A few days in Paris

Our last stop on the “whirlwind” portion of our trip was the city of Paris, France. This stop was all about fulfilling some dreams of Miss Morgan. Seriously – what girl hasn’t had daydreams about spending time in this beautiful city? I know I had plenty of them when I was her age, and I remember how thrilling it was to fulfill some of them with my Aunt Lois almost 30 years ago when I visited the city for the first time.

At the top of Morgan’s wish list was visiting the Eiffel Tower, and we managed to work this one in on our first evening in the city. As we were standing under the tower, waiting to go through security, I looked up to see this… Kind of gives you goosebumps doesn’t it?

There are two different elevators in the tower. The first one gets you to the second story observation deck. The view from here is gorgeous… AND there is an amazing macaroon shop.

The second elevator takes you right up to the top, where you have a true birds eye view of the city. I love that (except for one notably ugly one…) their urban planning has discouraged high buildings within the core of the city.

Paris was the place where it started to hit all of us, just how tired we were. The travel has been intense for the past couple of months, and when Artie declared that he was “done with travelling”… I could get it. I was still in pretty rough shape myself, finding it difficult to walk. So, Artie and I took Paris a bit slower.

Number two on Morgan’s list was visiting the Louvre. Marcus and Morgan made their way there. Morgan loved it, and Marcus got to see (from a distance, through a sea of people), the Mona Lisa.

On our last full day in Paris, we decided to take a bus tour and a river tour. Our bus tour started at the Louvre again.

We only got to do about 1/3 of the bus tour… because someone with a tiny bladder had to go to the bathroom… so we hopped off the bus on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées to find a restroom. It truly is a beautiful avenue, and of course – we got to see the Arc de Triomphe in the distance. Unfortunately, I was too ticked at having to cut the bus tour short that I didn’t think to take a picture of it though…

We took an (Uber) car down to the riverside by the Eiffel Tower. In one of the traffic circles on the way, we got into a minor accident with a motorcycle (no one was hurt). This made an impression on Artie, and he said “Wow, now I can tell my friends that I’ve been in a car accident”…

The river tour on the Seine River was one of the highlights of Paris for me. Even though we did get to see a number of the monuments in other ways through our time in the city, there is something incredibly special about seeing them from a boat. And the bridges… Paris has unbelievably beautiful bridges.

More beautiful bridges.

This is Notre Dame Cathedral.

And this is the Orly Museum, which was originally built as a rail station.

Here is a view of the Eiffel Tower from the river.

We managed to work in a quick visit with an old friend of ours (Nathalie), and her family before we had to fly out of the city on Sunday. It was wonderful to just sit, and eat and let our kids play together for a couple of hours. We’ve missed that while we’ve been travelling – and it was a great gift. Thank you Nathalie and family 🙂

Our travels slow down for a bit now. We flew from Paris, to Faro, Portugal on Sunday and we’re staying in the town of Lagos for the next month and a half. We got to see a LOT of amazing things in the past 7 weeks, but everyone is tired and looking forward to some time to rest, re-group and get caught up on projects.