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Sunday, July 24, 2011

Singing and Riding

My son is a funny kid. He has a pretty big imagination and loves dancing and singing....On July 4th weekend, we decided to get out a tricycle that his grandparents got him. He had never ridden a bike before but we figured it would be fun for him. When he got on the trike, he started singing a song from Yo Gabba Gabba (his favorite show). I am pretty sure he was pretending he was in the show... check out this video from the show and then the video I took of G that day.








The Rest of Our Paris Trip

Day 4 -This was our last day of our museum pass so we decided to go to the Army Museum and Napoleon's Tomb. The Army Museum was really for Justin; so he could get his history geek on; but I thought it was pretty interesting as well. This museum probably had the most modern exhibits I have seen in Paris so far...very interactive, English and French translations for everything, and these cool video graphics of the major battles projected onto a "terrain" from overhead. Here are some pictures.

Courtyard of the Army Museum

Napolean's Tomb 

Courtyard again

View of the city from the Army Museum gates....this is probably one of my favorite pictures from Paris.
Since this was our last day with the museum pass, we decided we would go to the Arc de Triomphe at night. So, we had dinner from a boulangerie and wine from the grocery store which was amazing. I had an amazing 4 cheese quiche from the boulangerie. It was probably the best I've ever had!

These were the least greasy Lays chips I've ever had!

Beaujolais from the grocery store. 3 eu and amazing!

The Arc!

There were TONS of stairs to get to the top. It was this day that I realized I am pretty out of shape.

Apparently, this is the thing to do as a tourist in Paris. So, we followed suit.



At the top!

La Defense

Back on the ground again.


Day 5 - Our fifth day in Paris was pretty low key. We went to Notre Dame....


...We went to the Isle St Louis and ate ice cream at Berthillon.



....then we walked around for a looooong time in search of the Luxembourg Gardens. We finally found it!





Day 6 - We took the day and went shopping at the Galleries Lafayette. I was in search of the perfect Parisian dress but didn't really find anything that suited my taste and my budget. So we bought Sam and G some tres chic Parisian kids clothes! We also ate at a McDo (McDonald's). It was VERY different.

That night, we went to dinner at a quaint little family-owned restaurant called Le Petit Troquet. Our hotel recommended it to us and it was probably the BEST food I had in Paris. The cauliflower soup was amazing!

That night, we decided to finally go to the top of the Eiffel tower. It was not nearly as scary as I anticipated!





Day 7 - We took a day trip to Normandy on the train. The train ride was really easy but once we got to Normandy, we realized that NOTHING was close to the train station. We took a cab to the D-Day museum BUT that was the only thing that was around there. once we arrived at the museum, we quickly realized that the beaches were another 45min-1 hour away! And we had no transportation but to take a cab. So, we stayed at the museum saw the exhibits. It was actually pretty interesting. After we were done, we decided to head back to the train station and get back to Paris. We should have taken a cab back but stupid us, we decided to take the bus. We couldn't figure out where our stop was so we ended up just getting off in the middle of the city and walking to the train station. Did I mention, no one in Normandy speaks English? I was able to get by with the French I know so we finally figured out which train we needed to take and got back to Paris. Needless to say, we didn't do anything that night. We went to the pub and called it a night.

Day 8/9 - The day we left, our flight was scheduled to leave Paris at 1pm. Well, we got there 3 hours early to find out they were bumping us from our flight! It took them 2 hours to figure out which flight to put us on but in the end, we were put on a flight to Philly where we had to change planes and take a 15min flight to Baltimore! We ended up getting back earlier than we had planned so that was nice. But we definitely got the run around when it came to them changing our flight. We didn't even know what time our Baltimore flight took off until we landed in Philly! Anyway, G was really excited to see us! Overall, I was glad to home but I would definitely go back to Paris and I could totally live there if I was given the opportunity!