Recap: Paris, Day 6: Rest and date night

Thursday started out pretty slow as we were beginning to tire from the constant whirlwind tour. Mom and Jodi decided to take off to a local mall to do some shopping, so me and Dad and the kids went for a walk around the condo:The condo was on a nice little lake and had a decent amount of paths and stuff around it. Erika enjoyed the ducks and we made a date to return to the lake to feed them. When the ladies got back, me and Jodi decided to head into the city for a little date night in Paris. We started at the Parthenon. Jodi was starving by the time we got to the city so she was chomping on some cheese bread for most of the beginning pictures. Here she is posing with it:

The basement houses a crypt where many French notables are buried, including Voltaire and Rousseau, and of course some noble prize winning physicists (Curies):

I really liked the Parthenon, it was an incredibly neat building and so grand that the pictures we took don't do it justice at all. One of the main attractions is Foucault's pendulum, which demonstrates the spinning of the earth. Pretty cool, I think. But I suppose it is just a metal ball on the end of a really long string.

After the Parthenon, Jodi posed outside of the Notre Dame:

Then, of course, we had to make our way to the Moulin Rouge. Oh my, we were in for a real-life nightmare. It looked relatively easy enough from the transit maps to get there, and it turns out it wasn't too hard to find... After taking the metro to a station close to our original arrival point in Paris, we started to walk the remainder of the four or five blocks (or so we thought) to get to our destination. Two blocks into our walk, the only stores that lined the streets were wedding dress shops and junk/thrift stores. We just shrugged it off and continued on our way as things began to get seedier and seedier. By block five, we sincerely thought our lives were in danger. We stood out like sore thumbs as tourists, and the locals were all staring at us, and were congregating in clumps in the middle of roads and alleyways. Imagine all the stereotypes about the ghetto/hood that you can think of, and we were in it. We debated turning around, but we were so far into the thick of it, we figured we could get out easier if we kept going. I honestly thought we might end up rolled up in a rug somewhere. Talk about dumb tourists at the wrong place, and to top it off, it was about dusk too. After sweating bullets and rushing down a couple more blocks, the worst seemed to be behind us. Still no sight of the Moulin Rouge. I tried asking a few people, but no one really seemed to care, except a fellow asking us from the back of his van if we wanted to by some speakers. Just kidding about the speakers part. We kept walking and finally made it to Pigale, the area where the Moulin Rouge is. We quickly snapped some pictures and made our exit back on the nearest metro. Jodi looks pretty white-knuckled in these:

We picked a little restaurant by the river to grab a bite to eat and end off the night. The food was completely nasty but the view was great (Notre Dame over Jodi's shoulder and the Eiffel over mine):

Grrr, I sure look like I am having a good time. After our snack, we went back to the condo, and got another, albeit smaller, scare from the local ghetto the condo seemed to be in. Oh well, we sure slept good that night.

Jeff and Jodi

Recap: Paris, Day 5: Palace of Versailles

Wednesday... should have stayed at the condo. Everyone needed a break or an attitude adjustment. Oh boy. It was raining on our walk to the train station, and pretty much stayed like that the whole day. The train was pretty crowded again when we switched at a downtown station, which allowed for a brief sighting of the legendary King Kong, our guardian angel... The way out of the train was blocked again for me and Reese. The main obstacle was an incredibly oversized suitcase; it seemed like two or three large suitcases put together, and had a general canvas-type appeal, like maybe something used in the armed forces. Anyway, it just so happened to be cutting down our angle to get out substantially, and I had no luck ramming it with the stroller wheel to try and get around. Of course, the monstrosity's owner was sipping a latte about ten rows away and jabbering on to his compatriot, with no inkling that his car-sized suitcase could possibly be problematic to those departing the train. Once again, my frustration subsided as I returned to acceptance of missing the train stop, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large creature lifting up the massive parcel and bringing it careening into the floor of the train repeatedly - up and smash! up and smash! In no time at all, the 'suitcase' was reduced to a pile of rubble so compact that we had no problem leaving the train. Outside, I noticed my dad seemed a little sweaty and red-faced, which may have given away the identity of our 'mysterious' King Kong, but we were all content with the outcome. (Except of course, Mr. Latte, who was left with an unrecognizable suitcase). To put the Paris metro into perspective, here are a couple of pictures of the smooth setup we figured out for the maze of escalators in the stations. I still can't believe how huge the underground part of the Paris transit system was.Notice the exhausted look on my Dad's face. Hmm... could it be?

The palace was huge. Not overly quaint, or medieval, or picturesque, but really huge. The chapel at the start of the tour was the highlight for me, and we got a cute picture of Reese. (The one with the proper lighting to see the chapel got ousted for the cute Reesey picture, sorry). This, as it turns out, was the beginning of the end for Reese, and happened to be the only smile of the day (captured on film or otherwise). We couldn't take the stroller into the palace, and it was also nappy-time, so I pretty much stormed through the castle with a crying baby. At one point, it seemed like we had calmed the situation when Reese rode on my shoulders for a while, only to be informed by a 'palace guard' that a baby can only be held on the front of you in your arms. Seriously. The moment he came down, the crying started up again.

This is a pretty bad, unfocused picture, but one of the better ones we got as we ran through (of the dining/entertaining room that looked out over the gardens):

Ok, so picture this. You are in a pretty historic castle, and there are all kinds of old paintings and vases and the like scattered about the rooms. The rooms are also adorned with beautiful tapestries and linens for the monarchy's kings and queens of the day. Complementing the scenery are copious amounts of glass chandeliers embellishing the ceilings. And then you walk through one of the doors and see a huge piece of flourescent green/sparkly metal, in the shape of a balloon dog. No word of a lie. There was some crazy exhibit at the palace by Jeff Koons, notoriously known for infringing and tacky modern 'balloon' art. It drastically took away from the experience. Me and Reese made a quick egress to the gardens, while the ladies and my Dad checked out the Queen's side of the palace, including Marie Antoinette's apartment complete with the secret door she and her family used to flee for their lives. Jodi said it was pretty crazy to be there and see that stuff. After a bit, they joined us, and Erika enjoyed dancing in the gardens. I think in the summer the gardens would be fabulous. They were very grand and very big, but hard to enjoy in the present state of mind (cold/Reese).

The dancing was spontaneously beautiful and flowing, but when Jodi asked her to perform on cue, all we got was the 'clumping horse' dance. Cute though...

Here's a look at the palace from the back where the gardens are. The picture only shows half, but we weren't really in the photography frame of mind at this point.

We debated renting a golf cart to cruise around the gardens, but passed, realizing we still had a substantial train ride ahead of us. The two hour ride one way may have also contributed to the memories of the day. I suppose we are glad to say that we have been there, but I don't think I would recommend it in particular to anyone (especially with small children) when there are so many other attractions nearby that we enjoyed more. Overall, we felt that this palace was just huge/grand/over-done, with countless empty rooms with nothing on the walls but nameless portraits, as compared to the castles in Füssen, which felt lived in. Oh well, can't win them all. It's kind of funny that we are making a comparison at all. There is no way a year ago this time I would have thought to have been saying any of this. Anyway, Jodi just told me that she would go again, specifically in the summer for the gardens. Ah, how we view the past through a rose-coloured lens.

Jeff and Jodi

Recap: Paris, Day 4: Bus Tour 2, Conciergerie, Arc de Triomphe

On Tuesday we decided to keep going with riding the double decker bus tour to get to some of the places. I think you buy one day and then the second one is free. The first place we wanted to get to was the Conciergerie, which is now the justice building. It was used in the 1800s to keep the high profile prisoners that were to be executed, including Marie Antoinette. It has some neat old writings of Robspierre and stuff like that. Some of the higher-ups during the revolution (12 of them) killed themselves here too. It's attached to the new justice building and a really cool gothic church that we never got to from the 1200s called St. Chappelle. It was really interesting in there; here's the opening 'foyer':Jodi and Erika are checking out one of the mock prison cells, complete with a very 'lifelike' mannequin. He could use a little more blush. After that, Erika couldn't stop asking questions about why that guy was stuck in that little room, and other questions in general. To this day, the dummies still throw her off a bit. It's amazing how many historical places like to throw in the lifelike dummy for effect. Even pre-recorded voices are not uncommon.

Erika decided to pose in one of the 'cute' courtyards. It was actually used as the women's courtyard where they bathed and ate and washed clothes everyday before they were sent to the guillotine.

Although we didn't get a chance to go inside, we took a couple of pictures of the outside of St. Chappelle:

Right across the street is the Notre Dame cathedral, so we strolled on over and ate lunch at a cute place right beside it. It was also unreasonably pricey. I suppose that is what you get for sitting 20 feet from Notre Dame.

Here's a nice random from the bus showing Notre Dame in the background. I told Jodi to put her hand up because I thought it would give perspective. Of what, I am still not sure. Nice hand though.

And guess where we ended up. This square hunk of stone was probably the biggest surprise we had the entire trip to Paris. It's really big. And amazingly interesting what with the very detailed sculpting and all the various wars and victories inscribed on the rock. You can take some stairs to the top and look out too, but we opted out, considering we got a pretty good view of the city from the Eiffel. It's also surrounded by one of the busiest traffic circles in Paris, and is at the end of Champs d'Elysee - supposedly a swanky shopping district which has been heavily overrun recently with McDonald's and company. We ended up staying at the Arc de Triomphe a lot longer than we thought we would, and I am sure glad we took time for it.

Jodi is posing by the grave of the Unknown Soldier, which has one of those eternal flames:

We shopped for a few hours on Champs d'Elysee, and then got back on the bus just to have another nice ride and view of the Eiffel tower (and try to contain the kids). Another random on the bus of my Dad. I don't know what the building behind is.

Apparently, I am not the only one with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Jodi spent the previous half hour arguing with herself about needing to get off the bus, "I need to get off at the next stop..", and then the bus would stop and it would be, "No, I'm ok." I am not sure where she thought she was going to make it to, as the condo was at least an hour train ride away. At any rate, it finally caught up to her around the Louvre, and so we played on one of the bridges that looked over to the Ile de la Cite where Notre Dame/Conciergerie/St. Chappelle is, and was the place where the first settlement was in Paris (circa 2nd/3rd century). There's Pont Neuf:

Once again, we ate French (at a Greek place). The fellow couldn't leave Reese alone, almost to the point of madness. Time for the hour train ride back to the condo. The day turned out to be a really good one, even though we packed lots of stuff in it. The bus tour of the city was a great decision on my Dad's part and we ended up seeing a lot more of the city than if we would have stuck to the metro. You can actually see more of the city above ground. Who knew? The metro is definitely a vastly huge world of its own...

Jeff and Jodi

Recap: Paris, Day 3: Bus tour, Louvre, Notre Dame (October 13, 2008)

Yesterday my parents saw a double decker bus cruising around central Paris, so my dad suggested we try it out. We figured we could catch up with it at the Eiffel tower, so that was the plan. The Paris train system sure is clogged sometimes - very crowded. So, we had to make a change at one of the central stations, and it just so happens that there were a huge amount of people in the train, and it seemed the majority of them were standing directly in front of me and the stroller with Reesey in it. I couldn't get out of the train door. Jodi and my mom and dad and Erika were already past the threshold and safe on the other side, and I had resigned to missing that particular stop and taking the next one and coming back. The doors were just starting to close, when all of the sudden, the Red Sea was parted, as my dad tossed the matchstick Parisians aside like a raging bull and repeated the phrase - of course in English, "We need to get off here, we need to get off here!!" He managed to clear a beautiful path for us and we were swept onto the platform. I will never forget how one second, me and Reese were off by ourselves to the next station, and the next, all the people blocking us disappeared. Good thing too, I was glad to not have to try and find them later, as we never made any sort of contigency plan for getting split up (until then). Off to the Eiffel tower:

We had about 20 minutes to fool around by the tower, and then we got onto the bus:

We toured past the Champs de Mars park, and Hotel Invalides, and some other neat square thing with a solitary, tall statue - Place de Concorde. I am pretty sure this is where Marie Antoinette (and many others) were beheaded. Then, about 45 minutes later we arrived at the Louvre. The bus tour was unreal, and I would definitely do it again. There are so many of the buses running, you can get off at any of the stops and come back out after a few hours and catch the next one. Here's Erika outside one of the entrances to the Louvre:

The outside of the Louvre was the highlight of Paris for Reese. In the central courtyard, there is a big fountain and right beside that, a big pyramid - which is supposed to be the biggest glass pyramid in the world or something. The pyramid is actually the entrance to the Louvre.

Inside the Louvre was very overwhelming. After entering, there is a big open area (like 5 football fields) where you can get food (which we did) and some stores and stuff. Everyone's food was good, but my pizza turned out to be soaked in some kind of wet. I could have rolled it up into a burrito. It would honestly take days to see all the stuff in the Louvre, so we made our plan for our 2-3 hour tour, minding the kids temperaments, of course. The highlights we picked were Napolean's apartment and the Mona Lisa, and saw what we could on the way (some crown jewels, Picasso). I also wanted to get to the really old Egyptian stuff if we had time, and Jodi wanted to see the medieval basement - the part of the Louvre that is still intact from some hundreds of years ago when it was used for a castle, which turned out to be quite neat. All in all, it was incredible. We took a picture in some random mirror:

This picture does not do justice to Napolean's actual apartment; it was so overwhelmingly beautiful:

Of course we have to include a picture of the Mona Lisa. It was really cool to see something that you have heard about forever. We couldn't get close enough to draw a mustache on her face, as the whole triangle in front of it was cordoned off. Understandably so, with all the crazy tourists around. The whole wing that included Picasso and the Mona Lisa was full of students/bums sitting and staring at the walls. A few guitars and tamborines and hawkers would not have been out of place. Here's a picture of Jodes and Erika when we first saw it. Jodi's a little choked about not getting closer to the painting, and we were both (ignorantly) surprised at how small it actually is:
After the Mona Lisa, we figured we had some time to get to the ancient Egyptian stuff. Seen one sphinx, seen 'em all. Talk about ignorant, I know. Once Jodi figured out how old the stuff actually was, she burned through our 1 GB memory card in no time. Ok, that might be a little much, but I think she took around 50 random pictures of all kinds of stuff like this "blue miniature mummy":

To be honest though, I enjoyed the ancient Egypt part. It started to drag a little when we got lost and it took us an hour to get to the exit. You can't just go to the nearest door and leave, you have to get back to the glass pyramid. It is an incredibly huge place. At some point, there was some kind of alarm and we had to semi-evacuate, which was a complete gong show. Nobody knew where to go and whether or not the alarm was serious. Anyway, after Jodi and Mom hit the stores we were off on the next bus to Notre Dame cathedral. On our way, we caught a glimpse of Pont Neuf, most famous for its appearance in the Bourne Identity (tee hee). Here's the front of the cathedral:

That's me in the middle dressed up as a woman. After a short inside tour, and a quick evacuation of Reese due to non-conformance with noise regulations, we played around outside for a bit, and got pictures (not shown, see Christmas card) of Point Zero. The cathedral was very nice, and completely different architecturally from German münsters.

Reese enjoyed the inside so much, he rattled the fences trying to get back in, but we had to stick to the noise quarantine:
Staying true to opting for French cuisine, we hit an Italian restaurant on our way back to the condo.

Jodi and Jeff

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

Recap: Paris, Day 1: Train (Oct 11, 2008)

So, here it finally is. My parents came over for a visit in early October, and they treated us to an unbelievable week trip to Paris. The cost for a van was a little more than we expected (~600 euros), so we decided to hop on a couple of trains and do the Paris metro when we got there. Good thing too, apparently there are about 60 euros in tolls each way, and parking in Paris is supposed to be a nightmare. In hindsight, there is no way it would have been as good with a car. Anyway, the German ICE went from Freiburg to Strasbourg, and then we took the TGV the rest of the way to Paris. The TGV was crazy, we were cruising at speeds of around 250-300 km/h. The trip went pretty well, considering the kiddies had to sit on the train for 4.5 hours.

I am actually faking it in the picture above. Sure, I know, no one is going to believe that. This next little clip was on the ICE at the start of the trip, so things are still going smooth before Reese freaked out on the TGV:

Well, after lots of coloring and cruising the aisles and visiting with Grandma and Grandpa, we made it to Gare du Nord in Paris:

We figured we didn't really have to take care of our luggage in Paris, right? (Look behind Jodi). The kids sure wore us out on the train, so we were quite tired and banished them to the stroller. We had to catch a couple of connections on the Metro/regional trains to get to the condo, so we wandered around a bit. As soon as we got our bearings, we found a 'shortcut' to the regional station, which took us up 3 flights of stairs (no elevator, no escalator, whiney kids, whiney parents carrying the stroller) into some strange neighborhood. We finally found 'magenta' station or something and went down 3 flights of stairs to train level. We learned later that the two stations are actually joined, I think. Well, we made one more connection about half an hour away, and then got off at our stop (the stop that I thought was the closest). We ended up dragging our stuff around 2 km along the streets to our condo. The condo was really hard to find, and it turned out being a hotel and was a completely different name than what our place was supposed to be. It was great to get to the rooms and throw everything on the ground, even if we found some towels and rags scrunched in the bowels and recesses of closets and cupboards. After thoroughly making our room messy, we set out to find a restaurant nearby, and I picked a good old-fashioned French restaurant, El Dorado. (Mexican. Umm Burritos. Heck, umm, doritos):We all look a little spaced out/zombied - Jodi is falling asleep, I am cutting the wild boar, and Erika looks like a space alien. The burritos were good though. After that, we retired to the condo (about half a kilometer away) and we started to feel a little unsure of our surroundings - more on that later. We watched some French tennis recap, and then German darts or bowling or something else like that, and then off to bed. All in all, not a bad start.

Jeff and Jodi