Paris

We woke up really early on Monday morning for our flight to Paris.  Like it's-still-really-dark-out early.  The hotel was right by the train station and we didn't want to mess with a taxi or Uber so early in the morning so we took the train to the airport.  I love European public transportation, it is so incredibly easy.

The only thing we had planned for Paris that day was to get there and get checked in to the apartment that Charlie had rented on AirB&B.  We didn't want to schedule anything and then miss it because our flight was delayed or cancelled, and that worked out pretty well since we were arriving to our third city of the trip.  The place Charlie found to stay was amazing.  It was a two bedroom apartment with a room for us and a room for the girls and a double futon in the living room for Andy.  It had two showers and one toilet room, although one of the showers was tiny (according to Andy it was too small for him), and a full kitchen with a good-sized refrigerator (for Europe) and a dish washer.  The best part was the view from the huge living room window of the top half of the Eiffel Tower.  Unfortunately I didn't really get any good pictures.  I took one of Charlie the day we arrived and then remembered I need to take more the night before we left but the next morning it was so foggy you couldn't see the top of the tower.

I don't want to give you a day by day run down of what we did because that's kind of boring, but I will say we did a lot considering we were only there for about four days and we had three kids in tow.  I also spend about two of those days by myself with the kids, which went very well but by the end I was tired.  Tired of walking, tired of the weather and tired of being in a place where English was not the first language.  Mentally and physically tired.

Don't worry, we took the kids to all the hot spots.  We did a fantastic Eiffel Tower tour and even Charlie and I learned new things about the tower and the surrounding area.  We spend a lovely afternoon on the hill of Sacre Coeur, saw Notre Dame and the Arc De Triomphe.  The kids and I went to the palace of Versailles, which they really like but by the end decided they had seen enough palaces for one vacation, and I took them to the courtyard of the Louvre to see the pyramids.  We didn't go inside because they would have been bored.  Heck, the last time I went in I was bored.  We tried to go to the Musee D'Orsay, one of my favorite museums in Paris, but it was our last day and the line was so long we wouldn't have gotten to see much.

I did sneak in a fun kid day while Charlie was at his conference and took the kids to EuroDisney, or as they like to call it Disneyland Paris.  There were a few things that were different than the park in California, like the hours and the fireworks show, but a lot of it was the same.  It was a fun day of doing something totally for the kids and not making them learn anything.

The only bummer about our time in Paris was the weather.  The first day we got there it was sunny and warm and we hoped that it would last the whole week, but we weren't that lucky.  We got a little sun on Tuesday for our Eiffel Tower tour and then it got overcast and windy for the rest of the week.  The day we went to Disneyland it was so cold I finally bought a second sweatshirt for the girls and myself to wear over the sweatshirts we brought and I bought gloves for all of the kids and myself.  That made a huge difference, but I was still cold.

So, Paris was awesome minus the weather.  The kids got to eat crepes, Andy ate an entire baguette in one sitting (minus about one inch of it), Andy mastered the Paris metro system and we spent so much money on vending machine candy you wouldn't even believe it.  I know where I get that from, my dad.  Except he hoards it and keeps it forever and the kids and I ate that stuff right up!  It was kind of bad because if I had coin Euros in my pocket, even if they were the equivalent of $1 or $2, we would drop them into the vending machines like they were dimes or nickels.  We rode all over the city on the Metro and there were vending machines at all the Metro stops so you can see where we might have spent a lot of money on all the amazing, delicious, different and new candies.

However by Friday I was done.  Worn down and cold and tired of trying to speak my horrible 25 year old French.  The fog rolled in and it started to rain and we were all just done.  I was more than ready to head to London for the last full day of our trip and then on home.