July 12th fell on a Thursday back in 2012. L dropped me off at the train station after work (timing was tight - she had to run back to the office right as we were about to leave to grab some documents proving that she was single in preparation for her upcoming marriage to her German beau. #internationalmarriageproblems? - but luckily we made it with a bit of time to spare). As we zipped down the Autobahn, she told me about how nervous a bunch of the other people in the office were about her driving. Yeah...
The Thalys train takes just over three hours to reach Paris from Cologne. The bright red and pink seats were a little jarring. And because Thalys services France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, all the announcements were made four times: in English, French, German and Dutch.
It was already dark by the time we reached Paris Nord station, since it was past 10pm by this point. A few months prior to this, a few of us had been joking late one night about how it'd be pretty cool to spend Bastille Day in Paris. That toss-up plan was about to materialize - S and L were set to arrive in Paris the following day.
*Street art photo previously featured as part of this post.

A bit of background first - so I'm interning in Marketing/Communications with a B2B tech start-up this summer, and as a result, spend a fair amount of my day absorbing concepts like "ROI" or "content marketing" or "C-suite" by osmosis. The other day, I found a really cool marketing campaign that I also happen to have a personal anecdotal story about (since "storytelling" also seems to be big in B2B right now).

A few years ago, KLM - Royal Dutch Airlines had a promotion where they were sending out personalized luggage tags - free of charge, no purchase necessary, no catch. (They were really nice tags too; my dad took mine a few years ago, crossed out my information and wrote his on it in Sharpie...but I digress.) So obviously this was a sizeable financial investment on KLM's part, sending out thousands of personalized tags, printing them, shipping them, etc. And on the surface, it may seem like money poured into an abyss without an immediately tangible ROI.

I believe at the time KLM had been undertaking a re-branding endeavor and really trying to get their name out there. I remember debating whether to order a set of tags at the time, never having heard of this airline and being all suspicious about providing personal information on the internet and whatnot. But I did, as did thousands of others.

A few years after that, last summer, when it came time to book my flights to Europe, I remembered that airline that had impressed me with decent quality luggage tags (brand familiarity), and eventually went on to book 5 flight segments through them (although two of those segments were actually flown on Delta Air Lines, whom they've partnered with). Was my actual flying experience with KLM a positive one? Yes. Would I fly with them again in the future? Most definitely.

Let's step back for a moment, crunch some hypothetical numbers. Since the tags are being printed as bulk orders, let's price the cost at say, $5 per order. Add on $5 for shipping. So say these "gifts" cost the company $10 a pop. For each converted customer who ends up booking a trans-continental flight in coach, that's $1,000 to $2,000 a go. Business/First class may stretch up to $5,000. So now you've got the customer for the first go round. If you're investing this much in customer conversion, then presumably you have faith that you're offering a decent product and expecting customer loyalty. Even if only a small portion of those who were presented with the promotional gift became customers, the campaign more than pays for itself.

Then we did lots of walking around, popped into The National Gallery and looked around quickly, then headed to The British Museum.
It was kind of humbling to see all these amazing relics - so many pieces of legacies of humanity collected in one piece. Due to time constraints we weren't able to explore everything, but we did get to get out the ancient Egyptian and Greek exhibits, and some miscellaneous modern artifacts.
^ Not sure what was happening here, but look at all the police! Very differently uniformed from those in Belgium. Next we headed over to Westminster Abbey, where the Royal Wedding took place in April, 2011.
The architecture in London - in Europe in general, really - is phenomenal! So many photogenic buildings.
After wandering around some more, past New Scotland Yard and through a park, we checked out Buckingham Palace. And seeing as how we were three Canadian expats, we couldn't exactly leave without taking a photo of Canada Gate... (Awkward tourist photobombs continue)
Harrods, a quintessentially British department store, was next on the itinerary. The inside is amazing, definitely very next-level. The chocolate section was insane, the seafood area was really cool, the coffee selection was impressive, and it was just all around awesome. 
I don't actually remember what we had for dinner - probably grabbed something quick from Pret A Manger and booked it over to the Apollo Victoria Theatre for Wicked. First time seeing a West End musical (well, first time in London, period), and wow, what a first! The entire cast was phenomenal, and put on a great show. Rachel Tucker's voice, just wow.

S had to work on Friday, so I started my second day in London alone with a quick breakfast at Pret A Manger. (Those places are everywhere!) Then I headed over to King's Cross station in search of Platform 9¾ (there's a trolley half-smashed into the wall apparently), but alas, wasn't able to find it.

I didn't really have a set plan for the day, and figured I would just wander around and see what I saw. Unfortunately the weather wasn't nearly as nice as the previous day, raining off and on for the majority of the morning. I passed through Regent Square Gardens, and then Tavistock Square.
The park is filled with a number of memorials, including the likes of Virginia Woolf, Louisa Aldrich-Blake and Gandhi. (Reading Hind Swaraj and Other Writings for a class this year.) Apparently Tavistock House was Charles Dickens' last residence in London.

It's kind of amazing, the sheer amount of history at every turn in London. I went and checked out the Wellcome Collection. The displays were remarkable, ranging from a thought-provoking syringe + blood tube wall display to a library of the human genome to droppings and fleece samples from Dolly the sheep to tools from antiquity.
Some historical highlights included Charles Darwin's walking stick, Napoleon Bonaparte's toothbrush, literal chastity belts, and a fragment Jeremy Bentham's skin. ^ a little gory, but at the same time, kind of cool. Learned about Bentham's Panopticon in a critical theory class last year, and it plays a role in my current WIP.

Next up was the Grant Museum of Zoology, at UCL. The diversity of organisms is truly striking, when you really think about it. They also had a bunch of skeletons just casually chilling on the second floor banister (below).  
Did I mention it was a day filled with museums? The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology was up next (also part of UCL). L was headed to Egypt later on in the summer, but since I couldn't go, getting to see some artifacts on display was the next best thing.

Pretty hungry by this point, as it was late afternoon by now. Since I was already on campus, I went to the UCLU's (University College London Union) Print Room Café. The prices were quite decent, so I didn't think the portions would be too big, and ended up ordering the nachos and grilled halloumi. Definitely got a weird look when I went to pick up my food. It was delicious though. 
What can I say, halloumi's got me hooked. Although I haven't been able to find any back in Canada yet, unfortunately. Salad rocket/arugula is pretty big over in Europe. Went to some really big bookstore after this, but the name escapes me at the moment. Then I headed over to the National Gallery, which is home to loads of priceless paintings. Only managed to pass through a small portion of the rooms before having to leave to meet up with S. Seeing Van Gogh's Sunflowers in person was pretty cool - it's a lot smaller than expected.
We took a bunch of photos in Trafalgar Square and then headed for Indian food for dinner. (The British really love their Indian food!) It was a good thing that the food was delicious and filling, because S gave me a fairly crazy walking tour afterwards. I'm not entirely sure where all we went, but we crossed the Thames and wandered along the river bank for hours. There were street pianos and a giant purple cow stage (udderbelly... idek). The Tate Modern looks fairly cool at night, the trees all lit up and everything. Fireworks went off at one point.
Millennium Bridge looks awesome at night (below). It's awesome how from basically any point in the city you can see numerous landmarks. That really cool dome in the centre of the photo is St. Paul's Cathedral, which is a piece of really remarkable architecture.
After some timing mishaps with the bus, we finally got back to Bloomsbury. Getting to the hostel, I'd panicked a little when it seemed like I hadn't brought my plug adapter, and ended up charging my phone through a computer in the lobby for about half an hour. There was a bookshelf that functioned on the principle of take-a-book-leave-a-book, so I read for awhile. There was a copy of Catching Fire with the UK cover, but the inside inscription indicated that it had belonged to someone from Endeavour Hills in Melbourne, Australia.

It's more than a little amazing how travel brings the world together.

the travel bug has caught me 
and it won't let me go.

stuck here, running in place,
dreaming away
sleepless days and autopiloted nights.

this desire to wander,
this lust to live,
this craving for more...

just another walking cliché,
ensnared by the allure of
a beautiful demise.

Photo taken summer 2012, at the Apple Store in the Louvre, Paris, France. L, S & I were trolling and changed the desktop background on one of the MacBooks ;) 

So getting to London involved: street car - bus - plane - train - and then I was at Victoria Station, where S came and picked me up. (Originally he'd considered coming to get me from Gatwick - and holding up a sign with my name and then pretend not to recognize me on purpose - but decided that he only values our friendship at £18, so it wasn't worth the train ticket haha.)
So all summer, S has been pulling 'I told you so's all over the place. Before leaving for London, I asked if I should bring shorts to London, and he was all like, "no, it's London, we don't wear shorts here." I arrive, and of course this is the one day when it's boiling hot in London. -_-

We ended up doing a quick walk by some of the major points (Buckingham Palace, a park, the London Eye, Big Ben, etc.) and then booking it over to Piccadilly Circus so I could go buy shorts. Sticky jeans are no fun!
London is just so alive. So many people (and so well-dressed and polite too!), so much activity, so much cool stuff to see. It was actually pretty impressive how far we managed to walk in one day.
British telephone booths! (Although I've seen identical ones in Canada as well.) I don't imagine these see as much use nowadays, what with the prevalence of cell phones and what not. (Or handy, if you're German ;) I went inside one for a photo and it smelled like urine, unfortunately.
We ended up just grabbing dinner at Covent Garden as well. Alas, can't remember the name of the place we ate at. It was pretty good though! (Although I'm not a huge fan of rocket/arugula.)
Trafalgar Square! This would be a place where we would end up many times over the course of the next couple of days.
All in all, the London trip started off with a fully packed, insanely awesome first day!

Going to speed-recap the last couple of weeks in the next couple of posts, and hopefully get everything up to London (last weekend) hashed before leaving for Paris. So - third day in Belgium didn't carry the same urgency to see things, as I was still in Brussels. Somehow managed to get lost trying to find a church I'd walked by with P the night before. (In the process, had a really awkward encounter. I mean, getting hit on in Europe - except in Germany, apparently - is kind of inevitable, and sometimes it's really bizarre, but this one really took the cake for creepiness.) And the church wasn't even open.

Finally made it out to the Palace of Justice. Unfortunately a part of it was under renovation, and it wasn't open (since this was a holiday Monday). Still pretty cool though!
So Av. John F. Kennedy leads up to this ^, and I want to take a photo. There's a couple in the way, and finally they move; I get my camera out and up, ready to snap one. They look at me, holding the camera. Then they pounce in front of it and started making out. I don't even know. (Saw a lot of couples in Belgium, actually.)

Also hit up Parc de Bruxelles, Parc Léopold, chilled by the water, got lost on the way to the Parliamentarium, swung by the Palais Royal... And then it was back to Germany for me. (Crazy enough, a girl who'd been on the same train on the way there was again on the same train coming back.) Alas, didn't get to everything this time around (e.g. missed out on the Atomium), but there's always next time!
I was pretty boring the weekend after that. Stayed in town thinking I would get lots of life-admin stuff done, but it mostly just disintegrated into sleep, watching videos and doing not much of anything. Grabbed coffee with J, who's from Finland, on Sunday.
Friday afternoon we had a retreat at work. Decided by vote, we went on a boat trip down the Rhine, checked out a tiny village called Unkel (which turned out to be really tiny - we'd walked the entire main area in like ten minutes), came back, and grabbed dinner at Tuscolo. The pizza was massive - bigger than my face! So yummy. Didn't partake in the wine though, as I was setting off for the Netherlands the next morning :)