Saturday, 07.07.07
An amazing day! Our first day in the city, so much to do so much to see. We started off at the Arc de Triomphe/Champs-Elysées where we all took about several hundred pictures each. Ah, the joy of digital cameras and the ability to photograph ad nauseum!
Everything is so grand and amazingly beautiful. The art is so plentiful it almost seems to be taken for granted: sculptures in the middle of playgrounds, chain link fences butting up against statues. You can walk all day and never run out of the art. I am in heaven.
The Champs-Elysées was so much fun. Clelia had clued us into the best bakery in Paris, the Ladurée, and she was right. Incredible! And then the girls got to go crazy in Sephora; which is a chain we have in SF but the people watching is way more interesting here. The French take their makeup seriously. Unfortunately the boys wouldn’t accept my offer to make up their faces but they did pose outside the shop with a Dolce and Gabbana underwear model (on poster). I can’t believe they didn’t get discovered as male models.
Fortunately for me, the anti-shopper, the Champs-Elysées turns into the gardens in front of the Louvre (Tuileries garden). So very beautiful. We walked all through the Tuileries and up to the Opéra Garnier and, on Clelia’s recommendation, off to a small Japanese restaurant for dinner. Eating is always an adventure and this was true here. The kids have been great at trying new things.
After dinner more walking, photographing and just soaking up the culture. It is truly disorienting not to understand anything anyone is saying around you. It’s funny how we take English speaking for granted and I will certainly bend over backwards to help lost looking foreign travellers now.
We ended the day at King Louis XIII Palais Royal courtyard, and then a ride on the huge ferris wheel back at the Tuileries, a terrific, if not terrifying, way to get a panoramic view of the city!
All exhausted, we walked back to the Arc de Triomphe to catch the train back to Chatou. This was a perfect first day in Paris! Karl and I are so happy here, the kids are incredible, and life is sweet.
