Always Learning

Well, it’s been a while.

Life has gotten busy. I have gotten busy. And yet everything is kind of the same around here.

Trev and I are now running a thriving photography & videography business – Trevor & Elisebeth. It’s keeping us constantly working, which is a great thing for me.

This past year as a teacher, I realized a lot about myself.

I learned I thrive on feedback.

I learned I need to be busy, but not overwhelmed.

I learned that caring for children takes more energy than they train you for in college.

I learned that traveling is equally exhausting as refreshing, but very needed.

Most importantly, I learned that it’s okay to be hard on yourself as long as you can also be positive. My struggle this year was staying in a negative space. And that’s what is going to change this next school year…as I have a more difficult set of students and way more weddings during the school year.

Here’s to positivity. (and maybe more consistent blogging.)

A Summer Like No Other

Summer 2017 has been breathtaking, stunning, memorable, and so many other things.

I wish I could put all of it into words, but I really don’t think I can. I mean, how do you explain everything you’ve experienced when you visited so many places and when you’ve created so many memories with your best friend.

I thought the summer that Trevor and I got married would be the best summer of my life. Don’t get me wrong, that summer had so many amazing things going for it, but this one tops it. We worked through struggle and this summer was a celebration of conquering hard things in our life together. Despite all of the ick going on early in our marriage, we got to feel some of the most amazing feelings in the world this summer. We felt a heck of a lot of love. We felt a pulse for adventure and a spirit of exploring. We pushed ourselves out of our comfort zones and found something even more miraculous. We focused on our marriage in ways we didn’t know was possible.

While I don’t think many future events will top this summer’s adventures, I can’t wait to see what is ahead and how I’ll be proved wrong in this way.

(Psst… Hoping to write about Portland soon-ish, but we’ll see…)

XO Elisebeth

Europe 2017: Paris Day 3

Hey, y’all – sorry for the little (okay, kind of long) hiatus from sharing about our traveling this summer! I just got back from a wonderful lake up north and am feeling rejuvenating and wanting to share about our final (full) day in Europe earlier this summer.

Day 3 in Paris, we were hoping to hit up some items on our itinerary that were not on my list of things I had already done in Paris. I was pretty excited for all that we had planned.

We had left our luggage with the concierge at our hotel as we were transferring from our fancy hotel to an AirBnB for our final night before heading out for breakfast!

Number One on the list after breakfast: the Paris Catacombs.

I had heard lines there could be over 2 hours at this time of summer, but little did I know what we were getting ourselves in for… Through rain and shine, hunger and bladder needs, we stood in line for OVER 7 HOURS. Yes, you read that right. We stood in line for not just 2 hours, but 7 total hours (actually I think it was about 8, but I’m having a hard time recalling the specifics). It was a day of grueling boredom. On the plus side, we got to go through the simply intriguing catacombs. We paid the extra few euros for the audioguide, which I highly recommend at the catacombs or you’ll miss a lot of interesting and important information about the history of the catacombs and Paris. I definitely recommend visiting the catacombs, but either buy tickets ahead of time (which is difficult because the site to buy the tickets through doesn’t translate well on Safari or Chrome) or be prepared to stand in line for a long, long time if you go during peak season. Here are some of the photos that we took during our time in the catacombs as well as while in line!

It was hardcore downpouring during part of our time in line – thank goodness for our umbrella we packed!

 

This was how close we were to the entrance (just inside that green building) when we were told we may not make it inside by the time it closed.

 

The experience within the catacombs was such a unique experience and is in many ways indescribable. How do you put into words what it’s like to be around so many bones of humans? Those were people! They had stories! Like, wow.

After we finally finished up at the catacombs, we took the metro to Notre Dame to meet up with our friend, Maria! So glad she snagged this photo for us!

We then headed to eat some delicious dinner and enjoyed a final dinner in Paris! We also got some amazing gelato with a macaron in it!

After a late, late night, we grabbed our luggage and headed to the AirBnB and hit our pillows soooo quickly.

The next day, we headed home. We had a rather dramatic departure from Paris as some technological pieces of ours were left in our AirBnB. Big, long story, trust me – I’ve saved you an hour of your life by not sharing.

We arrived home from our trip and were glad to be back. Honestly, it was very easily one of the best trips of my life. For sure, it was better than my first trip to Europe, but I think a huge chunk of that was because I got to go with Trevor and we got to do everything together. I cannot wait for all of our future adventures and I am really hoping we someday get to go back to Europe!

I’m hoping to get up a post about Portland SOON!

XO Elisebeth

 

Europe 2017: Paris Day 2

Paris, France is a city I hope everyone gets to experience. Day 2 I had a bit planned, but also had enough flexibility that we knew we could go off track of plan, too.

Our day started off fantastically, waking up in a ginormous bed in a luxury hotel was amazing. We went out and found some breakfast (which may have more likely been considered brunch at that point). We ended up back in the Tuileries Gardens for some morning crepes and enjoyed those with a beautiful view of the Louvre. The picture below doesn’t even compare to the actual beauty of the Gardens.

After my delicious Nutella crepe, we headed over to the Louvre. We went through the entrance underground and saved major time by doing that instead of using the main entrance by the Pyramids. I definitely recommend this strategy if you’re visiting! Trevor also enjoyed getting to see another Apple Store (how cool, I know).

Inside the Louvre we enjoyed so much phenomenal art. It’s honestly so overwhelming. Some rooms feel like every square inch is covered in amazing art. I also love the architecture of the museum!

While we easily could have spent the entire day in the Louvre, we decided it’d be a better decision to keep on schedule. After the Louvre, we went to Notre Dame. As you’ve probably noticed in previous posts, I super love cathedrals. Going to Notre Dame was high on my list because of my last visit there.

The line outside was crazy long, so we ate some macarons in line. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted the only picture of the only macarons we ate on the entire trip, so *insert imaginary image of delicious coffee and vanilla macarons here*.

Another wonderful part of Notre Dame, you’re allowed to take pictures inside!

Once we enjoyed Notre Dame, we headed over to Shakespeare & Company. We were going to go inside and experience the beauty of books but the line was crazy long to go inside. We walked around the Latin Quarter a bit after and then headed to Arc de Triomphe!

Arc de Triomphe was a bit underwhelming and quickly turned into both of us being hangry. Unfortunately timed, we didn’t find any food for quite a while and ended up going back to the hotel to find something that would be open before “normal dinner hours”. We went and got some delicious sandwiches and brought them back to the hotel to eat in the comfort of our hotel room with Netflix.

Well, our European travels were coming to a quick close at this point and we were really beginning to feel tired from all of the travel. We called it an early night for our last night in our really nice Parisian hotel before switching over to an AirBnB.

Thanks for checking back in for these wonderful adventures!
XO Elisebeth

Europe 2017: Paris Day 1

We’re finally on to the next city! It probably seems like we were in London forever, but I honestly could have stayed even longer!

LEAVING LONDON / PARIS DAY 1

We decided to take the Eurostar to Paris rather than take a plane as we were pretty sick of flying at this point. I could not have possibly foreseen how much of a good decision this was. On the Eurostar, you stay with your luggage the whole time so you don’t have to worry about your luggage getting knocked around or anything. We bought tickets that were slightly more expensive but included a meal without having to go to a snack cart.

We also got pretty nice seats with a lot of leg room and table space, which is where I edited a lot of the Amsterdam photos! All in all, the Eurostar was where I looked at some of these beautiful photos.

When we arrived in Paris, we realized we had no idea how we were getting from the train station to our hotel. We also had very limited data and all the signs there were, obviously, in French. Nonetheless, we made it to our hotel and the area was simply beautiful. We knew we were staying in a richer area of town because we had used free nights from a credit card to stay there. For real, this was the major money saver point of the trip. We stayed at the Park Hyatt – Paris Vendôme. It’s a 10 minute (or less) walk from the Louvre and even less from Tuileries Garden where we spent a lot of time.

After checking into the most luxurious place we’ll ever spend time at, we decided to walk around the area and begin finding some food. We walked around for awhile and ended up finding a cute place in the Tuileries Gardens to eat crepes.

Following such delicious food, we walked around our “neighborhood” which was when we realized just how close we were actually located to the Louvre! We were there in no time. Although we didn’t go in on Day One of Paris, we did take a few pictures outside!

We had a lot of time between when I had bought tickets for the Eiffel Tower and our time outside of the Louvre. So we decided we’d walk to the Eiffel Tower instead of transit. What better way to see the City of Love?! It was a bit of a walk and I was feeling it by the time we finally arrived but was it ever worth it! The pictures on the walk there are wonderful and the pictures of the Tower upon arrival were as well!

Since we arrived in the area of the Eiffel Tower about 3 hours earlier than our ticket allowed us to go up, we decided to just sit and enjoy being there. We found a nice spot in the Gardens of Trocadero to people watch. We were offered wine, champagne, and beer and a million souvenirs by all of the people who try to sell them illegally in the gardens. It was just simply a great time to sit and relax and of course, prop up our iPhones and take cute pictures.

As the evening progressed, we walked to the other side of the Eiffel Tower to Champ de Mars and watched the sky begin to turn colors as the sunset. Talk about a romantic experience!

Our ticket to go to the top was bought for 10:30 pm because that was the earliest time available online which helped save us a lot of time in line. We bought only to go to the second floor, which was different from my first time there. 2013 trip to Paris, I went to the top during the day versus 2017 trip to Paris, I went to the second floor at night! I loved being able to experience the same thing in such a different way! Here are some of our pictures from the second floor and our time on the Eiffel Tower!

Watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle from the Eiffel Tower was a little odd, and I think I preferred that viewing experience from farther away.

After we completed our time at the Eiffel Tower, we waited for a bus to catch back to our hotel. This took wayyy longer than we anticipated, but when we did get back we enjoyed the comfort of our beautiful hotel after stopping at a convenience store for some snacks and OJ.

Day One in Paris was as amazing as the city itself! I can’t wait to keep sharing about Paris  (and eventually even tell you about our trip to Portland, too).

Keep on comin’ back for more travel reads!
XO Elisebeth