11.24.17

You have to say 'see vu flay'

Last days.  Often hectic.  Often bittersweet.  Often filled with angry almost 6 year olds.

Today was H2’s day to engage in family warfare.  She stoically gazed across the battlefield filled with family members enemies, and chose S and H1 as her targets.  Somehow I avoided detection, surviving the day relatively unscathed by her dirty looks and powerful shoves.  

Our plan for today was to eat pastries, walk up the Champs Elysee, climb the Arc de Triomphe, and finish the day with our ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  A very Paris last day, a seemingly H2 friendly day.  Climbing stairs, riding elevators, metro and taxi rides, PASTRIES.  It all seemed so perfect.  

We woke up late, securing that extra sleep necessary to non-cranky babies.  By the time we got out of the apartment, it was after 11am, and S decided that she needed Eric Kayser in her life - his quiche, his pain au chocolat amande, his pain au raisins, his cafe au lait.  Who am I to get in the way of her desires?  (I am also madly in love with this man).  S even said that Kayser may have eclipsed Pret as her favorite European breakfast spot.  These are significant developments.

As we filled ourselves with pastry, a TV crew was shooting a spot in the bakery.  S had just told H1 that she would make a good TV reporter with her running commentary on lots of things that didn’t really matter, so H1 was in rapt.  She stood staring with her big eyes directly into the camera, mouth agape, pastry goatee firmly in place.  

From there, we headed to the metro, on our way to the Champs Elysee.  We all agree that we enjoy the older cars.  All chrome and rattling metal with open windows letting the rushing wind in as we zip through the tunnels.  The girls are now pros, sliding into open seats, grabbing onto bars, and covering their noses at body odor.  

Passing a crepe stand, H2 decided she needed a nutella crepe, so to keep her beast at bay, we grabbed her a snack.  She happily munched as she danced down the street, playing hopscotch on the conveniently placed stones in the sidewalk.  

The Champs Elysee stretched before us, and for the first time in Paris, there were crowds of people on both sides of the street.  In all of the miles we walked, I hadn’t seen this many people in any location: not the Louvre, Orsay, or even in Disneyland.  Strangely, as we walked up the street, the crowd was never heavy, just little pockets of people, nothing compared to what it looked like from 50 or 100 yards away.  

Almost as soon as we hit the street, both girls said they needed to pee, so we swung into a mall to use the water closet.  For a cheap 2e a piece, we were welcomed into a toilet wonderland, decorated in brightly colored toilet seats and offering Japanese style toilets.  

I was welcomed into a row of three urinals with no door separating me from the hallway, and urinal stands so narrow, my shoulders would not allow me to pee from closer than 2 feet from the urinal.  

Bladders emptied, we cruised towards the Arc, cutting across the street to make a stop at Laduree to compare their macarons to Pierre Hermes.  PH is the modernist to L’s traditionalist.  While going into PH’s store was like stepping into a glossy black and glass future, stepping into L’s was like a time machine back to the Belle Epoch, with ornate scrollwork and pastels.  

The macarons were similarly themed.   As a reminder, H1 announced that one of PH’s macarons tasted like ass.  No such issue at L.  The flavors were classic and accessible.  I didn’t need to pretend to like any of them to look cool to my friends living in Eagle Rock.  AND, at L, they battled over which macarons the girls should get to try for FREE.  Free stuff = my favorite.

While S waited to pay, I went outside with the girls and supervised as they swung into traffic around one of Paris’s many poles along the sidewalk.  I’d shout CAR and they’d scamper back into the middle of the sidewalk, recovering amazingly quickly from a full layback while holding onto the pole.  

Meandering down the avenue, we passed Louis Vuitton and the Louis Vuitton line to go into the store, which stretched around the side of the store down the block.  We also passed the only sports cars I’d seen in the city, 4 Lambos and 4 Porches, all parked right up against LV.  In the window, they had the Monet Waterlily collection, which somehow managed to look kind of trashy and cheap - I think the giant gold all caps MONET along the clutch overlaying his masterpiece might have been overkill.  He seemed like a man of more subtlety than that, but maybe gaudiness was secretly his jam.  

Right below the arch, I saw a dad struggling to get a selfie with his daughter, so I asked if they wanted me to take their pic.  He said yes thank you, so I took a few killer pics and asked if he could take on of my fam.  He sort of gave a grudging yes, snapped the world’s fastest pic and split.  Some people just don’t want to build pic karma.  

Crossing the street, some b-boys were doing their thing, and the first thing we notice is a heavier dude in a sweater, red faced with the crew.  The other two guys were in all black with their crew sweaters, and this guy is in maroon pants and a wool striped sweater.  He seriously looked like someone’s dad who had just jumped up to be a part of the show.  They are popping and locking, and dad is up there sort of following along and then doing that hand wave thing that means you guys go on without me and then putting his hands on his knees and breathing heavily.  He kept stretching and limping around and honestly, we thought it might be an Andy Kaufman performance art thing because it was one of those “one of these things is not like the other” moments.  Then the guy's jam comes on and he does a handstand, headstand, and then the splits while inverted - limping back by the speaker post activity.  

We literally had to drag H2 away because she is famous in our house for her b-girl moves, which initially I thought were impressions of walruses coming up the beach.  

We paid the 24e to climb the tower, which is pretty steep considering it’s stairs and basically exercise which could be done for free lots of other places without having a bunch of weirdos right behind me invading my bubble while I huff and puff up a circular staircase.  

Our children decided to race up the stairs, leaving us in the dust.  Luckily, they have been super into fighting lately, so this slowed them down enough that we could catch up and break up their growling match.  

The view from the top was indeed beautiful, but I’m not sure anyone else got a good picture because my children kept shaking the railing that everyone was using to line up their pictures.  Their two favorite things to do in high places are to shake the rail and to hang on the rail.  Because hanging on the rail was impossible here due to its horizontal orientation, they decided to shake the snot out of the rail.  

On a serious note, the Arc is quite beautiful and powerful, as is the memorial to the unknown soldier at its base.  It is indeed monumental, and I’m sure that marching back from victory through this arch must have been a stirring occasion.  

Down into the metro once more, this time to make our way towards the Eiffel Tower.  Strangely, we hadn’t been close to the tower yet.  We’d see it from almost every place we’d walked, it loomed over us, yet we hadn’t ever been near it.  We crossed from the right bank to the left, and ended up near Invalides and Rue Cler.  We walked down Rue Cler, a pedestrian street loaded with specialty grocers and restaurants, cruising its length in search of a bistro that would suit our children’s needs: pizza or burger.  

We found a place that had burgers, busted out the coloring for the girls, and had a nice late lunch on Rue Clear.  The restaurant, L’Eclair was cozy and friendly, and we finished our last real meal in Paris with a lemon cheesecake and a classic Parisian dessert, the Paris Brest.  Two pastry buns with hazelnut creme sandwiched in between.  Simple and perfect.  

With tickets to head up to the summit of the tower at 5:30, we stepped out into the twilight and made our way to the base.  The tower was already lit up, and we passed through the army of street sellers that we  hadn’t yet seen in Paris.  The crowd was fairly thick, but with pre-purchased tickets, we kept skipping the lines and getting to bypass the crowds.  

KEY MOMENT: In front of us in line an American young man’s sister told him to put on his beret, and he said it would be culturally insensitive for him to put on that article of clothing here in Paris.  

The one thing you can’t bypass is the 50 other people in the elevator on the way up.  

Even the 2nd level of the tower has impressive views, maybe more so because you can make out the details of the places you are seeing.  A second elevator took us to the top, and the chill and wind immediately cut through the girls and both started asking to go.  H2 vigorously.  She proceeded to badger us the entire time - EVEN THOUGH, she was the one who so desperately wanted to get to the top of the tower.  

In the continuing saga of bathrooms, we all made sure to go to the bathroom at the top of the Eiffel Tower, the girls upset that the bathroom attendant wouldn’t let them come get me out of the men’s room.  

Back to the base and out onto the busy street opposite the Trocadero.  Our first taxi attempt was 30e to our hotel, so we tried again with a guy who wasn’t trying to flirt with tourists and he took us home for 15e.  

Tired, but not too tired for macarons, we split our huge tub o’ macarons, dividing them with my pocket knife using a book for a cutting board and H2 demanding that she get the big piece and then mocking everyone for getting smaller pieces.  We had a nice talk about gratitude and sharing, and later we will have the talk about keeping your quest for the biggest piece to yourself while pursuing it more covertly.  

We had all but the final necessities packed, so we crashed with bellies full of macarons, knowing that tomorrow would be an early morning.