Our tour of Europe made another stop, this time in Paris. We hopped on a train out of London, passed under the English Channel and a little over 2 hours later, we were in The City of Light. What an amazingly beautiful city it is. We spent three full days there and while that was certainly not enough time, we saw plenty in those three days. Here's the recap:
Day 1
After arriving the night before, our first destination was the Arc de Triomphe. It's fun to see such famous monuments in person after seeing pictures of them or seeing them on tv and realizing that pictures don't do them justice. Even the pictures below just don't capture how big and ornate it is. We took an elevator to the top of the Arc and were provided with some amazing views of the city. Unfortunately while we were up there, it started to rain so we had to get down before the girls got too wet. Nevertheless, we saw enough to be wowed.
Looking over Avenue des Champs-Elysees
Day 2
The highlight of Day 2 was visiting the Eiffel Tower. Olivia is a bit obsessed with the Eiffel Tower. It all started a couple years ago when my parents returned from a trip to Paris with a plastic dinner plate for Olivia that had a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. Olivia eats from this plate every night for dinner and we would point out the Tower and tell her that someday we would go there. Throughout the duration of our time in Paris, anytime she would catch a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, whether from the Arc de Triomphe or just while we were walking around, she would excitedly shout "There!" while pointing to the Tower. So cute.
We didn't make it all the way to the top of the Eiffel Tower because it was closed due to a logjam of visitors at the time we were there, but that was fine. We saw plenty from the second tier vantage point.
Olivia and Mommy doing a little dancing in front of the Tower.
We ended up doing the river cruise the evening of our second day. They have cruises up and down the river you can take all day long, but we wanted to do one in the evening to see the sights at night. However, with it being summer and with Paris sitting on the far western side of the time zone, it doesn't get dark there until pretty late. The cruise went from 9-11:00 pm. The girls were troopers about it, obviously being out way, way past their bedtime. Olivia loved being on the boat up until the very end when she was overly tired and Ashton did good too.
Notre Dame Cathedral in the background
Love, love this baby
Musee d'Orsay
Our treat for taking the late cruise: an amazing sunset.
Day 3
Our third day of sightseeing started with Notre Dame Cathedral. The Cathedral is currently celebrating 850 years. That's 850 YEARS! It's difficult for me to get my mind around how they could build something so amazing without the use of computers, electricity and other modern day conveniences that are necessities today.
From Notre Dame Cathedral, we walked to Luxemborg Gardens. Along the way, we stopped and grabbed some sandwiches, thinking it would be fun to have a picnic at the park. However, when we got to the Gardens, it was a bit windy and our grand idea for a fun picnic didn't turn out as great as we thought as we spent most of it hunched over bracing the wind and trying to prevent our food from blowing away. Oh well. We tried. At the Gardens, we found a huge playground. It was probably the biggest playground I've ever been to. It was so big you had to pay (both adults and children) in order to access it. For several hours, Olivia was in heaven. Between there being so many different things to do and her current attention span of about 10 seconds, she was running nonstop all over the place.
I don't recall hearing any other English speaking families at the playground. While our girls are too young to fully appreciate it, I'm thankful we are able to expose them to so many different people and cultures from young ages. My parent love to travel and when I was young, we took lots of family road trip vacations all over the US. As a result, I've been to 46 of the 50 states. (I haven't yet been to Alaska, Oregon, North Dakota or Minnesota.) While our girls are fortunate to be traveling globally, I hope we instill in them a love for travel, exploring new and different things and adventure. By the way, Geoff and I think it's ironic that Ashton has now been to three different countries, but has yet to be in the country for which she is a citizen of!
Anyways, next to the playground was a sweet little carousel. Olivia patiently waited her turn and then chose the giraffe to ride on.
Funny how they cut their trees into flat, boxy shapes.
After leaving the Gardens, we walked towards the Musee du Louve. As much as Geoff and I would have liked to have explored the massive Louve, seeing the famous Mona Lisa and other artwork, we knew we couldn't attempt it with the girls. It would have been a waste of our money. So instead we stopped by the entrance so that we can at least say we've sorta been there.
I'm pretty sure she's singing one of her favorite songs here - If You're Happy and You Know It
Side note: I just have to pat myself and Geoff on the back and say that we packed for the four of us (Actually, do babies count as two people when traveling??) for this trip in just two carry-on sized suitcases. I'm impressed with us! :)
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