Yurrup

That's right.  I went to Europe with my favorite people in the whole wide world.


We landed in Paris at 7am last Monday.  And we toured churches and gawked at pretty Parisian things in the city for HOURS - in an effort to adjust to their time zone.  This meant we packed in SO much in the first day.  It also meant that I fell asleep on a bench next to a homeless guy in broad daylight while we waited to get into St. Chapelle.

Notre Dame.  How amazing is this?

I have been an art history student and die hard fan since...since before I had my driver's license.  So it was pretty exciting when I got to run through the Louvre with these two goobers:

Pictured:  Goobers.

And when I say "run through the Louvre," I really mean it - that place is so huge and so full of people that seeing the art world's Greatest Hits was kind of an athletic experience.  Because the Louvre is a beautiful place - but it is also the world capital of bad parenting.  Normally I LOVE little kiddos but when they're screaming down the big marble halls, or trying to crawl up my legs while I look at a painting...not so much.


The scene outside the Louvre is almost as good as the stuff inside.  It is the favorite spot for a "pique nique" - and there were musicians and photo shoots going on, and these cops/French military/safety patrol who walk around with machine guns.  Nobody thinks much of the French military...until you see them walking around with Uzi's and berets.  So all they have to do is go for a nice little stroll in one of the prettiest capitals of the world, and they scare everybody.  Well played, France, well played.


When we left Paris, we drove through the Loire Valley.  It's full of castles and wine.

Not pictured:  Wine, because we drank it all.

This is not to be confused with the Mac Daddy of all castles, Versailles, which we visited a few days before. Did anyone else know that Marie Antoinette had perfumed sheep at her little play house where she would pretend to be a peasant?  Isn't that just insane?  Let's ask a sheep:

We stayed in some medieval cities (not kidding).  You know who loves medieval cities?  This girl.  And also, cats.  They were everywhere.  One of them hopped up behind me in a chair at a restaurant without me even noticing.  A woman at the table next to us tried to tell me, but there was a language barrier, so she decided to act it out.  Homegirl started hissing at me and clawing at the air between us.  Keep in mind that I still didn't know the cat was there...so I got kinda scared of this lady but then my mom pointed to the cat and I was like OHHHH okay I get it now.

And now, for the French and Spanish coastline....

  It's kind of really perfect.  In fact, the only thing that isn't super charming about France is socialism that all the food is wheat-based.  Wheat-based = I can't eat it.  So when we got to Spain...which is all about rice...I ate so much paella.  And it was SO good.

We hit up the Dali museum, which was also his house, which is also where he's buried.  It has a really fantastic art collection.  But it's hard to imagine someone living there - nothing says home like a bathtub stuck to the ceiling?  Sculptures made out of pink goo?  TV screens made to look like a face, but you can only see it if you look through a lens on top of a big camel statue?  You do you, Dali.

Next was Barcelona, which is all about vacationers and this gorgeous church

...and about FCB Soccer.  Going to the stadium is also kind of a religious experience.  

They take you through the press box and the locker room and the chapel (yes, they have one), and then out by the field.  

And then...23 hours in Madrid.  I don't have many pictures from there, but just imagine some combination of the Prado, 25,000 protesting miners, outdoor markets, and my brother finding every single Burger King on the Iberian Peninsula.  Oh, and wanna know what you can buy in the Madrid airport?  You can buy a pig leg and they give you a tennis racket case to put it in.  We didn't (thankfully) but it was one of those moments where you see a hoof sticking out of a tennis racket case and think, "THIS IS A THING THAT EXISTS."

So, that was Bito Fam Grad Trip 2012!  I am jet lagged and really, really happy.  And I can't wait to go back to Europe someday!