Skipping Town

Our last day in Paris. Boo, hiss. I went out and got pastries this morning, and then Andrew went for a run. After we all got showered and dressed, we took the Metro to the Champs Elysees so we could see L'Arc du Triomphe and walk around on the Champs. I bought myself a souvenir, a classic Longchamp shoulder bag. Then we walked to the Boulevard Haussmann and just strolled for a long time, taking it all in. When we got tired, we hopped on a bus until we got to Printemps and Galleries Lafayette. Both stores have their windows decorated for Christmas already, so we looked at all the decorations before walking on, to lunch. We ate lunch at Le Boullion Chartier, one of my favorite spots, and though I haven't been there in over ten years, it did not disappoint. We ordered with abandon and drank an entire bottle of wine. To finish off the meal, L&G each ate a gigantic profiterole while Andrew and I had three kinds of cheese. It's such a bustling restaurant, with as many ord...

We tried, we really tried, to take it a bit easier today. We sort of succeeded. This morning, we went back to Notre Dame to see if we could have some more pigeon encounters, but the pigeons weren't there; a drone was flying around, scattering them (possibly intentionally, by the police?). We also tried to find the boquinista with the cat figurines, but none of them were open. So it was a slow start to the day. We took a train to the Luxembourg Gardens, and had a snack of crepes while sitting in the sun. We tried to find the playground in the park, which I'd read was wonderful, but it had been completely removed; a sign said there would be a new playground in the spring. But it was lovely to walk around the park on a beautiful fall day. No more rain, just a bit chillier than other days this week. We took a long walk around St. Germain, past Gertrude Stein's house, past lots of shops selling all kinds of foods, both enticing (pastries, breads) and alarming (a lot of unide...

A RAINY DAY. One day of rain makes me feel even more lucky for having such amazing weather all week. I went out this morning, in the rain, to pick up some pastries for our breakfast, and when we set out for the Centre Pompidou a bit later, it was still raining. Walking around with wet shoes, with wet coats and wet umbrellas, and then waiting in the rain for the museum to open, was not good. But once we got into the museum and checked all our bags and wet clothes in the coat check, it was better. We all loved the Centre Pompidou. It was a nice change from the more traditional paintings we'd seen at the Louvre and the Musee D'Orsay, and L&G were really taken with a lot of the wackier modern art. Their favorite was a broken-apart piano sculpture, and a piece made up of thousands of strands of ear buds. We made it through both floors of the main galleries, and then stopped in the bookshop, where I bought two Sophie Calle catalogs--one I'd never heard of before, and one fo...

I got up early this morning and went out to get pastries so we could have a more leisurely breakfast at home. Then--finally--we managed to ascend the towers at Notre Dame. It was worth the wait and hassle. Being up so close to the gargoyles is amazing, as is the view. The twisty stairwell was harrowingly narrow, and the staircase to the very very top was even narrower. You wouldn't want to have any kind of emergency up there, that's for sure. After we made our way back down, we bought souvenirs at a shop across the street and then got snacks--hot chocolate for Greta, crepe with Nutella for Lucia--and ate them in the courtyard across from the front of the church. The area is full of hungry, scavenging, fearless pigeons, and after watching people with birds on their hands, arms, and shoulders, the girls attempted to catch some pigeons too. Greta had a few on her hands and arms. It made her day. Both girls were even more excited when we walked past some of the boquinistas near...

Another full day. We talked a good game about taking it easy on the tourism with the kids in tow, but neither of us are very good at not trying to see things. So: another full day. The previous night, we'd gotten breakfast things at Franprix (yogurt and pastries) so we had a less-rushed morning at home. Then we headed to the Louvre. We'd gotten Paris Museum Passes to avoid the problem of the line, but we really didn't need them; there wasn't too much of a crowd. We went in through the pyramid and went right to the Mona Lisa, where we got to see it from the very front of the viewing area. L&G were underwhelmed, I have to say. We walked though the rest of the Italian painting galleries, but their focus was definitely on finding something to eat. Which took a bit of doing, since we foolishly hadn't just sat down at the first cafe we saw. But we found a concession area, and L&G had muffins, and there was a Starbucks, and YES WE GOT STARBUCKS. (Watery, sub-par St...

We all slept late. The girls slept the latest. It was a rough night. For some reason both kids get horrendous nightmares when they're overtired, and that did not change despite being in an entirely different country. Sigh. Sigh. BUT we got up and out the door at lunchtime, but we of course needed breakfast, and though it wasn't easy to find someplace still serving breakfast, we did, at a cute place called L'Annexe, across from Ste. Chapelle. After we ate, we walked to the Place Louis Lepine to see the bird market, which did not disappoint. Most exciting for Greta was a guy with a table of birds and a rabbit, free for the handling by any interested children (by "free" I mean there was a bowl for a few expected coins from the parents). Greta, of course, went right for the rabbit. It made her day. In the plaza was a guy with a giant bubble-blowing contraption made of two sticks and a long rope, and he was creating enormous bubbles that a crowd of French children ...