Oh wait, there's more!

Of the famous Paris must see sights, Notre Dame is way up there. Here behind me you can see the cathedral on it's little island. We actually went and visited it a few days later, but it looked pretty from the bridge.

Aaand Arran got in on the photo action! Well, I suppose since he took the majority of the pictures he "got in on" it a lot, but still.



Although they have yet to make an appearance in our pictures, we met Ian and Kathleen in Paris and ate lots of good food with them, among other things. While walking to dinner one evening we passed this street, which I think Ian wanted a picture of. And it's pretty, so it has been included :)


Coming back from dinner we passed a little bakery that was open and in the window we saw some canelés in the window. Ian got two so I could try one. Here I am chewing:


Looking at Arran:


And I liked it! Apparently it wasn't very good quality, but I still thought it was super tasty.


So, there are still more pictures. And we're going to Prague (yay!) today, so we'll soon have pictures from another European capital for me to take a ridiculously long time to post!

More Paris in pictures!

There are certainly more fun an exciting things to see in Paris other than the Eiffel Tower. Like an Arabic restaurant named Noura!


Noura happens to be the name of my best friend (hi, Noura!) and I got pretty darn excited to see the restaurant. And made Arran take several pictures.

Now, in terms of historical sites, we went to the Arc de Triomphe, which is actually a bit complicated to get to because it's kind of on an island surrounded by streets.


It really is beautiful. While Arran wandered around and took pictures I just sat in a corner and looked around- at all of the names on the wall, the ceiling, the reliefs. Very cool.


The Arc also offers opportunities for dramatic tourist photos :)


And silly ones, too!


Of course we also walked down the Champs-Élysées, which I tried to call the Champs-de-Lysées pretty much the entire time we were in Paris. The Arc is at one end of the street, so we just wandered on over after dinner. As you can see it was prettily decorated for Christmas with blue lights in all the trees!


How perfect for a picture!


The street had tons of shops and also the movie theatre where we went to see Avatar in 3-D with French subtitles later in the week! Arran and I both enjoyed the movie and I left really wanting my own dinosaur type creature to fly around on. And on the other end was the Luxor Obelisk, a giant Egyptian obelisk with gold painted hieroglyphics, which once stood outside of the Luxor Temple in Egypt.


And nearby there was a fountain with mermaids, who look like their snuggling with fish!



Those last two pictures were for Marilee :)

So, there are still more pictures to come, worry not!

Paris!

So, as most, if not all, of you know, Arran and I went to Paris for Christmas/ New Year's. Aside from trampsing through yet another European capital (we've got two under our belts!) we got to spend time with Ian and Kathleen (Arran's brother and sister-in-law) who were spending their holidays there!

I will start this post out with one of our favorite things about Paris- the bread. This was our first baguette and certainly not our last :) While this was just one that we picked up at a local bakery, we ended up eating a lot of super tasty hand-me-down bread from Ian. He bought a good amount of bread at well-known bakeries that he just wanted to try, and we got to finish off many a high quality loaf.


While we were in Paris we went to the typical Paris places. So obviously, the Eiffel Tower! Here Arran is incredibly excited :)


Arran was most impressed by how wide the tower was at the bottom. We enjoyed walking around the base and taking large quantities of pictures, which I will mostly spare you from.

But, oh look! There's me!


And the Eiffel Tower from a little further down the river.



And:

I figure I'll go through our pictures and then do a couple Paris posts.

Christmas!

Arran and I just got back from Paris yesterday, so we've got plenty to report from our super awesome vacation. But! since we left on Christmas Day, I wasn't able to make a blog about our (first!) Christmas together.

We had some presents under the tree to unwrap and among other things, I got an apron and hat! I have decided that this will be my baking garb, which is especially appropriate because of the gingerbread man (for cooking I have an apron that my friend Hallie made for me). Arran was definitely most excited about his Lego set and we also got some card games, which we have plans to play this weekend with Stefan and Amanda.

So, for Christmas morning I made apple pancakes (with Christmas sprinkles!) that we ate with agave and then I made kiwi, apple, lichi juice. Which happened to be a bit too sour, but hey! it was green :)

Here I am in front of our Christmas nook.


Here is Arran excited to begin on his Christmas themed meal.



And to further get into the spirit, Arran drank coffee out of a holiday mug!


Soon there after we were off on a flight to Paris!

We hope everyone reading this, and who celebrates it, had a Merry Christmas, and that everyone has started off the New Year safe, happy, and healthy :D

We had a visitor!

My friend from college Joe came to Berlin for a long weekend and Arran and I got to show him Berlin! Unfortunately there were record low temperatures the past few days, so we got to see Berlin while being extremely cold. Well, I take that back. I was extremely cold. The boys seemed to be mostly just cold.

Arran and I have actually done very little sight seeing, so this was an opportunity for us to go around and see things, too.

On Friday Joe and I went to the Brandenburg Gate and Check Point Charlie. Here we are in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Fun fact, Napoleon apparently stole the statue at the top of the gate in 1806 and took it back to Paris. Obviously the Germans got it back.


And Checkpoint Charlie, which was one of the wall crossing between East and West Germany.


Oh, look! Another picture! Joe came without a hat, gloves, or scarf, so we hooked him up with some Berlin ones.



On Saturday we went to the Charlottenburg Palace, which was pretty awesome. Here is arran and me standing in front of the palace, which was originally built as a summer home in the late 1600's. Because, who doesn't need a palace as a summer home?


We took a tour and got to see a lot of original furniture and art, and then some that was just from the time period. There was one room which had over 700 pieces of China decorating the room, which was quite neat.

Aside from being awesome inside, there were also grounds outside. During the spring and summer I'm sure it's a lot more beautiful, but everything at least looked pretty with the snow. Here is Joe and me around the back of the palace.


The view looking out from the palace.


The back view of palace with Arran and I.



So, this was just a few of the pictures and things that we did. It was a great weekend and I'm glad I got to see Joe!

It's *really* starting to look like Christmas!

Technically, this isn't the first snow of the year, but it's the first snow of December!


It didn't really stick for very long, but the point was it looked nice and made it feel very holiday-like :)


So in Germany we have two friends- Amanda and Stefan. Amanda is a fellow teaching assistant who happens to be a vegan and Stefan is a German who we met through alternative means. For the past two months Amanda, Arran, and I have been doing weekly dinners. Well, weekly food marathons might be a better description. Basically we pick a theme and then made ridiculous amounts of food in the form of appetizers, main dish, and dessert to go along with it. Then we eat too much over several hours. We've done Thai, Caribbean, Arabic, breakfast for dinner, and Indian- just to name a few.

Amanda and Stefan recently met at our Thanksgiving feast (pictures will no doubt be posted eventually) and he has recently been in attendance at our dinners. This past Saturday our theme was pizza party! We had pop, made pizza, and Amanda made a super awesome salad. And then for dessert- we decorated and baked Christmas cookies!

Proof that we have friends and that we made cookies:


Arran's mom sent us a vegan gingerbread mix (complete with hazelnut flavored agave syrup- yum!!!) and I found a recipe for vegan sugar cookies, which worked out quite well. I mixed all the dough before dinner and then it was chilled and ready to be rolled out!


Then we cut them out with cookie cutters and decorated them with sprinkles, both conveniently provided by Marilee (thank you :) ), and some chocolate that Amanda brought. Arran obviously got in on the decorating as well!

So we had a nice few hours, sitting around, drinking tea and cider, decorating cookies, and then eating the cookies that we just baked. Here is one almost empty plate:


And here is a mixed plate, that also, was also empty shortly there after:


All in all, we had a great night with friends and are getting more and more into the Christmas cheer!

It's starting to look a lot like Christmas!

I present to you, Linnea and Arran's Christmas nook! Here you can see our tree, which is still alive and can be planted outside when the holidays are over. It is decorated with gingerbread ornaments courtesy of Arran's mom (thanks again, Marilee :)!) some ribbon I braided and then Arran wrapped around the tree, some smaller ornaments that were given to me, and some little things that I made. Under the tree are presents courtesy of Arran's parents (we have presents!). On the window sill you can see our advent calender- Arran let's me open the little windows every day because I get so excited to do it. And then we also have a few smaller decorations. Basically we're all ready for Christmas! We've also been listening to Christmas music and have even gone to a few Christmas markets

To further get in the holiday spirit, I plan on making cookies, complete with red and green sprinkles either today and tomorrow. :D

On a completely different note, I was going through pictures I hadn't posted and came upon these:


Can you see the little hedgehog?


So, one day back in October I was walking home from school and I saw the little guy, or gal, trying to cross the street. When they made it about half way across, a car started coming, so I ushered them to the other side so they wouldn't get hit. The next problem was that there were curbs on the street and the hedgehog was too small to crawl up onto the side walk, so I picked them up and put them on the side walk, where they scurried away. And that is my story about saving a hedgehog :)