July 7-22, 2014
Overall this trip was awesome, considering all of the bumps, missteps, malfunctions and somewhat Griswald-like (starring me as Clark Griswald). By far everyone’s favorite was mountain biking in Scotland. I took 604 photos and a lot of video. At the bottom is the 5 minute video from Master D. (There’s duplicate photos but that’s because the video will not print when I print my blog at Christmas time) – I love that Sherisse said we should all have him put our lives to music. That’s the “hollywood version” of our trips. Here’s a little different view in photos I’ve narrowed down.
07/08/14 Disembarking from the plane after landing in Paris. They watched too many movies and didn’t sleep very much because they were so excited.
Middle of the day after checking into the hotel – Let me just say “jet-lag had set in” and it was a real beast to wake them up again.
After figuring out walking back and forth in the rain to the hotel that the green metro line (that would have taken us everywhere) right in front of the hotel was closed for construction, we finally made it to the main station, where I pulled my first “Clark” moment – and through bad french translation only bought two kid subway tickets – tried to get us all through with those two tickets – making multiple commuters very upset holding up the line as I’m trying to hand back the ticket, (thinking it’s a family pass, you know one pass for adults and one for the kids) but it won’t open the queue again. After getting stuck in the doors – B patiently found someone who spoke English and rectified the mistake. Not without my kids getting a very large laugh at my expense.
Notre Dame after waking them all up. TT wasn’t impressed with the “really big dark weird church”.
Finally at the eiffel tower, but we are starving and the line to go to the top was waaay too long – so we went to eat instead of going up.
Our weirdly lit outdoor seating with a view of the Eiffel tower was the first of our many delicious mugs of hot chocolate with our meal. Doable only because it was about 70 degrees
07/09/14 Day two – Our tour of Versailles with 4’10” guide Isabelle (who was a TOUGH chick taking on a few different rude tourists) Also on our tour and not pictured was two middle-eastern women from South Africa, one of which declared to B and Master D her dislike of American children that she wanted to “pop”, while me and my american children went to the bathroom (in which I cannot accurately describe the stinkiness of the ‘paid for’ stall – I threw up three times. Never in my life smelled anything THAT BAD!) and What? She wants to pop American children? She also asked us why Americans were so arrogant to call our baseball tournament the “World Series” – Did we think America was the whole world? Yes, she actually said those words. Thank heavens, Isabelle picked up on it and after lunch separated them from us for the tour of the Louvre.
The great hall of Versailles. Where we learned that King Phillip invited up to 80 people watch him get dressed and poop in the mornings every single day. It was an honor?
Outside the palace of Versailles
The Louvre (with our guide Navila – who was also really tiny – and sadly didn’t get a photo of. She told us a lot of the conspiracy theories and why exactly the “Venus de Milo” was so cool. It’s all in the curving of the hips and shoulders.
the infamous inverted pyramid – I highly recommend a private english speaking tour of these attractions. This is my 2nd time to both the Louvre and Versailles and I learned SO much!
I must always have a Coldplay reference – the french revolution artwork “Lady Liberty Leading the Revolution” by Delacroix from the cover of their Viva La Vida album.
Our last night in Paris at midnight after an absolutely delicious dinner – more subway confusion, so we took a taxi back – and B left his cell phone in it. Never to be found and extremely difficult to replace in a foreign country. Foolishly we thought the tower would still be open to go up at midnight (the Empire State building is) – so we never climbed the tower. Ah well, we did see it sparkle for five minutes – heights and views are overrated anyway.
What great photos! You all look so happy and enjoying every minute. ;D
Guess we’ll have to go to Paris someday, maybe. We only made it to south France and that was the least favorite of our three countries visited, mostly because of the attitude towards Americans. I mean, we are nice people!
Love the pictures and what a great adventure!
I love every single one of these pictures!! Looks like an amazing trip. Holy cow, Ari’s hair is so long!