Thursday was our first full day in Paris. We all woke up around 10:30, I went downstairs to the bakery that was almost directly below us and bought a few croissants to enjoy as breakfast with eggs and fruit. The plain ones were divine, the chocolate left us wanting the ones from Quebrada. By the time we actually got out of the house it was past noon and we headed out walking over towards the Rodin museum. On the way, we stopped at the back of Invalides. It is a museum and a hospital and retirement home for veterans all in one. Surrounded of course by lovely gardens and stone walkways. Since museums, especially military ones, are not the girls main interest or forte we just looked around a bit, snapped a few photos and continued on. We went in last time Jordi and I came to visit.

We walked around a few more blocks and into the Rodin museum. I know I just said museums are not the girls main interest, but the Rodin museum is very different as it has two parts. The outside garden is just a beautiful garden full of Rodin’s bronze sculptures, and then his old house is full of more stuff but it’s small and it was very skippable for us. The garden is a wonderful place as it is outside with lots of room to run and move with a few neat statues along the way. Celia had fallen asleep on the way over and so we sat down to lunch once we got inside the garden in the little cafe. The french make such fantastic salads, I don’t know why they taste so much better than mine. Eventually Celia woke up and we went to explore the garden some more.

The photo above is from the back of the garden looking at the mansion. The girls were sitting separately and then I asked them to move closer and for Josie to hug Celia. She tried, and half a second after I managed to snap this, they were more wrestling than hugging. But the moment got an audible ‘awwwwwwwwwww’ from the many multicultural tourists standing around behind me, who also snapped some pictures. We had an odd experience of people taking pictures of our children. Not that the girls happened to be in the shot, but people actually taking their picture on purpose. Tourists are strange.

The statue in the middle of the pond above is of a man being forced to resort to cannibalism of his dead children because of extreme hunger. We did not explain, they did not ask. Rodin was a strange guy, he was definitely looking to evoke emotion with his art. He also makes the hands and feet on his statues enormous.

I snapped some more pictures too. Lots of backlit ones with the beautiful sun.

And the obligatory family shot so that I remember that I was there too!

Look at the straight, square trees, very typical french garden! We started to play games with the statues, trying to pretend that Josie was holding their hands or getting pet on the head. It kept her interested as we looked around. Mostly Celia just wanted to do this…

Josie humored me with a lot of portrait taking in some nicely lit places.

After the garden, Josie was losing it so we walked back toward the Eiffel tower. Josie fell asleep in the stroller, being majorly jetlagged and all, while Jordi carried Celia.

Along the way for a snack we stopped for some ice cream. Jordi got a kind of lemon/lime, I got caramel. It was hot and Celia actually agreed to take a taste. And this is when she learned about ice cream. I guess everything does taste better in Paris because once she finally tried the ice cream she loved it and kept going back for more, learning to say the word ‘cream’ as well! We headed over towards the Eiffel tower for some outdoor playtime. We found a playground along the big park in front of the tower and they both enjoyed getting to play on new equipment.

We also got our first introduction to french playground etiquette. Sand toys are all brought from home, sharing is not particularly encouraged, there is nothing just laying around for public use. There are no swings. Lots of nannies in this area, some of whom smoke while attending to their small children. They did have a smaller child and a larger child area which were nicely separated and a ton of public ping pong tables.

After playtime we headed to see the eiffel tower closer up. It always impresses! Unfortunately we also learned that only one elevator was working currently and reservations must be made 2 months in advance. The lines were very long and we pretty much gave up on that idea. It also stays light out very late this time of year in Paris, and so we still did not get to see the tower twinkling as it wasn’t dark yet. But we got the girls on the two-floor carousel, a very Paris tradition that the girls loved.

After some playtime, we attempted to get closer to standard dinner times. We headed back to Rue Cler and went to an italian restaurant. No high chairs but Celia did pretty well with sitting in a regular chair, although it may have gotten some pasta sauce smooshed into some crevices. It was a great first day in Paris.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2012 at 9:47 pm by Jen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.