days we were in town. It was in Montmartre, but tucked in a little side street, away from the noise and traffic and hubbub of the big city. The area was quaint, picturesque and with great atmosphere, so we were very happy with the location!

The little passage that led to our apartment (entrance in photo below)--so cute and quiet!

Of course during our holiday, we had to sample all the culinary offerings of France, which included the following..........

Mmmmmm!! A fresh croissant each morning is a wonderful breakfast!

French crepes experience--a 3 course extravaganza!!

First fondue attempts--all the cheese you could ever dream of

Plus of course many different cheeses, baguettes fresh daily from the multitude of bakeries, and good menus with hot French onion soup (perfect for the weather) and yummy, filling main courses.

Between eating and drinking, we braved the cold snowy streets to check out the sights:

The famous Notre Dame

Inside the tall ceilings of the Notre Dame

Night along the Seine

Climbed the many steps up reenact Amelie at Sacre Coeur :)

My attempt at artistic renditions of the Eiffel tower:

View of the city from the 1st floor of the tower...not the best with the bars but the rest of the tower was too frozen and dangerous to access!

Looking down from the tower

The city landmark is brightly illuminated at night

The Pantheon--here lies Victor Hugo

And of course, we took time to aimlessly wander the streets to soak up the atmosphere, and discover more about everyday life in Paris.....

Look, some Parisienne knows about Canada!!!!!!!

Poetic multilingual art

An old man navigates his way slowly along a snowy Parisienne street

After a few days of freezing my toes off, we headed back south via Madrid again. The excess eating and low temperatures got to me, and I got ill on Saturday night. So it was a time to rest and recover from the holiday, rather than check out a Madrileno weekend. On Sunday morning, we got up and had a typical Spanish breakfast of chocolate with churros (despite my still-weak stomach thinking it wasn't such a great idea...), and then flew back to Santander. Seems like not even northern Spain was exempt from the snowy cold weather:

Snowy mountains of Cantabria welcome us back to Spain...