Amy's post: Overview of Paris

Lindsay, Lucy and I just returned home from a dream-come-true long weekend in Paris. How do I describe it? I feel like I just went to a restaurant where the menu is 500 pages of my favorite ingredients... I only had time and room in my stomach for one meal! I will remember that food forever and really really hope I get to go back some day and try everything else.

On Friday we woke up early and took a taxi to the airport in the rain. We walked outside to the plane 

Ryan Air offers dirt-cheap travel between European countries - tickets from Sevilla to Paris can be as low as 20 Euros!! They save money by not allowing checked baggage (and are extremely strict about suitcase size), not serving food on flights and parking out on the tarmac. It's always fun to walk up stairs onto an airplane!

Our taxi driver prepared us that we wouldn't arrive in Paris for a long time - the Beauvais Airport (not Charles DeGaulle) is 1.5 hours from the city, and he said that when he went, he had to wait 3 hours for the shuttle! I was really glad to have that info so we could adjust our expectations and not be frustrated about time stuck at the airport. As it turned out, the shuttle left right after we got there so we were pleasantly surprised! I really appreciated hearing that taxi driver's perspective of gratitude for low-cost airlines. He said "It used to be that the only people who could visit Paris or Rome were the rich. There was no way a working man could ever see those beautiful places. They have brought that opportunity to everyone!" 

Here we are on the Metro! We were meeting Alycia Clarke and her kids at the hotel that night - they were taking the train in from Amsterdam after her kids got out of school. I admit that I was nervous for that first day - a huge, new city where I didn't speak the language and didn't know my way around at all! I had butterflies as I tried to sleep the night before and as silly as it sounds, I had to coach myself through being brave, strategies for worst case scenarios, etc. I lived in Israel and Chile during college, but I realized that those experiences were run by big organizations, and any international travel thereafter has been with Erik! In our marriage he largely functions as the left hemisphere of the brain and I function as the right hemisphere (together we make a great brain! And together we are the "head" of the family) :)... but because he always handles the details like Passports, travel schedules and maps, I usually check out for that part and worry about everyone's emotional needs, communication, and enjoyment of the present moment. Anyway, this is a long way of saying that when we arrived I was quite open with my girls that I was feeling nervous but we were going to figure this out together! Growth mindset, girls - let's tackle this Metro System!! We asked lots of questions, exclaimed "How fascinating!!" when we made mistakes (like getting on the Metro going the wrong way - we immediately learned what we'd done wrong and never did it again), and "we're doing our best and learning!" when we took a long time getting somewhere because we were on a steep learning curve. I was grateful that the girls (and I) never framed it as "wasted time" on our very short trip to Paris. We could have paid for a guide-led, perfectly planned, perfectly-executed trip where no minute was lost and every bite in our mouths was perfect, but it wouldn't have allowed us to problem-solve and therefore wouldn't have been as rewarding.

After checking into the hotel we went on a walk to find a bus that would take as around the major sites and get us oriented to the city. We stopped by Notre Dame on the way.

Perusing antique books along the side of the Seine River

Taking in the beautiful, beautiful city!!!

We finally found the bus tour!! After Sevilla, Paris felt FREEZING!! So we fulfilled Lindsay's dream of shopping with her mom in Paris and bought Lindsay and Lucy some big puffy parkas (never mind that they were from Gap Kids). :)

After a long bus tour and hours of walking, we picked up a pizza and some desserts from a Patisserie, and headed back to the hotel to wait for the Clarkes. They arrived soon afte we did, and I thought the kids would never fall asleep, they were so excited!! But they were out as soon as their heads hit the pillows.

The next morning we threw on clothes and set out to climb the Eiffel Tower! See Lindsay's post for details.

After lunch at the Eiffel Tower, we went to the Musee d'Orsay, which is an Art Museum of 19th Century Masterpieces housed in the gorgeous former train station. Lindsay and Avery got Audio Guides (iPods!) and took their time relishing every work of Art.

No pictures allowed inside! I snapped this one of them before I noticed the sign. Our highlights were Degas' sculpture The Little Dancer, everything by Van Gogh but especially his famous self-portrait, and really all of the Manet and Cezanne. At the last minute before leaving the US, I had thought I wanted to take the kids to Paris, so I bought several children's books on those Artists, and it really did prepare them wonderfully! They were so excited to see the paintings and statues they had learned about, and felt like they knew the artists. Here are the titles, in case anyone wants them for their libraries:

Matisse, the King of Color

Cezanne and the Apple Boy

The Magical Garden of Claude Monet

Camille and the Sunflowers (about Van Gogh)

All by Laurence Anholt

We bought souveniers outside the museum

How do you find a sit-down Parisian restaurant with a fun, real-French atmostphere that serves hearty and kid friendly food... for two moms and six kids?? (Can you imagine if I'd brought Sophie and Stone??) We couldn't believe our luck. A private room tucked in the back, a super patient and friendly waiter, yummy food, and... hold on... purple suede armchairs? Oui, si vous plait.

Shout out to my sister Lindsay! French onion soup in Paris. Please be there with me next time, along with Courtney, Whitney, Rachel and Mom). 

After dinner I was in charge of getting us to the boat ride I had reserved online. I had printed out the ticket... but left it in the hotel room (really far away). I had a confirmation email in my phone... but it had already passed the "10% battery" warning. I thought I knew where we were supposed to meet the boat.... but the information was kind of ambiguous. We ended up walking and Metro-ing a ton of extra unnecessarily... but I was so grateful to the Clarkes, my kids, and my own brain for not making me feel bad about it. I am usually really hard on myself about things like that and I was pleased with my progress. :) We showed up for the tour in the nick of time and it was BEAUTIFUL!! 

In the morning we let the kids sleep in as late as possible but eventually had to wake them up... I had reserved a private Art docent to take us on a "Treasure Hunt through the Louvre" specifically designed for kids ages 8-12. Alycia stayed behind with Aaron (and Pete, who was flying in to Paris from Saudi Arabia!), and I took the five buddies on an adventure through the Metro to meet the guide. I took this photo by the Metro map to remember how proud I was of us for figuring out quite a tricky journey

The Louvre was INCREDIBLE. See Lucy's post for details. 

After the tour, Alycia, Pete and Aaron met us by the famous glass pyramid (remmeber the Da Vinci code? I can't wait for Lindsay to be old enough to read that! She'll love it.) and our large crew headed in the direction of Luxembourg Gardens, which we had heard was beautiful and a great place for kids to play. It was amusing and endearing (read between the lines) to watch the kids' energy levels plummet as we walked - everyone's legs hurt, everyone was starving, everyone had to go tot he bathroom. Flagrant disregard for the "No Whining in Europe" policy. :) We arrived with some very grumpy people, but the weather was lovely and the park (though you had to pay to use the equipment) was really fun!! We found food and played and rested our brains for awhile.

And then each child got to choose a very fancy French dessert at Maison Angelina, a restaurant I'd read about and really wanted to find. It was right there inside Luxembourg Gardens!

No such thing as too much chocolate

The Clarkes had to catch a train back to Amsterdam, so we squeezed in a quick visit inside the Cathedral of Notre Dame (see Lindsay's post for the photos she took)

And had dessert-after-dessert: Nutella crepes to celebrate Avery's birthday (it's actually today!) 

We started calling these three "the triplets" - they are peas in a pod

After the Clarkes left, we hopped on the Metro to visit the Arc d'Triomphe, which we had only seen from the bus (see Lindsay's post), and then completely ran out of brain and muscle for the day. As we sat there at the arc as the sun set, I said, "what about if we just head back to the hotel and rent a movie tonight?" to which the squealed and called me the best mommy ever. :) So that's what we did - we cuddled all together in my bed and watched "We Bought a Zoo."

The girls slept in late, we checked out of the hotel, and had hoped to go to Versailles... but it was closed. Our plan B was to   take the Metro to Montmartre, find a delicious bakery, wander around the atmospheric town and climb up the hill to the Sacre Couer Cathedral. We found this little bakery with signs for "best baguette 2011" and "best bakery 2012" on the windows, and even more importantly, a long line of people inside.

Everything looked so delicious!! Our breakfast was so good, we went right back inside and ordered a lunch to go! We had learned earlier that when you're in a city you don't know and you find great food, you should take it then and not risk finding more later. I will never forget the onion tarte and almond brioche I ate from that bakery. 

The Sacre Couer Cathedral was so unique and interesting, and the huge golden mosaic of Christ with his glowing golden heart spoke to our hearts as we sat inside for a minute - we have felt Jesus' love for us often during the past month.

Heading down the hill to the Metro station... a little earlier than we had expected. I marveled at something that happened inside my brain. In another life I would like to be a neuroscientist so I could understand how the following happened:

I was in fits of rapture eating my almond brioche, with Lindsay and Lucy equally ecstatic about their pain au chocolat and  quiche du jambon et fromage. We were gazing at a quaint little church near the Sacre Couer, completely present in the moment. Then suddenly a comment Erik had texted, "take a taxi from the airport so you can make it home in time to tuck in Sophie and Stone" connected like a connect-the-dots with a comment Alycia had made "wait, I thought your flight left earlier than that." I had not thought at all about those comments - I was sure our flight left at 6:45. But right under my consciousness my brain was sifting through information, uneasy about my flight though I didn't even know it! Suddenly I asked Lucy "does our flight leave at 18:45 (6:45 pm) or 16:45 (4:45)??? We couldn't remember for sure, and my itinerary wasn't in my phone's email (it was printed on a paper in a back pack being held at the front desk at the hotel) so I called Erik and after 20 minutes, got the correct information: Our flight left at 16:45!! Two hours earlier than I had planned. We hustled to the metro station, made it all the way back across the city to the hotel, picked up our luggage, traveled in a different direction all the way across the city, and popped out of the station across the street from the buses... where we saw people already boarding the bus to leave to the airport!! We made it by the skin of our teeth. Had I remembered even 30 minutes later we would have missed our flight. Thank you, brain!

Lucy wrote her blog post on the plane

Lindsay had to finish her homework. I thought friends and family would enjoy seeing her assignment and laughing at her embarrassment of having to do it in public. Try reading the Spanish - lots of those terms come from Latin and we use basically the same ones in English - I bet you can figure them out. :)

She held my jacket over her tray table like a tent so no one would see what she was doing. So embarrassed!! We laughed and laughed.

And now we're all home, back together again. I just sent Erik off to Poland, Ukraine and Serbia for a week - another learning curve for both of us! I really missed him while we were in France so I wasn't excited about being separated for the next 8 days, but this has been a dream of his for years, and he will be visiting some of his most valued and beloved Chess.com employees. So we're really excited for him! I'm hoping he'll post his experiences on the blog too. Wish me luck while he's gone!