Living the dream and the nightmare

Ok, I will break this up into 3 posts. So last year when we went to Argentina we had some scheduling problems and the airline would only give us credit toward another trip. So we had a pretty big airline credit and we decided to take a dream trip. We set it up to fly into Paris for 2 1/2 days, go to Venice for 24 hours, and then go to Rome for 5 days.  

So I spent months researching sites to see, times available, getting tickets, arranging the hotels, and making sure we used our time to the best of our ability. 

I also planned the trip the week after spring break because I didn’t want to leave Ila alone for a whole week with no responsibilities.  

Spring break was fun.  It was pretty laid back doing some spring cleaning and last minute travel plans.  Ila had Pearl over a couple of times and they had a sleep over Friday night.  

Saturday bring Ila came up stairs and said, “we have to take Pearl home?” When I asked why she said, “Pearl was throwing up last night.” 

Of course my first thought was, I CANT GET SICK! Doesn’t it seem like when someone gets sick around you; you begin to be hyper sensitive and feel like you’re getting sick? Well Sunday, General Conference, loved it! 

As Sunday went on I started to have a stomach ache, but it was all in my head. Right? I had preemptively taken some vitamins to get my bowls moving for the trip. (One of my curses in life) Well the medicine was working too good and I really wasn’t feeling well, or so I thought.  

Our fight was delayed over an hour and a half so that ment Lovure was out of the question.  I had bought some really good passes to skip the lines and have a tour guide take us around to the best exhibits.  The tour company didn’t have any flexibility but they enjoyed keeping our money 😐

That’s ok, we move forward and put our sites on the Eiffel Tower.  It was great.  We did a tour and got to go to the very top. We were exhausted from our 10 hour red eye flight but we were here. 

Ok, so we didn’t make it much further than the Eiffel Tower because we were so tired. So we went back to the room to crash. Let me tell you about our room. Now I knew we wouldn’t be spending a lot of time in the room so it just needed to do the job. It was a perfect room for those needs.  Not a great room if you have the flu.  You could barely walk around the bed. I couldn’t put my suit case on the floor and open it because there wasn’t enough floor space. The bathroom had the necessities, but the doors were anti privacy French doors. The doors didn’t come together so there was a one inch gap between the two doors, and bathroom stall doors are taller than these doors, and the doors were glass. So everything done in the bathroom was for everyone in our tiny room to experience…and with the stomach flu, I had diarrhea. Ugh!!!😩 

Day 2 (first and only full day) we went to Sainte chapelle, the conciergerie, Notre dame, and the catacombs. 

We tried to go to the Pantheon and Basillica sainte denis. We missed both of those places because they closed before we got there because we were given bad instructions by people on public transportation 🥴

All I could think while walking through the Catacoombes was “how are we going to get this family history done?”







Day 3 last day in Paris

We went to the Paris temple.  Loved it! We had  security guard take our picture in front of the temple and I was so sick I didn’t even look to see if he got the temple in the picture, he didn’t. 



This was a super rough day. I was putting one foot in front of the other but it was more about survival.  After the temple we went to the Palace of Versailles.  

After Varsallie we headed to the airport.  We caught the plane and we were off to Venice.