The Tired Tour

It seems that the more tired we become the faster we see the sights. Today we had 3 things on our Paris sights wish list: Montmartre (mommy's choice), Pompidou (Jax's choice), and a playground (you can guess who's choice that was).  Justin and I spent an hour last night mapping out our path and metro plans, this is much more complicated now that we ate staying outside the city centre.  So off we went to start the morning here:

Now how would you explain the fame of this place to your kids???  The best part of this stop was watching people pose for pictures.  There is this big vent fan on the street right outside and it is constantly blowing air out so you can get the classic Marilyn Monroe skirt blowing up pose any time, and in front of the Moulin Rouge none the less. 

I took this picture from the opposite direction and Ethan thought it was making his jacket into a cape, but you can just imagine the poses most people were striking. Sometime you should ask Jax about this spot and the girl in the pink dress, I mean only a pink dress if you get my drift.  He could not stop laughing and turning a bit pink himself. So why did we spend so long here? Not to people watch but to catch a little train that would take us up the hill to this:

The breathtaking Sacre-Coeur.  They say you have the best views of the city from here but it was pretty smoggy today so not so much.  By the time we got there Ethan asked me when we were going to "the real Paris". I apologize to any real Parisians, but apparently to a 6-year-old American boy you're only really in Paris if you can see the Eiffle Tower from where you stand.  So with a very brief trip through the artist alley at Montmarte we were headed down the hill and on to the next stop.  It is worth noting that Ethan took more interest in the art than anyone else even though he was the one rushing us to move on.  This is Ethan's M.O., complain about our plans but then have more fun when we get there than anyone else.

Next stop, lunch!  Only on vacation and in Paris does your picnic lunch look like this!

Those are actually the desserts but we all quickly abandoned our actual lunch (which was also delicious and barely more healthy) to get to these.  That was the best decision we made all day!

We ate lunch outside of the Pompidou, a modern art museum that Jax had read about and asked to visit, only from the outside of course with this little tired gang. The building is unique because all the pipes for water, electric, sewer, elevators, etc are on the outside of the building and they are color coded.  I didn't get a good picture, but I did get one with this equally colorful clown right next door.

This adventure has led to many interesting conversations as we have encountered homeless people, beggars, and most commonly street "performers" that are essentially begging through music or some other form of entertainment (like the clown).  Among the most interesting were the accordion players on the subway --smart, you can't walk away. 

See him down there on the lower level of this double decker train?  Understanding this as a child (I mean begging, but maybe the accordian too) is both confusing and quite simple, and talk about parent stumping questions!  

Anyway, as I said, we are tired and so every stop was short today, we were quickly on to our playground hunt. But mommy is a little bit smart and set us on our hunt in the Jardin des Tuileries, and to get there we had to walk through the Louvre, a bit tricky I know but admit it, you would have done it too.  

The Louvre may be my favorite thing we've seen yet, and we didn't even go inside, just imagine!  It is huge and beautiful, an incredible mix of old and modern.  Check it out:

As usual the pictures don't do it justice, even a postcard would be better, except these feature us :) and they capture the memory.  This was actually my favorite moment when we walked into the palace courtyard and could see the pyramid through the archway, it was amazing!  And look, in honor of my favorite spot I even got to be in one of the pictures, yep I really am here too! 

Also note that Cullen slept through the entire Louvre adventure, but at least we can prove that he was here too :)

So finally it was off to the gardens and long awaited playground. 

  

The kids even talked us into "souvenirs", 4 for 1euro, how long do you think these will last?

The whirlwind tour is over for today, one day of that is enough.  We only have one destination planned for our last day in Paris, but before then... Did you guess it?  Disney Paris!  

Many times when we were planning this trip the kids would say, "Can we just go to Disney World instead"?  Of course we always replied that one day they would thank us for this awesome trip.  But we are all huge Disney fans so we decided to surprise them with 2 days at Disney Paris. We just told them tonight, between that leverage and total exhaustion they were in bed quick!