A Week in Paris

Okay, this is a long time coming. Rachel's brother, Jon, came to visit for a few weeks at the end of May. A week after he came, we all took the super fast ICE train to Paris, rented a central apartment, and soaked in the Parisian life for a week. Every morning I would go out and get some delicious croissants, French pastries and a baguette for breakfast. We walked A LOT during the week....I guess that's how the French can eat such delicious food and not get fat :) The first full day we were there, we took a walk to the Montmartre district, historically home to artists and bohemians.

At the highest point in the city is the Sacré-Cœur Basilica. Quite beautiful, but unfortunately it was very overcast that day and we couldn't appreciate it gleaming in the sunshine.

We took Rick Steve's walking tour of the district, seeing many interesting things along the way, and ended up at the famed Moulin Rouge.

The next day we went to go hang around the Eiffel Tower. They've got some great playgrounds around it, and the kids always made sure we saw them. It's really fun, and a little surreal, to just hang out in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.

Rose sliding down a pole for the first time after I gave her a little tutorial on how to wrap her legs around.

Cannons lining the front of the Military museum, home of some great WWI and WWII exhibits, as well as Napoleon's tomb.

That afternoon, we took the kids to explore the wonderful Rodin museum. The outside is a large garden, dotted with his most famous works, including the above The Thinker.

On Fridays, the Louvre has late hours until 9pm. We tired the kids out during the day and put them to bed a bit early. Jon offered to stay behind while Rachel and I did a quick tour of the Louvre, just a 10 min walk from our apartment. The Louvre is HUGE, so we stuck roughly to Rick Steve's highlight tour and saw the most famous stuff (Venus de Milo, winged Victory, Mona Lisa, etc), all pretty amazing. I would love to be able to go back some day and spend more than just a couple hours running around.

The next day, Saturday, we dedicated to visiting Versailles. Here's Rachel and Rose sitting together on the 45min train ride from Paris.

Here we are after we just entered the gates to the palace grounds. Look at all that gold!

Taking a walk in the garden of Versailles, after taking the palace tour (thanks again, Rick Steves!)

After walking through the gardens and stopping for a little lunch, we walked a bit more to explore the Queen's Hamlet, a rustic retreat built for Marie Antoinette. Everything was beautiful and quaint and very picturesque, though funny to think that the queen escaped to this "peasant villlage" to try and identify more with her people. Maybe it's like some rich celebrity "roughing it" in a Motel 6 (but with your own chef and servants). Despite it's historical origins, this was my favorite part of Versailles. So much more beautiful to me than the opulent palace.

The next day we did a LOT of walking to go see the famed stained glass of Sainte Chapelle and then on to explore Luxembourg Gardens. This was probably the 3rd merry-go-round of the week for Rose and Evan.

There is a really nice playground in Luxembourg Gardens for which you actually have to pay couple euros admission (keeps out the riff raff?) It was recommended to us by a friend, so we brought a picnic lunch and tried it out. The kids (and Rachel) had a lot of fun.

Remember the canons outside of the Military museum from earlier? Well Jon and I decided to check it out on Monday. The WWI and WWII exhibits were very thorough and interesting (though with an obvious French bent), and made me want to learn more about these great wars. Above is the enormous sarcophagus of Napoleon's tomb. You'd have to go through 6 other coffins inside the red porphyry tomb before getting to Napoleon himself.

We wanted to get our money's worth from our Paris museum pass, so we revisited the Arc de Triomphe (first encounter was last Thanksgiving) and this time went up to the top to get a view of the city.

One of my goals of this Paris trip was to go to the top of the Eiffel tower with my new DSLR and tripod and take some good pics. Below are just a couple.

"Downtown" Paris on the horizon and Trocadero Square in the foreground.

Montmartre and the Sacré-Cœur Basilica.

An experimental time-lapse photo I took. Didn't get to perfect the exposure before the operator shut down the merry-go-round for the night.

My last shot of the trip as it started to rain, looking back from Trocadero Square before heading back to the apartment after midnight.

We really enjoyed our week in Paris. We were able to see and walk through a lot of history, experience many priceless works of art, marvel at some amazing architecture, eat lots of delicious food, and get a small taste of daily Parisian living. I hear you either love or hate Paris. I can say that Rachel and I love it, and look forward to another trip back.