Paris

Scott and McKayla are our first official Germany visitors.  No better way to show them Germany than to take them to Paris.  Ha.  Actually, we thought it would be fun for a ten year old to see something she may have heard of before.  Little did we know, we were risking everyone's lives to drive there.  It was nuts.  There was no sense of order, whatsoever.  Luckily, Josh was driving and not me, or I probably wouldn't be here to do this post.  We wouldn't have gotten as close to running out of gas if it was me driving though.  (2 miles to empty when we finally found a parking spot!)

This is the view from our apartment.  We rented from airbnb.com, which is a website where people list their dwellings for rent.  So, we stayed in a girl's apartment while she stayed somewhere else.  We had a good experience and now have a cool place to stay when we go back.  It was considerably cheaper than getting the two rooms we would have needed to accommodate all of us.  Best of all, the metro was literally outside of our window.  There was also a McDonald's and a Subway, not 100 feet away.  

 We arrived pretty late on Friday night, so we got settled, found some French fare (Subway sandwiches, anyone?) and then Scott put the kids to bed so we could go out on the town.  Here I am with the Eiffel Tower in the back.

 It is really beautiful at night.  And we were even there on the hour, so it twinkled.  It was fantastic.  It is pretty amazing to think of what went into building such a structure so many years ago.

 I picked this blurry one on purpose.  It was better than the focused ones!

 The Arc de Triomph

 In front of the Invalides museum, which Louis XIV built to house wounded soldiers.  It is now Napoleon's final resting place. (Ziggy Piggy, Ziggy Piggy...Oink oink oink!)

 Brigham was offered ten dollars if he could touch a pigeon.  He gave it a go, but was unsuccessful.

 I thought those windows were awesome!

 Checking out the cannons, which were very impressive.

 The 3 Musketeers were even there to give us a show!

 Those are our serious faces.

 And hers.  Sometimes Europe is boring for kids...

 We got this sweet new attachment for the stroller.  It allows a single stroller to be a double without the girth of our double stroller.  Our double is just too big for the small streets in Europe.

 We worked our way to the Eiffel Tower, and had a good time in the park there.

 Apparently we can't quite get a picture that is centered!

Neat place for a picnic, isn't it?

 Benson had a great time feeding and chasing the birds.

 Waiting for our boat ride.

 Sweating on our boat ride.  Do you see it dripping down his face?  It was a hot weekend.

 This is Musee d'Orsay, an art museum in a former train station.

Notre Dame from the water.

 Ben being Ben on the boat.

 After the boat ride, the kids and I walked to get some ice cream (Brigham slept through that too, poor kid!) and then waited for Josh and Scott who tried to go see the Catacombs.  Which, along with everything else in Paris, had too long of a line to wait in.  Once we were back together, we rested near this window where trains would go by.  Benny wanted to see inside the windows. Thank goodness for a tall dad!

 In front of Notre Dame, with our friends.

 Josh said these guys were doing the same street performance ten years ago when we was last in Paris.  They were pretty good rollerbladers, that's for sure.

 Briggs and Grandpa.

 Another cool old building.  (I can't remember names of places if the conditions are right.  Let alone places in France with French names, when it's really hot, everyone is hot and tired and complaining of being hot and tired, and we are walking to dinner.  Cool building though.)

 The boys, at Hard Rock, enjoying my milkshake.

 We left the kids and got to go out again to see the city that never sleeps.  Seriously - there were people everywhere and it was the middle of the night.  It was crazy.  It was nice to spend some time together seeing the Louvre, and the Opera House, which were our two destinations for the evening.

 Josh said he wants to get one of these someday, "Smaller, of course," with all of our accomplishments.

 This was a party bus that we passed a few times.

The Opera House.  Two facts that I learned: 1) it really did have an underground lake and 2) the chandelier really did fall.  

 The kids, back home after a hot and tired day.

 A view of our apartment.  Cute, right?

It was a nice trip to Paris.  I'm sure glad we got to visit and that we don't live there.