our trip to france {part 1}

a little less than a month ago, sean and i were blessed to go on a vacation together for 9 days!  his mom stayed with the kids for the first half, my parents for the second half.

our trip was rewarded to us by hunter douglas, the window coverings company.  sean’s company onesource is a hunter douglas dealer and one of the great perks of that is these amazing trips that are rewarded!  this is only our second hunter douglas trip (a few years ago we went on a mediterranean cruise), because we share the trips between partners, managers and sales people as well.  no complaining on the wait here – 3 years in between all-expenses paid vacations is fine with me!  all that to say, i am a big hunter douglas fan!

(clockwise from top left: paris metro, grate in a cathedral in conflans, just outside van gogh’s house in auvers-sur-oise, in monet’s kitchen in giverny, in our room on our boat, at la couronne in rouen, on the beaches of normandy, at the normandy memorial and cemetery, under the arc de triomphe in paris)

this year’s trip was a seine river cruise in france!  we started in paris, then conflans, vernon, rouen, les andelys, then back to paris.  i’ll be honest with you – the only places on the trip i had heard of before were paris and vernon (where monet lived and painted his famous waterlily series).  but we love an adventure and were up for anything!  this trip was also different for us because all of the guided tours were included.  since we’re cheap, we usually opt out of guided tours because of the added expense.  and because we didn’t want to be on a hot bus for hours with a huge group of people.  but because these were free we decided to try the tours out.  i am so glad we did because some of them were the highlights of our trip!  and thankfully, our tour groups were relatively small and the few bus rides we did have to take were short (other than the couple hours to normandy).

so, our river cruise… the mediterranean cruise was the first we had been on and it was a huge ship!  our boat was much smaller this time.  despite its small size, it was really nice!  it was a pretty new boat and our room was great – best bed i’ve ever slept in!  the biggest difference about this boat compared with the ship we were on is that this boat is small.  the living spaces consisted of a small coffee lounge, a larger cocktail lounge, the dining room, and the roof deck.  on a big cruise ship there are tons of activities: casinos, pools, shopping, mini golf, rock climbing.  since this boat didn’t have any of that, it left us to do a lot of relaxing.  sean and i rarely slow down, almost never do nothing, so this was great for us.  in order for us to slow down, we literally had to be forced to!