First Things First

I realized that I never really blogged about our first anniversary...so here goes.

We went to a hotel in downtown Minneapolis, and Andy had them fill it with rose petals.





That night we went to the King and I Thai just down the street and I had fried rice with Mock Duck and Andy had Pad Thai with Mock Duck and a "3" on a 4-level spicy scale. He about died. Those Thais like their food spicy! It was really good though, so he ate as much as his burning mouth would allow.

On our way back to the hotel we saw my sister & brother-in-law's last name graffitied on the bus stop

The next day (our actual anniversary) we went home and ate the top of our cake (not all at once). It still tasted great.

I forgot to mention that Andy had a dozen red roses (just like he gave me when he proposed--awww!) delivered to me at work on Friday.

That was the end of that.........BUT............. the best is yet to come! 2 weeks later we left for 2 wonderful weeks in Paris.

What follows is a grossly brief photo essay of our trip.

We rented an apartment in southern Paris. While a bit tricky to arrange and get into, it was the best decision we made about planning the trip. We got to really experience life in Paris. We had a huuuuge bathroom, bedroom, full kitchen and living room with a balcony. The bedroom had a great view of the Tour Eiffel which we loved. Our street was busy, but you couldn't hear it at all when the windows were shut. We were on the 5th floor.



Of course we saw all the famous sights:









One day we took a bike tour. We rode bikes from the train station out to Giverny where Claude Monet lived. We saw his family tomb, his house and his water & flower gardens (and a cool graffitied truck on the way out there)









That was my favorite day. Andy's favorite day(s) were when we went out to the wine country. A couple hours' worth of train rides and we were in his paradise. We took a few tours of different wineries and one day Andy tasted so many red wines that his entire mouth & teeth were stained purple. I don't have that photo, but it's pretty gross.

On our way home we had some time to kill in l'aeroport.