En Paris!

We arrived at Paris Nord train station around 10:30am (with the time change).  Our cab driver dropped us off in front of the Tuilleries Gardens near the Louvre.  We passed by our hotel on the way so that was one less thing to try to find later.  We found a shop where we could buy our hop-on-hop-off bus tickets as well as the Paris Museum and Monument Pass.  It took some time to find the right bus stop for our tour bus, but we got to walk passed some of the Louvre buildings and took some pictures.  Once on the bus, our first stop was Notre Dame Cathedral.  This was a massive and impressive building.  It was also very busy.  I was getting grumpy because I needed some food, so we bought a baguette sandwich to share and went into the park behind the Cathedral to eat.  Isaiah ate too.  Then we took some family pictures with the Cathedral in the back ground.  This involved Keith getting up and down from the ground a lot.  Unfortunately, the ground was fine powdery sand that clung to everything it touched - so Keith might look a bit dirty in those ones.  Paris was a bit weird, in that all of it's lovely green spaces were fenced off.  No picnics to be had here.  After we ate, we took a brief tour of the inside of the church.  We didn't want to wait in line to go up the bell tower, but it would have been pretty cool to stair a gargoyle in the face.

Our next stop was the Arch of Triumph. This was commissioned by Napoleon back in the 1800's and was also massive and impressive.  The engravings and carvings were beautiful and the lookout at the top was well worth the 46 stairs (after the elevator). From here we bussed over to the Eiffel Tower.  Paris has a great deal of massive and impressive structures.  The Eiffel tower baffled me a little, because I had no idea why it was built.  The lines were huge here, and we felt like we had had a good enough view of the city from the Arch so after we had taken our pictures we went back to our hotel to check-in.  By this time we were hot and sweaty and needed a rest.  We were staying at Hotel du Louvre - which was a rather ritzy place just across from the Louvre.  It was a treat to ourselves to stay here.  They couldn't find our reservation because of a miscommunication with Eurostar (the company we booked this part of our trip through) - but after a few tense moments it was all sorted out (and we didn't have to pay again, which was a blessing). 

We took a bit of time to get freshened up and then headed out to get some McDonalds.  Some of you might think it's a shame to eat McDonalds when you're in Paris, but when you see the prices of food and know that this is only a small part of a big trip - you will likely come to the same conclusion we did.  Anyways, while we were eating it started to pour outside - but fortunately stopped just as we were walking over to the Louvre.

The beauty of travelling with children comes when you are approaching the end of a very long line, and then some man in a vest waves you over to another door where you are ushered directly in and provided with an elevator.  It really is fantastic.  The Louvre was a bit difficult to navigate since it is so huge, but we managed to find almost all of the paintings and sculptures we wished to see.  We saw the Mona Lisa (behind bullet proof glass and a crowd of people), and a few by David, we saw the headless statue in the stairwell.  This one used to be on the prow of a ship in Greece or something - she was gorgeous. 

We spend quite a bit of time wandering through the rooms, looking at the work that had gone into these paintings and sculptures.  The great thing about the Louvre, was that it was the loudest gallery I had ever been inside.  Most galleries are very quiet and hushed, but the volume of people alone, made this impossible.  It was a great relief to me however, since Isaiah absolutely loves big rooms with vaulted ceilings.  His voice echoes and he is almost never quiet when he's in one.

After the gift shops we began our most epic quest of the whole Paris trip - finding snacks.  We hadn't eaten much during the day so Keith was really looking forward to finding a drink and some chips or a chocolate bar.  It didn't help that we had a fully stocked minibar back in our room with tasty but fiercely overpriced goodies tempting us from inside.  We walked for a couple of blocks and almost everything was closed.  There was not a convenience store in sight.  Just when we had given up all hope - we came across a Superette.  Keith breathed a sigh of relief.  We had found our snacks and went back to our hotel room.  As we watched Scrubs from our king sized bed, eating our snacks, we let the luxury sink in.

The following morning we grabbed a quick breakfast at McDonalds and headed over to the Louvre to finish off our tour.  This time we focussed on the sculptures and saw the Venus de Milo and another one of Psyche and Eros.  We both loved this one.  Although made of marble, it was so delicate and simply amazing to look at.  From here, we raced back to our hotel in time for check-out.

Le Musee d'Orsay was our next stop.  It was a short walk away from the Louvre and focussed on 19^th century art.  The paintings housed here were truly impressive.  They had rooms of Monet, Renoir and Degas.  The highlight - or piece de resistance - was the Van Gogh room.  They had just brilliant works by him.  Keith took a video of it.  The gift shop was fantastic too - because they had prints of our favourites available to buy.

We hopped back on the bus to the Opera House and ate lunch at McDonalds at LaFayette.  LaFayette was a store we had no business being in.  I didn't see a dress under $1500.  McDonalds was the same though - and we ate next to some nice people from New Zealand.  Not being high-end fashion shoppers - we soon moved on from this district and began the walk to the train station.  It was a fun walk because the farther we went, the more "real" Paris seemed to get.  We started to see supermarkets and bargain shopping.  I found dresses for £20 (and bought one just outside of the train station).  When we arrived at the station, we took a quick look around for where we had to go and then did a bit more exploring outside.  We found a crepe stand and Keith had a lemon juice and sugar crepe and I had a banana and nutella one.  Yum.

The ride home was uneventful but pleasant as we talked over the journey and all that we had seen.  We arrived home after 11pm and were happy to learn that we had been given a room on the first floor and that our luggage had already been put in our room.  It was a lovely flop into bed.