The Pates are Great in 2008

We had a SUPER fun travel weekend, but I must wait till tomorrow to catch up on that because I have too much to say and not enough time to do it. So for this year, I leave you with this!

Wishing all of our loyal blog readers a very Happy New Year!!
We are celebrating with Flemming, Maya, Baby Helena and 12 others we don't know in Central Copenhagen.

Have fun and be safe!!!

3 Texans and a Brazilian in Denmark for Christmas

Our Christmas was so nice and relaxing. We woke up in the morning and opened all our presents our families had sent to us and our gifts to each other. We have been talking about getting new knives because ours are getting really dull. Michael surprised me with new AWESOME knives and I got him some coffee cups he really liked.

For dinner we had invited Daniel and Fran over. Daniel is one of the Texas Tech Students here studying at Denmark Technical University. Fran is also a student at DTU and is from Brazil.
Fran made us "Greek Rice" from Brazil. It is a traditional Brazillian Christmas Food. It was cool to hear about her Christmas and New Years in Brazil. It is summer down there right now and she thought it was quite strange to be celebrating Christmas in the winter. She also told us about how they hang out on the beach on New Years. Ah, that sounded nice.

Of course we would have preferred to have been in Lubbock or El Paso for Christmas, but we had a really great Christmas despite that fact.

Fran and Daniel

US!

Dinner

Frans DELICIOUS Brazilian "Greek Rice"
It contains rice, carrots, pecans, raisins, and sliced ham

Æbleskivers for dessert

It was cold and windy on Christmas Day.
This is Fran and Daniel cold before they even stepped outside

Christmas Weekend

Michael came home really early on Friday so we got the gym out of the way very early, came home, ate dinner and went on a little walk around Lyngby to take pictures of all the decorations and shop windows. It was FREEZING out, but we had fun.

Our Building decorated for Christmas
Our flat is on the far right at the very top.

The Window Display at Johannes Fog

Chocolate Shop Window

The Lyngby Hovedgade is the main street in Lyngby where all the shops are. It is an old cobblestone street and located just a block or two from our flat. We walk on this street daily, and Michael walks this at least 4 times a day! Once to get to work, then to get back, then to get to the gym, and back again! In the big intersection there is a big crown hanging. It is usually only up at the holiday time and in the summer around the time of the Lyngby Town Festival.

Lyngby Hovedgade Decorated for Christmas
This one looks better if you click on it to see it big.

Sunday night Michael and I made Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies and Sugar Cookies together.
The chocolate chips you buy here are much different than the ones in the states and I think are a bit sweeter and bigger, so while they were really good, I prefer them with the smaller less sweet Chocolate Chips. It actually created more of big pockets of Chocolate rather than small little bits of chocolate.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sugar Cookies
These turned out awesome!

As we started to make the cookies Michaels family called us on Skype from Lubbock from Nanas house. We were sitting (And by we I mean the laptop and webcam) were sitting at the counter so we had a good veiw of the table. It was so much fun and we felt like we were right there with them. The best was when we answered everyone started singing to us and Nana was in the background recording the whole thing. We talked with them for quite some time, and everyone was walking around and different people would sit and talk with us and it really felt like we were there. It was great.

In Denmark Christmas is celebrated on Christmas Eve, which is really quite funny to us. Flemming and Maja invited us over to their house to spend Christmas Eve with them and some of Mayas Family. It was a lot of fun with all the traditional food and the singing and walking around the Christmas Tree just like last year. Unfortunately, most of the pictures I took didn't turn out so well.

Dinner

Flemming and Helena

Kortest Dag

Oh thank God!!!!!!!!!!

The shortest day of the year has passed!

Now, our days will start getting longer again....even if just by a minute or two each day at first. All that matters is we made it up the hill and now we can head back down it.

The few hours of sunlight we have here at this time of the year have been hidden behind low thick clouds and foggy days, which can really take a toll on a body that's not use to it (and even on those that ARE use to it).

These two pictures are taken at close to the brightest time of the day.

Stupid Clouds

This is our 3rd dark Danish Winter and has been by far the most difficult, so I am happy to know that we made it to the worst part of the year.

I can't imagine living up any further North than we are now. Especially in places with 24 hour darkness. I'm not certain I would survive that without becoming very depressed.

Paris Randomness and Depature

Our last morning in Paris came quickly. We had enough time to get up and enjoy another yummy breakfast at the hotel before checking out and making our way back to the airport.

Breakfast Dining Area

Breakfast consisted of a basket of fresh bread and croissants, cheeses and meats for the bread, hard boiled eggs, and other odds and ends. They brought each of us the cutest little individual glass jars of coffee and each a giant coffee cup!

View from our Hotel Room

View From Hotel Room

Our way to the airport was pretty uneventful. We got to the airport got checked in and went to the SAS lounge. I think Paris is one of the worst airports if not THE worst airport I've ever seen, so getting to use the lounge was a very spacial treat. When we were flying over Denmark I happened to look out about the time I knew we were landing soon and as I was looking I could harldy believe my eyes! I saw some buildings called, "Høje Gladsaxe" which were down the street from where we lived the first time we were here. I knew Lyngby was just North of it and then all of a sudden I saw the green roof of the Lyngby Town Hall and the Christmas Tree. As fast as I could I took a few pictures. When I was flipping through them after we passed I was happy to see I actually got our flat in one of the pictures along with all of "our" other landmarks of Lyngby! To give some idea of the scale of this picture, right above the word Lynbgy there is a white C shaped building. That is where our gym is and a mere 2 minute walk from our flat.


We got back home about 2pm and unfortunately, because Michael and his group are in crunch time, he had to call into a meeting at 3pm. So he literally went right back to work. At least he was able to call into the meeting from home. He was so grateful for the one day break.


We have what we call the "Pate Picture". When we were in Tokyo Michael took the camera and pulled me close and snapped a picture of us with the Emperors Palace grounds behind us.

Since then we take that picture everywhere we go with a backdrop that we like best from that city. Somehow we ended up with two from Paris. (Actually 3 if you count the Christmas Tree Anniversary Picture)

Pate Picture with Notre Dame

Pate Picture with The Eiffel Tower

I did some comparison shots of Michael in December 2002 in Paris and Michael December 2008 in Paris! He has grown a neck and lost all his hair.





I'm sure in our lives we will make it back to Paris again, or I certainly hope so. How can a city be SOOOO beautiful??? Since we have only been in December perhaps we might go see what all the fuss is about with "Paris in the Springtime". I can only imagine it is amazing. Paris was the first international city (besides copenhagen) that Michael and I have re-visited together. I have done Moscow twice and him Tokyo. It was a nice change to really be able to enjoy the city in a different way.

So where to next???
Did somebody say Bella Roma??

Paris in Pictures

When we left Denmark both of us were a little under the weather. Michael had a sore throat and my lungs weren't liking me so much. It felt like a constant asthma, but it wasn't my asthma. None the less it didn't stop us from enjoying our 1 full day, and anniversary in Paris. We had a yummy breakfast at the hotel and like the stereotypical Americans that we are we went to the Starbucks across the street and started our day of roaming the streets of Paris.

The day was beautiful! The sun was out and shining which was a welcome change from Dreary Cloudy Lyngby. The morning we had about the same weather that we have in Copenhagen, but as the day progressed it got colder and colder and colder and then FREEZING. It was much colder than it is in Denmark currently.

The Seine

Isn't it just beautiful?

The Louvre

We sat here and drank our coffee and liked watching the sun.
We walked through the grounds of the Louve to a big park area which would eventually lead us right onto the Champs-Élysées.

We walked up Champs-Élysées to the Arch de Triumph and stopped in several shops along the way. We were going to cross under the street to the middle but once we got there, it just didn't really sound all that appealing. So we didn't, and continued our walk to the Le Tour Eiffel.

Arch de Triumph

We had to cross back over the Seine. If you look carefully in this picture you can see Sacre Coure in the background.

Finally we made it to the beautiful beautiful Le Tour Eiffel. Its size didn't strike us as impressive as the first time our eyes laid eyes on it. Yet, it was still massive and still impressive. Maybe knowing how big it is makes it less shocking? The lines to get up it were itty bitty. I couldn't believe it! And the line to climb the steps up it was non existent. We didn't go up this time, but last time the view was just incredible. So beautiful to see Paris from that angle.



We started to get a little tired and quite hungry about this point (as this was about 3 hours after we started) and opted to head back to the hotel for rest, food, and warmth. We stopped along the way to look in the windows of a real estate place and couldn't believe how expensive it is to live in Paris! We saw an ad for a 32 square meter (Sorry, I don't know what that is in feet) flat for 380,000 Euros! DANG! That is PRICEY for that little of space. Granted thats not really drastically more expensive than Copenhagen.

I had forgotten that you can see the tower from all over. So pretty.

To get back we walked along the Seine the entire way. It was a lovely walk. We admired all the bridges and buildings that line the river. We talked about who must live there and how one can afford to live in the buildings along that stretch of road.

Michaels Favorite Bridge
Pont Alexandre III

Me and Pont Alexandre III

When we travel we live off of bread. We aren't foodies so it doesn't phase us much if we do or don't eat good meals or the local food. Give us some bread and we couldn't be happier. We each got a baguette's. OOoo they were SOOOOO good.

Yes, I ate that entire thing by myself. :)

After resting a little bit and warming up we braced what had turned into freezing cold weather. If we had more days in Paris, we would have called it a day at this point, but alas, we didn't. So we bundled back up....and marched on.

We have a tradition that on our anniversary we take a picture together with a Christmas Tree. Any Christmas tree. So our first stop was to get a picture with the tree outside of Notre Dame.

From there we had no direction and we just walked. We saw this cute little skating rink set up complete with 3 igloos. This is the little kids skating area. Parents were pushing their kids around in little seats and other kids were using cute little things to help them from falling.


We walked up a bunch of smaller streets and saw this very decorated little restaurant, with the most over the top nativity scene I have seen in a long time.

We only walked about an hour before we decided it was just way too cold to be outside any longer and headed back past Notre Dame and back to the hotel again.



This is a boat that was sitting on the river. It has grass on it. We thought it was perfect for a picnic.


Since we had both been a little under the weather and then suffered cold weather all day we both weren't feeling 100% and so didn't do anything fancy for dinner as we had planned. We hopped about a block from our hotel for a quick bite to eat and a *gasp* Tex Mex Restaurant (Yes, Myra, it was Indiana Cafe, and we did talk about our margaritas and you speaking French to the waitress).

The street where the restaurant was located

The best thing came after dinner when we went to the Patisserie across the street from the hotel for some desserts to split and Nicolas wine shop where we purchased some bottles of wine to bring home and a half bottle of wine to drink with dessert.

Me with my wine and half a brownie

Brownie

Apple Tart

I hadn't seen this little symbol before. It made me laugh

After we ate we watched the Democratic debates on CNN. We felt very political I suppose because we were looking forward to watching it after seeing the Republican debate the day before. We had an awesome anniversary. It was especially nice because Michael turned off his phone so no one from TI could reach him at all. He enjoyed having a full day of no work to be bothered with because they are incredibly busy right now. We had an INCREDIBLE day in Paris. Even though we were under the weather a little bit and it was FREEZING it was still SO much fun to just BE there and be there together. :o)