11.22.17

Remember, you said I could buy new clothes, Daddy.

The family was allowed to sleep in today.  No tours, no activities, no plan.  I was awoken by a body slam from my 72 pound child, followed by a flying elbow from my 60 pound child.  

This is just how Macho Man Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan get in bed. No alarm clock needed.

The process for getting ready is basically harass your child with requests to put on pants/shirt/undies/sweater over and over again like this: pants pants pants pants put on your pants pants pants yes you have to put on pants pants put them on on now put on pants.

Once that all happened, we’d burned something like an hour and half.  Little did we know that this day with nothing planned would take us to a mileage milestone: 9 miles walked.  

Then the great breakfast debate.  Same place or new place?  Lots of good points were made, but we decided on Eric Kayser.  A semi-chain here in Paris, but on the list for the best baguettes in the city, and we knew they had coffee, the nectar of the gods.  

To the bottom of the Latin Quarter we went, soon hit with a brutal gust of wind after turning down a street perpendicular to the boulevard.  H1 began shivering and we decided we’d have to head back to the hotel to get her some more layers.  There begins the added mileage for the day.  

Eric Kayser was lovely.  From the stern faced ladies at the counter helping me practice my French and eyeballing me as I kept ordering more food, to the actual food, the best croissant we’ve had and definitely the biggest, tastiest quiche I’ve had the honor to eat.  The girls nommed on pain au chocolate almond and slurped down OJs while H1 managed to look like she had just been in a savage fight with a wild pastry, covered head to toe in crumbs.  

She lost a tooth in Paris!  

Have you met my lord and savior, BREAD?

Like a true model as she has been calling herself, she reclines to eat brushes her moody hair over her eye and then proceeds to sort of make the food get all over her without managing to get much in her mouth.  

Marching back to the hotel, we passed a patisserie making all kinds of crazy meringues.  We decided on this lil’ guys rolled in various flavors: caramel, coffee, pistachio, white chocolate, milk chocolate, cherry.  We watched as they put them all together, from filing the piping bag to piping out huge escargots of meringue, to rolling them in the toppings.  I was definitely fascinated, the girls just liked the bees coming in to taste the sugar on the sweet bread.  

We stopped at this super French store, GAP, and picked up new gloves for the girls because the ones I ordered are too big.  H2 came out of there with a non-itchy neck warmer too.  I should have known not to try and pick out clothing or accessories.  Rookie mistake.  

The meringues demanded to be scarfed and I’m not sure what I got to try because H1 and H2 put them on our little table and ate them like the were in a pie eating contest - no hands, head to the table.  H1 loved them and S said it’s because it’s like eating air.  Perfect for H1.

Out onto the street, it was playground time at the Luxembourg, but first…

ICE CREAM #1.  

The young woman at the counter made the girls order in French and after some prodding, they both managed to get framboise and vanille cones.  I felt very special because she said my framboise was spot on while S’s was eh.  Normally, my accents are muy gringo so it’s still one win to 300000000 losses.

Pumped on street crepes. 

There was a line for the zip line today, causing the girls to hesitate, but the pull of zip was too much and soon they were flying around the track again.  The girls helped other kids pull the lines up and over the steps and didn’t crush any little French boys today.  

At the end of their play time, they were climbing down from this rope pyramid, and H1 was dangling not able to find a purchase for her feet.  H2 reached over and pushed her legs over to reach a step and H1 started to snarl (literally), but then H2 said in a sweet voice I saved your life, HannAh!  Even H1 had to let go of her anger at that.

Our only hoped for stop today was the Orangerie to see Monet’s giant water lilies, so it was off to find a metro stop.  Unfortunately, the store the girls like was on the way.  

H2 has been wearing the same cardigan for the entire trip that she snagged on her first day in Paris.  She’d be wearing the pants too, but because she goes commando, we told her those had to be swapped.  As she saw the store, she told me remember, you said I could buy new clothes, Daddy.  And with that, my wallet was swiped from my hand and I was left in the dust, fit only to stand and look awkward and large in a tiny French store.  

Trouble brews.

She headed into that store on a mission, and the shop manager was so excited to see her in her sweater.  The girls browsed and tried on as my arms grew fuller of coats and gloves and hats and mufflers.  

Eventually, decisions were made, and two little girls emerged in new sweaters - a cat on H1’s and a pair of cat’s eye glasses on H2’s.  They were so pumped they refused to wear their jackets so they could show off their new sweaters.  

I was desperate for lunch and verging on desperate to eat something not traditionally French.

So we went for falafel.  

In the Marais, A’us du Falafel stands as a testament to the greatness of falafel and schwarma and everything deliciously situated in a pillowy pita.  Tons of blogs and best ofs list this place and it is rightly deserved.  For 8e you score a good sized pita loaded up with lots of fresh veggies and then you slather it with red sauce and you are stoked.  Even H1 said this place is really good.  That is like 25 Michelin Stars at least.

After stuffing ourselves there, we scampered back to the metro to make our way to the Orangerie.  It was about 4:25 and the museum’s last entrance was 5:15.  Seems doable, but with two gremlins, this was a gamble.  

At Tuileries, we needed to cut across the park to the far side right by the carousel.  Blog followers, as you know, this is the Hs magnet, their catnip, their messiah.  After many, not right now not right nows we made it across a vast swath of park, up the stairs, past the teenagers hugging and kissing, past the lost balloon (that was a dangerous moment), and into the doors.  

Here the girls were serenaded by a French grandmother at the coat check with America, the Beautiful and asked to sing along by the lady shoving her clenched fist in H1s face like a mic.  Luckily, H1 lives with me and this is one of my favorite moves so she was game and started jamming out.  

Much of the museum time was spent asking H2 to get away from the paintings and that no, you don’t need to film your sister right now and no you don’t need to play a game on momma’s phone.  

The water lilies themselves were gorgeous, massive round room filling stretches that elegantly captured the water, the plants, the light situated in very elegant rooms.  

S was so pumped she needed a water lillies pencil.

Back outside, the teenagers were still hugging, and H1 said ugh they are still here!  Why don’t they go home?  And I told her that she isn’t allowed to talk to a boy that long EVER because #1 they don’t have anything to say that takes that long and #2 they are probably just trying to steal things from you like kisses or hugs.  She nodded in perfect understanding.  

Down into the metro, and as soon as we saw the train pull up packed to the bursting point with people, we said uh no.  When the second one pulled up it was a firmer uh no.  And at the third, it was a hell no.  H2 said oh come on we can get on, but it definitely wasn’t big boy time on the metro.  

S said, why don’t we walk, it’s not that far.  And I looked at her like she was crazy.  It was pretty far for two tired girls at 6pm.  Maybe 2 miles to hoof it.  I asked again to confirm and she said, yeah let’s walk!  

Maybe 5 minutes later she said I know my sense of direction isn’t the best, but shouldn’t we have turned down our street by now?  

Now I understood why she thought we could walk.  She got her gardens mixed up.  Rather than being 5 minutes away at Luxembourg, we were 75 minutes away in the Tuileries.  Whoops.

We decided to try to find a taxi.  

After a good half mile of walking without seeing a single one.  We stopped at a metro along the Seine to try again.  Looking over the parapet of the bridge, S saw huge swarms of rats attacking a trashcan, so we stood and watched with horrified fascination as the rats had dinner.  

This metro wasn’t better, but we went two and two and we squeezed in, H2 pressed safely between me and a guy she thought looked just like me.  We thought this was max capacity, but probably 5 more people pushed in and at this point you couldn’t fall over because it was so full.  Luckily, we had only three stops, and we were out, breathing freely again.  I know we have LA traffic and all that, but I might take that over the Paris metro at 6pm.  

Deciding on sandwiches and pastries for dinner, we went back to Eric Kayser to score some eats.  All of our feet and legs were pretty smoked at this point.  Somehow the day with no plan always ends up being the most brutal day of walking - without a target, we wandered and ticked off the meters as we went.

Loaded down with our dinner, we hiked back up the hill to our hotel, all of us dragging.  Normally, there is a mad scamper at the desk to get the key to the room, but tonight, all was subdued.  

We ate, the girls jumped into bed, and I began this...only to fall asleep and have to pick it up and various points in the next day.  

Next, on to Brussels.

Okay, so let's close our eyes and look at the paintings.