Paris, Day 3 - World Cup Soccer!!!

Sunday was primarily dedicated to watching the US Women's National Soccer team play in the World Cup vs. Chile. The game was played in Parc des Princes, which is the home stadium of Paris Saint Germain.

We started the day with the standard run for pastries: 4 pain au chocolats, chouquettes (little donut hole type things - sorry French people!!!), and chaussons aux pommes (an apple fritter, again my apologies to the French). I also got ingredients to make capresi salad for Charlotte for lunch, which we've decided is a daily necessity. The restaurant we went to on Saturday night had olive oil with basil infused into it, which was so yummy. Conveniently the small grocery store had some, since they did not have fresh basil. Charlotte had to have her capresi salad in a ziploc bag so that we could picnic and go straight to the stadium without things that would be confiscated. Again, I'm sorry to the entire French culinary scene.

After breakfast, Doug and Jon took the kids to a French playground, which might have been the highlight of the trip for Elisabeth. She played soccer with a bunch of 7 yr olds and got to speak to them in French. Charlotte amazed them with her French, too, when she told them "I am duck," and "I am cheese." They thought she just couldn't speak French, but the rest of us knew she was translating her daily humor into French.

playing soccer with French 7 yr olds!

Melissa and I pulled picnic lunches together before setting out to the playground. Despite every weather app saying there was a zero percent chance of rain, it rained.

On the way to meet up with the crew, Melissa and I walked by this walled off cemetery that you could only peek into every so often. It was very neat with little "houses" for your departed loved ones alongside your more typical graves. In some instances it looked totally abandoned with vines growing all over the place, but some graves and little houses (crypts??) looked very well tended to with obviously fresh flowers.

Paris cemetery.

From the cemetery we took the bus down to the Eiffel Tower for a picnic, and so that I could recreate some pictures that I took of the girls 7 years ago. Unfortunately the Eiffel Tower is undergoing some type of renovation which put barricades up where I originally took the pictures which meant that I could not recreate the same picture.

After the Eiffel Tower, we walked over to a metro stop and headed over to Parc du Princes. Doug spent a year living in Paris and lived right near Parc du Princes, so on the way to the American Outlaws pre-party we visited Doug's old apartment.

The American Outlaws put on a fantastic pre-party with live music, games, etc. We got there about half an hour before it ended, but that was enough time to apply our war paint before the march to the stadium. The Parisian police shut down the roads for our march and let us take up the whole street for the half mile walk. Locals were hanging out on their balconies cheering us, the police were videoing us on their iPhones as thousands of us walked down the street chanting and waving American flags. Such a fun time.

war paint application

At the game, I met up with a friend that I haven't seen since high school! We also ran into some of our best friends from Virginia! Soccer is a wonderful thing that reunites people. The atmosphere at the stadium was electric and the game was phenomenal. Our "second string" roster can dominate.

Good friend from high school! Eric!

We had planned to take a boat tour of the Seine after the match, but the timing just didn't work out as after dinner it was past 9pm and we were all wiped out. We got home around 10:45pm as it was. Long, long but fun day.

Today we leave Paris for Normandy. First stop is Evreux where my mom lived for 3 years as a child!

Found in Elisabeth's bag.... from yesterday... when I was starving. My favorite kind of sandwich.