Paris or Bust!

OK, so Paris was NOT a bust, yahoo! We made it, in one piece, "safe and sound" as they say. I lost no children on the subway, did not run over any French people, and no one, as far as I know, got bitten by a camel! All is good. We did however, spend a ton of time in the car where the children had unlimited access to their Nintendo DS players and videos on my laptop. Brain suckers I say, none of them could spell their name when we arrived!

It took us 10 hours to make the 6.5 hour drive. Primarily due to the fact that the Autobahn was closed around Frankfurt and neither Gretta (my GPS) nor I have a 6th sense about direction and how to get around construction in a city. It took us over 2 hours to travel less than 20 miles. Imagine the response I gave when the children asked "are we there yet" and we hadn't even left town! We also had some experience with Paris traffic on the west side of our journey, which shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone, even Gretta...

We stayed in a B & B near Giverny, the town where Monet did most of his painting. The B&B was on a 10 acre farm with no other guests in it that week. Awesome for 3 little boys who have been watched over like hawks on every city street we travel on (they tell me I am over-protective about traffic...well, this may be true,but...if they would just watch where they were going!!). The boys were able to play outside without my supervision, something to remind them of home, and good for everyone I must say.

Giverny has turned into quite an artist colony since Monet put this very quaint, rustic, little 2 street village on the map. The village has many art galleries, art museums, as well as street side artists selling their wares. One gentleman had loads of sand delivered to his yard and used it to make sand sculptures. The rule was you could see the sculptures for free, but he asked for a euro or two for a photograph. The kids enjoyed the sculpture of a cool dragon and of the Last Supper. So much so, that after leaving, Daniel says to me (in a way only Daniel can), "mom, that was really cool we got to see that First Breakfast sculpture!" I am not kidding. He is funny, that boy. The boys were unimpressed with the impressionist museum claiming (too loudly I am afraid!) that the paintings all looked like blobs and asking when we were going to see some art that looked like something! Out of the mouths of babes, honestly, I thought the art looked like blobs too. I just would have never admitted it! Monet's house and gardens were fabulous. The gardens look exactly like you would imagine them to and have probably seen in every popular Monet artwork (or umbrella!).

We were wisely advised to avoid ever driving in Paris, even with trusty Gretta as our guide, so we took the train into the city. Smart choice. Paris traffic is AWFUL!!! I was going to say, "like none other" but I still have night terrors about riding in a taxi in Cairo, it may not be worse than that! We had an agenda of 3 or 4 (the 4th was going to be a bonus) sites to see in Paris. We saw 2. I know,it sounds kind of lame, but you try getting 3 distracted boys on and off subways, down streets filled with things to look at and pigeons to feed and still cover any ground. Not possible. So, I just let the boys set the pace (I say that now like I am such a calm mother, if you could have counted how many times I said, "Come ON boys, please! Hurry up! We will never get there at this rate!" You may think otherwise.)

We spent almost 3 hours at the Eiffel tower. A kind of goofy, but super popular tourist attraction. I know why; my kids loved it! It was pretty cool to be so high up and see the entire city. Fortunately for me, this attraction is one of the very few we have seen in Europe that has pretty good safety standards. There was almost no way my kids could have plummeted to their death off of the tower. I only had to worry about losing them in the giant crowd. The best part about the Eiffel tower (after the view) is the great number of pigeons in the courtyard below. The kids saved all their leftovers from lunch and fed pigeons for what seemed like hours. Connor's new claim to fame is that he caught 3 of them in his hands. Yuck! Don't they have bugs and stuff?

After getting lost for quite some time, (I should have brought Gretta) we ended up at Notre Dame. We actually made it here (by accident) for mass. Very cool. The church is truly amazing, and is worth all of the hype.

The day after Paris we visited Versailles. King Louie the 15th (I think) built this enormous structure to show off his wealth. Well done Louie, it is big and looks like it cost a lot of money. We toured the inside which was very cool, but not as cool 9at least to the boys) as the big snail we saw outside. I left the boys to look at this for about 45 minutes while I walked the gardens alone. They wanted to take it home. Boys are funny little creatures, aren't they?

Well, that about sums up our 5 day furlough to France. Jim was in Minnesota at the same time we were in France. This made the boys a little homesick for the first time. Jim brought back peanut butter and syrup so I think that helped a little. This week Jim is in Ireland for a few days and I am hanging out with Jim's brother Steve who came to visit for the week. It is really good to see him. The boys sat by the window for over an hour waiting for him to show up.

Once again dear friends, I wish you all the best!