SixFourteen Photography >> Dallas Ft. Worth Wedding Photography

Jessica and I have been EXTREMELY blessed to be able to travel a lot this past year. Vegas, Riviera Maya, Paris, Rome, Cabo, Florida… It has been a blast! But the best trip I have ever taken in my life, and one that resonates in my soul, was Paris and Rome this past December. We decided to do a non-traditional Christmas and spend it in another country. So after much deliberation, we decided on Paris, & Rome, neither of which do we even slightly understand the native language.

2 delayed flights, a “home alone”-esque run through the Amsterdam airport, one argument with a mean flight attendant (in which I earned myself a new nickname), a very large Heineken, and one more flight later we’re in Paris! We booked it a little late, so there wasn’t even an option for a ‘one stop’ flight. Worth it though! We stayed at a little hotel near the Eiffel Tower called the Tour D’ Eiffel. For the price, it was fantastic! Amazing and helpful staff, great breakfast, and perfect location! The room, as you can see below, was not big, nor was the bed comfortable or the temperature easy to control, but it’s Paris! Who cares!

I normally don’t do this, but I am going to tell the story along with the photos…

Our first night, we didn’t have a whole lot of time, so we walked over to the Eiffel Tower to check it out. Movies and photos do not do this thing justice! Jessica and I had NO IDEA how enormous it was. Unfathomable! We spent the rest of the night trying to navigate back to our hotel. Every corner has a quaint little bistro, so we quickly learned not to depend on the restaurants and businesses we pass on our way to places to lead us back, because they all look the same! Getting lost in Europe is a little scary, and a LOT of fun!

We bought a hop-on hop-off double decker bus ticket for our 3 day stay so we could see the sights without walking everywhere, or paying for taxis. It was probably the best investment we made the entire trip. There was literally a new bus at each stop every 5 minutes. Plus, every time you get on, you can plug your free headphones into a jack next to your seat for a guided tour of the city, so we learned a lot too! One of my favorite parts of Paris was the Louvre. I have always heard stories about the Louvre, but I never pictured this. If you want to see everything in this museum, you need at least a full day, but probably more. We saw so many sculptures, paintings, tapestries and other artifacts that we read about in textbooks our whole lives.  I would live in this place if I could.

Mona Lisa!

Apparently this bridge is in a Sex & The City movie?

After about a 2 hour wait, we were able to go to the top of the Notre Dame Cathedral. It was pretty much a never ending uneven spiral staircase all the way to the top, but it was so worth it! Such a spectacular view of the city.

We like to break rules!

The Musee d’Orsay did not allow photography inside, but I did happen to snag a picture of Van Gogh’s self portrait with my cell phone (included in the cell phone pics at the bottom). If you have seen the movie Hugo, you know this place well. It was the old main train station in Paris, converted into a museum in the 80′s.

Love this photo of a homeless man with his best friend.

The Basilique du Sacre Coeur was quite a hike, and a little scary, but had gorgeous views of the city since it is the highest point in Paris (besides the eiffel tower of course).

We went up to the tippy top of the eiffel tower for Christmas eve and it was breathtaking.

So we had some big plans for Christmas day. I checked the Palace of Versailles’ website to check for holiday closings, and it stated that they were only closed on Easter. So we made the trek to Versailles to find out that they forgot to mention they close on Christmas too. We were pretty bummed, but we just decided to walk around the gardens while we were there, which proved to be worth the trek! It was gorgeous.

The next day, we headed out to Rome! As you can see below, the first thing we did when we got there was hit up a little pizza joint! This is where we began to learn that Italian wait service is VERY different from American wait service. Italians take their eating very seriously, and they didn’t much like us Americans coming in and eating in a rush so we could get back out and play. However, I now understand why they take it so seriously… it is amazing. I could never live in Italy because I would be enormous!

Trevi Fountain

Pantheon

The Colosseum!!

Jessica and I got to skip the 3 hour wait to get into the Colosseum by taking a guided tour and it was worth every penny. Having been a fan of the movie Gladiator forever, my jaw was on the floor the entire time. I was like a 5 year old.

Gladiator schmadiator… I could take em!

This bird was posing for everyone’s pictures.

We went to see the Pope’s service our last day in Rome. This is where he speaks.

That little white blur is the pope!

It was hard to get pictures in the Vatican Museum because it was incredibly crowded, but this tapestry was worth the 10 minutes it took to wait for an opening in the crowd.

By far, the most breathtaking part of our trip was the Sistine Chapel. I grew up seeing photos of this place and picturing it in my mind, but I was blown away by the real thing. The detail in the painting and the size of the chapel is incredible. I really wasn’t supposed to take these photos, but I snuck a couple in!

I got caught taking this one. Everyone and their mom had their cell phones out taking photos and video, but I guess since I am 6’3″ I stand out a little more. On our way out the door, a guard grabbed my arm and said “No peechurs! No peechurs!”  Seriously dude? I didn’t come all the way out to the Vatican to stare at the Sistine Chapel. I gotsta get my peechurs! And I did!

One more fun little story. One thing I have ALWAYS wanted to do is rent a Vespa in Italy. I used to be a scooter junkie, but I had never owned or ridden an actual Vespa.   So, against the recommendation of our hotel staff and my beautiful wife, I did it! I cannot even begin to express the amount of joy I had when we pulled off the lot on a white Vespa, headed to see the Colosseum. It was indescribable! We rented it for a whole day, and it had to be back by 9pm. Well around 6pm, we decided to go hit up the main shopping area in Rome, so I got to where I thought we would be close, found an alleyway with a bunch of scooters, and parked there. We walked for a few minutes before I realized we were not where we needed to be, so we headed back to the scooter…however, we could not remember how to get back to the scooter. So we spent the next 2 hours walking all over the back alleys looking for where we had parked. Then we remembered that on the way to our parking spot I told Jessica to pull out her cell phone and video our little trek through the back alleys because it looked so cool. We were able to make our way back to the point where the video started, and from there we watched the video and followed our steps all the way back to where we had parked. Then we got on the scooter to head back to the rental shop…and we got lost again. When we finally figured out where we were, it was about 8:45. I’m still not sure how we managed to pull it off (besides the fact that we drove illegally in a bus lane for a few minutes), but we got it back to the store at 8:58!

Here are some pics I got with my cell phone, since it wasn’t always super convenient to grab my big camera out of the bag.

This was the trip of a lifetime, and I cannot wait to go back to both of these spots!