Recap: Paris, Day 2: Relaxation (Oct 12, 2008)

We got up relatively late on Sunday, our second day, as we thought that we were just going to sit and enjoy ourselves for the day - we had planned out the week pretty well and nothing seemed to fit on the Sunday. That lasted until about 10:00 and then we started to get a little antsy. So, we took off on the regional train back to Paris. (The condo we stayed in was in Torcy which is about 30 min from central Paris). We thought we would check out the Palace of Versailles, which happens to be on the other (west) side of Paris. This was Jodi's place that she wanted to check out the most. We made it to one of the central Paris stations (Champs de Mars), and then took a wrong train for a couple of stops and had to backtrack. On the way back, we got our first look at the Eiffel tower which was just amazing. When we made it back to Champs de Mars, we started getting confused with the train schedules - it was no wonder we had taken the wrong train. We stopped a fellow getting off of one that was coming from the direction we wanted to go and he told us that on Sundays, the train didn't go through to the palace, and we had to go back a few stations and catch one that went to the other side of the palace, and then transfer, and then catch another one followed by the metro... We just looked at him and nodded and smiled, but I was like that dog that hears, "blah, blah, Jeff, blah blah train" and we all figured forget that, lets do something else. One of the other stops that didn't fit in the itinerary or was for later in the week was the catacombs - a bunch of tunnels under Paris where millions of Parisians are buried after cemeteries became a health problem in the 1800s - and we decided to make our way there. The trip was a little tricky and we had to switch trains once, but we made it to the right stop. The problem with switching trains is that most of the stations we frequented didn't have escalators or elevators (or we couldn't find them), so each time we changed trains we had to do about 30 stairs with the kids in the blasted stroller up and down. Not too shabby to do once, but ten times in two hours was almost enough to pull my hair out. Anyway, we knew the catacombs were roughly located close to the train stop, but we had to flounder around for a bit:

When we made it to the entrance, we found out that it closed at 4, and all of our messing around with the trains took way too much time - it was 4:10. We gave up on seeing any other major attractions that day and decided to explore the area on foot for a bit. We picked up a couple of cartons of blueberries that the kids devoured and my parents got some coffee and we sort of just stood around with glazed-over eyes for a while.

We eventually got antsy again, and went back to the Eiffel tower:It was incredible. We decided with the kids we were going to take the elevator up instead of hiking the stairs. We got out on the second floor, and the view was great. Here's Jodi's panoramic video (sorry about the jerkiness, some pushy tourist was bringin' up the rear kinda fast):

In true Eiffel tower fashion, we sat down to a fancy meal right on the deck of the tower. Actually, we got some eighteen inch "American-style" hotdogs that were drenched in dijon mustard. Ack, I can't stand dijon. Erika and Reese sure got their fill though. By the way, so far as we can tell, when you ask for something with mustard, the mustard is always of the dijon variety. Same with the ketchup. Not dijon, not normal ketchup, but ketchup laced with curry. We tend to opt out of ketchup now. Back to the tower:

This is one of my favorite videos of Erika (notice hand gestures), showing the effects of a box of smarties:

Our timing turned out to be really good as we saw the tower and the view in the daylight and at night:

I even convinced Jodi to ride the final elevator to the top. The whole top floor is very crowded and fenced in on the very top level. Jodi was on the edge of tears/vomiting in this picture:

Reese was definitely enthralled too:

We happened to be visiting too during some kind of festival or celebration or something, and I still don't know what it was. The tower was all lit up blue at night and once a night or so had a bunch of sparkley lights on it:

It was so impressive at the time, but the movie above sure looks lame now, sorry about that. After a lot of messing around on the trains and stuff being closed/inaccessible, Sunday turned out to be a really great day. We were pretty tired - the kids even moreso - on the way back to the condo. Erika decided on a little pink purse (that broke within a day or two, and took on a beautiful shade of Paris grime/brown) as a souvenir that she is displaying on the regional train:

We were exhausted by the time we got to the condo. I also decided to eat a pound of chocolate which didn't help the digestive system. So ends our first full day in Paris.

Jeff and Jodi