May 1st is a big holiday in France. It is union day/workers’ day, and everything is closed. To be honest, I’d never heard of it, despite the fact that Michele kept telling me everyone around the world has the day off. She was not convinced by my commenting that not everyone has it off — for example, we don’t in the U.S.
It does make being a tourist a tad more challenging when you’re visiting on a day when nothing is open. And it’s raining.
In the end, we decided to drive to Sacre Coeur, because the churches are always open and, bonus, are sheltered from the rain. The downside of our plan was that every other tourist in Paris had the same idea. Oh, the crowds. Paris has limited parking on a good day. But on a day when everything is closed, and it’s raining?
We parked a healthy distance away from the church and walked up many, many flights of stairs. We saw the main church through the throngs of tourists and decided to see the smaller, “better” church (according to M&G) that’s further from the front entrance and less mobbed. We admired the stained glass windows and the beautiful architecture. AJ was curious about all the lit candles and wanted to light one too. We discussed why you light them, and decided who to light them for. He picked his Great Grandma Pearl (who died two years ago) and I picked all of my grandparents. After a surprisingly difficult time lighting the candle, AJ carefully added it to the rest (I did NOT want to add “accidentally burning down a church” to our list of activities on the trip.)
From there we went down many, many flights of stairs (is anyone else sensing a theme?) and had a delicious lunch at a restaurant with one very over-worked server; the clear downside of picking the short straw on the day everyone else has off. Even AJ who has disliked most of the (crazy delicious) food we’ve eaten on the trip liked the home-made spinach and cheese ravioli and the molten chocolate cake in Crème Anglaise.
Next we drove to an incredibly mobbed Notre Dame. After another walk from a healthy distance, we crossed one of the bridges covered in “locks of love” and even got to see a young couple getting wedding photos taken. The view of Notre Dame from the bridge is truly beautiful: AJ was far more interested in looking at all the different types of locks, seeing which locks were locked to which other locks, and hearing what happened when you pulled on them and let them go. We all experience culture in our own way.
We don’t have many pigeons near our house in Minneapolis. Greece and Paris are filled with them. Running at them full speed and screaming is a really awesome game when you’re five. In the gardens next to Notre Dame was a woman who was feeding the pigeons. The two approaches to bird interactions did not go well together, so the woman gave AJ some waffle to offer to the birds. Following her technique, he got a few of the smaller birds to land on his outstretched arm. Way cooler than the church for him.
From the church we went to a park and met up with Yves and his 3 boys, Hadrienne (13), Clement (9) and Thibault (4 3/4) at a big park. By this point AJ had reached his mid-afternoon meltdown time (between about 2 and 5 pm he’s at his worst: exhausted and hungry, but refusing to eat) and ran away from everyone and hid behind shrubs. Once again I got to hear a small child with an accent shout the equivalent of “Jackson, come back here!” as he zoomed away. Fortunately, after a strong talking to and me using a vice-like grip on his arm, I managed to get him to eat something, and he calmed down enough to say (after bursting out sobbing) that he really missed his daddy, but he thought eating some dessert would help him feel better.
Right. Turns out he was right: pumping him full of a brownie sundae did put him in a better mood. In fact, it put all the kids in a better mood. Who knew??
Here is a link to the May 1 gallery: https://photos.smugmug.com/Family/2014/Europe-AprilMay/Europe-Highlights-May-1/
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