Fancy That…Fancy This – Guest Post

Hi friends,

Just want to pop in the good ole blog to say hello. Chris and I are having a great time in the Philippines. We are on Day #13 of our honeymoon, sadly it is our last week of travel. We are currently on our 4th and last island.

Today, we walked the 4km of white sand beach and explored the road beaches less traveled.

We’ve eaten some very interesting and exotic dishes on our trip. We ate wild fern  the other night. It was very tasty, tasted like collard greens.

We also had seaweed, that tasted like ocean water once you started chewing it and the little salty bubbles popped in your mouth. It was very interesting.

Well, we are off to dinner soon. I’ll catch up with you later.

Enjoy today’s guest post from Ameena and her take on Paris.

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When Lea asked if I would do a guest post related to travel, I was thrilled because I love to travel! And since I just came back from Paris last month I figured I’d share a bit about why Paris is one of my favorite places in the world.

The Eiffel in the daytime…

The truth is that I didn’t get the appeal of Paris the first time I visited in 2000. It was hot. The food was…unique. Everything was expensive. People were extremely rude. And on top of all that I somehow got food poisoning and was SO sick. I was really upset that my honeymoon was such a disaster and I told my husband I would never, ever go back.

The Notre Dame…

Fast forward 8 years later…my husband asked if we could visit Paris again and since he rarely asks me for anything I agreed. This time I went armed with patience, a case of Cipro, a refined palate, and zero expectations. Everything was still expensive and people were still rude but I warmed up to the baguettes and the Nutella crepes and, of course, the macaroons.

The Eiffel at night…

2009 rolled around and thanks to an outbreak of H1N1 our trip to Buenos Aires was cancelled less than 48 hours before our flight. So we hopped on the only other direct flight available – a flight to Paris.

This time it felt like I was home. We grabbed baguettes and headed to the Parc de Luxembourg. We had overpriced coffee and macaroons at the Laduree. We laughed at the rude salespeople as we shopped on the Champs-Elysees. And as we left Paris for Amsterdam, the next leg of our trip, I told my husband we needed to plan another trip to Paris sooner rather than later.

Random shot of me, taken by my husband. Please forgive the self-indulgent nature of this picture…I had no choice but to post it because my hair was actually behaving for a change…

My most recent visit to Paris was in April of this year and this time we brought our daughter Maya with us. Aside from her eating too much cheese and chocolate, aside from her throwing up at every opportunity, and aside from her grabbing my Laduree macaroons with her germy fingers, we had a fantastic time. And we were all sad to have to come home.

The truth is that no matter how expensive the city is, no matter how rude the people can be, and no matter how much vomit you may have to clean up along the way, Paris is truly one of the most beautiful places in the world. I hope that you too get a chance to visit and see it for yourself!

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You can check out Ameena’s funny and witty blog Fancy That… Fancy This –>  here!