Done Worse

As is probably easy to see in many of my photos, we’ve pretty much had rain on every day of our trip. Usually not all day, but at least part of the day has been wet. It goes with the territory when you travel in spring. (It’s also why the whole family got new waterproof shoes, for which we were all thankful.)

In a delightful change of contrast, the weather forecast was for sun, so we decided another outdoor park was in order. Make hay while the sun is shining, as they say… which is appropriate, because the park, Parc de la Villette, is the former site of a giant cattle sales barn/slaughter house among other things. Additionally, it is next to an equally amazing children’s science museum, Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie. Winning!

M&G, Mike, AJ and I drove from the south side of Paris where M&G live to the north side where the park is. After getting tickets for 1½ hours later, we picnicked on a hill overlooking a fountain and cool sculptures, and then explored some of the park. Let me tell you, it’s a BIG park (the largest park in Paris), it was designed by the architect Bernard Tschumi and it has sculptures and statues and things to climb and run on all over it. To say that it’s awesome is an understatement.

The science museum was also super cool. You pick a section of activities based on your child’s age and you have 1½ hours to explore them. Close to your time you sit in a holding pen and when the sound goes off, you run in and start playing. We enjoyed the water sections, the gardening sections, the animal, machine and human body sections. Heck, we enjoyed all the sections (which surprises exactly no one given that we’re a pretty big science nerd family).

Upon completion of our time — ended by the same sound going off — we met up with Michele, Gilbert who had been joined by Yves and his boys, and we all went off to find Gilles, his partner Adèle and Nino in the park. The kids had a great time blowing and chasing bubbles and walking around the massive, massive park. No cow dung in sight!

Daily highlight gallery: https://photos.smugmug.com/Family/2014/Europe-AprilMay/Highlights-May-4

Another sight AJ really wanted to see in Paris was the Louvre. I’m not really sure why he had such an interest in it, but he really wanted to go. I was more than a little daunted by its massive size, but if he really wanted to see it that badly, I was willing to give it a go.

The museum opens at 9:30, so we decided to try to get there around then. By the time we arrived at 10, it was a madhouse. Oh the people. Again, the billions and billions of tourists. And the changes they’ve made since I was there last. Nothing was familiar and we had to wade through seas of people to figure out where things were. By the time I’d found what I thought was the correct line, there was a woman from the museum standing with a sign saying that if you were there at that point in line, you’d make it into the museum by 1:00 pm.

Um, no.

So instead I told AJ we could go to the museum gift shop — which I’d always liked. Funny thing that, it’s not there anymore. It’s now a super fancy high end shopping center with billion dollar purses… and clearly a steady supply of super wealthy tourists to buy them. We were not in that category. Fortunately, they had a (free!) really cool display of giant animals made out of garbage washed up on the sea shore and a giant evil looking panda named “Pandaora” (The artist, Gao Yu, wanted it to look like a panda/Pandora combo coming out of a purse instead of a box.) I told AJ this was “just like being in the Louvre” but without the wait. Okay, so I lied, but there was no way we were getting in the Louvre.

After looking at many fabulous and excessively unaffordable items, we decided to walk through the giant park behind the Louvre, le Jardin des Tuileries. Also free, and and also not requiring standing in a massive line. While the weather was overcast and a bit rainy, we enjoyed looking at the statues of curvy ladies (let’s hear it for the power of chocolate croissants), the fountains and the mini Arc de Triomphe (okay, actually called Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel). When we stopped for a snack (it’s pretty clear when AJ needs to eat: he gets super whiny and loses all ability to listen or reason, a winning combo really) he got a really big smile on his face and asked if anything looked different. He then held out his second tooth!

The tooth mouse is having a busy week!

We metro-ed home, rested a bit, and then went out again with Michele and her sister Genevieve. We completed some successful shopping (AJ smiled his way into getting a fancy scarf and a bracelet from Michele: that boy and his mad skillz) stopped for some juice and coffee, followed by some macaroons from the best (and most expensive, I swear) bakery in Paris. To eat our colorful and delicious snacks we went to the Jardin du Luxembourg where AJ enjoyed watching families play with boats and I enjoyed sneaking more than my half of the cookies. What?!?

The gallery of highlights is at https://photos.smugmug.com/Family/2014/Europe-AprilMay/Highlights-May-2.

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/