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Paris... enfin!

Before London, there was Paris (don't tell the English that, they may not like it).
We spent the first week of our vacation staying on the Boulevard de Montparnasse (below)

and seeing the sights of Paris...
Some sights... eh? Actually, the whole sex stuff was really only in Pigalle - home of Le Chat Noir and Moulin Rouge!

We were heading back to the train when we stumbled upon a neat little building called the Louvre. They had some fantastic art.
Of course, there was more to the Louvre than just soft-porn.


And we did get to see some of the local residents...
(in the Catacombs, if you couldn't guess!) :)

Alas, in the end we returned to the more phallic side of Paris with a visit to one of it's greatest erections, the eiffel tower.
To wrap it up, of course, we felt the need to repent. What better place to do that than a Cathedral, in this case it was Sacre Coure.

London... Finally!

So 12-weeks have passed since Kim arrived in the UK, 3 for Jesse, and we FINALLY managed to find a few days to check out London - only 90-miles to the south! (apologies in advance if this post lacks our usual light-hearted and humorous tone... we're trying to be properly British.)

At times London reminded us a lot of NYC - although you just don't get quite the same juxtaposition of old and new in downtown Manhattan:

New round shiny building (l), really old Tower of London (r).



Of course, we had to get all the "standards" out of the way:













Big Ben, Parliament...

The Tower Bridge (More impressive than London Bridge, which is currently residing in Arizona. Go Figure...)

Lots of pretty sparkly lights as we checked out London at Night from the London Eye on Halloween.














Tate Modern (way to recycle your old power plants!)

Random Cabby Huts.
(apparently these little sheds are rest stops for cab drivers to get a quick spot of tea between runs!).

Seeing as we were there for Halloween, we wanted to do something a little spooky, like the Jack the Ripper Walking Tour. Somehow we wound up with someone slightly tamer:


















Nevertheless, our Blue Badge tour guide, Jane, was fantastic. It was great to wander the alleyways that inspired A Christmas Carol. We're looking forward checking out more Walking Tours throughout the year!

In the end, we did get to see a few witches on this Halloween weekend (although they did have funny accents... we'll have to see them again on Broadway)!














As we continued our own walking tour, Jesse set off to find some demon barber:














Whilst Kim made friends with Paddington:


















Our morbid fascination with history culminated with a trip to Soho, where the locals eyed Kim suspiciously has she enthusiastically photographed this understated little replica of a water pump:



For all of you bio geeks out here, this pump on Broad Street (now Broadwick street) was the key player in the 1854 outbreak of cholera. Dr John Snow traced the outbreak to a public water pump on the street and disabled the pump. The end of the outbreak swiftly followed . Before this time, the disease was widely thought to be caused by air-borne miasma; Snow's findings showed it to be water-borne (www.wikipedia.org).

The site of the original pump now hosts a pub dedicated to the father of epidemiology. We stopped to rehydrate:












In the end, and free of gastrointestinal parasites, we returned to home and work :( Fortunately, we're sure we'll have many more adventures in London to share with you!