Made it to Paris

After our unintended, but chocolate filled delay in Dublin, we boarded our flight to Paris. Again, I need to just reiterate how friendly the Irish people were. They were all smiles and helpful everywhere we turned. We decided that we need to plan a separate trip to Ireland.

Once we landed in Paris, we set off on the world's longest taxi ride through what has to be the worst area of Paris. We saw drugs being done right in the open, near our cars. The infamous aggressive window washers were out. People knocking on windows for money. 8 cars wide across 3 lanes. Motorcycles zipping in between the cars. Cars going 5 different directions in clogged intersections while infirm pedestrians hobble in between them. I truly don't know how they don't have massive fatalities every single day here. What was probably a 10 min car ride without traffic took us an hour.

But arriving in Montmartre where we are staying made up for it. This is an area of Paris where I have never been, but I think is probably more like what people think of when they think of Paris than the more central areas. Its touristy here, to be sure (I will talk more about that in my post on Sacre Couer!) but it has narrow winding cobblestone streets with cafes on every corner. Lots and lots and lots of steps (I climbed 38 flights yesterday in only half a day here according to my Apple watch!

Our flat requires us to remember two different codes to get in. Thankfully I have children with memories.

Our place is very perfect. It is in a gated courtyard, so it is very private and quiet with just the handful of houses that are back here. We're staying here with our dear friends from home, so it has 4 bedrooms, a lovely rooftop deck, a kitchen, and a washer/dryer.

We very quickly located my favorite thing about France - ham and butter sandwiches. Not quite sure what time our bodies thought it was, you can never, ever go wrong with jambon et beurre. Ever. Its good for breakfast, lunch, 3am, really any time.

We were so late getting to Paris, but we still decided to try and fit in our trip to the Louvre. The Louvre is massive, sprawling, not well mapped, and approximately 85 degrees inside. I know it has countless priceless treasures but after having not slept and then traveling all day, we set our priorities on the Mona Lisa and Hamurabi's Code, which the girls had studied extensively in school.

We saw the Mona Lisa alright.

Its very strange to me that there is all of this straight up gorgeous, amazing, phenomenal art (even including other really lovely Da Vinci's) in the Louvre, and yet here we are all shoved into one (hot) room looking at the back of all of the other people's cell phones at a small honestly unremarkable portrait. Sorry if that offends all of you, but not actually that sorry.

Finding Hamurabi's Code proved more difficult. The docents were happy enough to point to it on a map, but getting from Point A to Point B is anything but easy to do. Go up, go down, go out, go in, go back up, down again, figure out you've just made one big circle and you're now back into the vortex of the Mona Lisa...... but we found it and actually enjoyed walking through the Near East art section more than we imagined.

The girls had each learned so much about Hamurabi's Code in elementary school that this was pretty exciting for them. In case you're unfamiliar, Hamurabi's Code was written in ancient Mesopotamia and is pretty drastic in its punishments.  In the picture below, Doug and Elisabeth are busy translating Hamurabi's Code from French to English.

And here we have smiling Charlotte next to the rock that contains Hamurabi's Code. Smiling next to such a code seems weird, but we were all really genuinely happy to find it.

Here are just some snapshots from outside the Louvre, in all of its touristy goodness. I like the crows and ravens around town.

Finally after our long day, we met up with our dear friends (please note Owen sprinting in from the side... I thought I grabbed a picture of all 4 of them, but apparently this is the picture I got) and went to get the healthiest dinner we could find: dessert crepes. OK, some of the adults (not this one) got savory crepes, but the rest of us went with some form of nutella + fruit, or sugar + fruit. 

We were all so exhausted that we came back to the house and just hung out upstairs on the roofdeck in the beautiful weather. Then we went to bed really early to try and wake up well rested.

Next up: exploring Montmartre, Sacre Couer, and a mideval festival