Paris Trip Last Day - Eiffel Tower and Jardin d'Acclimatation

Tuesday April 7th, was our last day in Paris, so we needed to finally climb up the Eiffel Tower.  Since we were going to walk up the tower, my parents opted out and spent the morning cleaning the apartment and packing.  The tower opened at 9:30am, so we were aiming to arrive there at 9:30 to avoid a long line-up.  We got there just after 9:30, but there was already a pretty long line-up to go up the stairs.  When we looked at the line, we wondered if it was really the line for the stairs because there were all sorts of people in line, seniors, small children, even a couple with a baby, women in high heels etc...  Fortunately the line moved steadily, but we were in line for about 40min before we reached the ticket booth.   An adult ticket to climb the stairs is €5 as opposed to €9 to take the elevator to the 2nd floor.  The benefit of the stairs is that the line moves much quicker than the line for the elevator, but you cannot access the 3rd floor by the stairs.  If you want to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower you have to take the elevator and so you have to buy another ticket on the 2nd floor.   We were happy just going to the 2nd floor.

Once we started up the stairs, I quickly realized that it wasn't that hard of a climb.  The kids could have ran all the way up to the first floor if there weren't so many people in front of them.  We stopped briefly on the 1st floor to take a look at the view and then made our way to the second floor.  Again, climbing to the second floor was no problem at all.  I am sure that my parents could have done it.

We went around the 2nd floor, looking at the view from each side of the tower, and then as there was really nothing else to do, we started back down to the first floor.  On the first floor we watched a short movie on the making of the Eiffel Tower, then we headed back down to the ground.  So all in all, it was not very difficult taking the stairs up the Eiffel Tower, and it only takes about 15min to reach the 1st floor and another 15min to reach the second floor.

After our Eiffel Tower visit, we headed over to the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne.  This is another place that I visited when I was a child living in Paris, but it has changed a lot.  We met my parents at the park at around 1:30pm.  Regular park entrance fee is €3/person, but since we have more than 2 children, we all got the reduced rate of €1.50.  The biggest change in the park is the huge Fondation Louis Vuitton.  It's a building designed by Frank Gehry, very impressive and surrounded by cool fountains. 

We had lunch and then let the kids go on a couple of rides.  For 35 Euros we got 15 tickets and most rides were one ticket so Grandpa bought an extra ticket and the kids got to go on 4 rides each.  Not all the rides were open, so 4 rides was enough.  On this particular Tuesday afternoon, the park was pretty empty except for 100 or so orthodox Jews.  It must have been a special Jewish day, but there were no line-ups at all for any of the rides which was great.  The kids also enjoyed the many playgrounds in the park.  My parents tried to visit the Fondation Louis Vuitton, but unfortunately it was closed on Tuesdays.  Something I forgot to check before I made the plans.   In any case, it was a beautiful sunny day and they kids had a great time, probably the highlight of their trip.

We headed back to the apartment to pack everything up and our Bluvan was waiting outside for us at 6:30pm. We got to the Beauvais airport by 8pm and our plane didn't leave until 9:40pm.  You would think that we had plenty of time, but airport security is so slow at the Beauvais airport that as soon as we got through security it was time to board the plane. 

After a short flight it was good to be back in Barcelona and  we were happy that Grandma and Grandpa could spend another week with us here.

Looking up the Eiffel Tower from the base.

View from the second floor, Trocadero and all the way to La Défense.

View from the tower, Champs de Mars and in the distance the Tour Montparnasse

View of the Seine river and l'Ile aux Cygnes

 

a beautiful day at the Eiffel Tower

Side view of the Fondation Louis Vuitton

Soaking up the sun in the Jardins d'Acclimatation

 

Kids decided to play in the fountains, not sure if they were supposed to do that, but it was our last day in Paris so whatever.

 

One of the 3 roller coasters in the park.

Not a very big roller coaster, but fun enough.

One of the playgrounds

Another playground

Rylan's favorite ride

 

Paris Trip Day 6 - Montmartre, Jardins de Luxembourg, Invalides

Monday morning we headed up to Montmartre to visit La Basilique du Sacré Coeur.   It was a beautiful day, and from the basilica we got a great view of the city.  Fortunately it was only about a 5 minute wait to enter the basilica and it was free.

From Sacré Coeur we walked over to Place du Tertre for a look at all the artists at work.  My parents met a Japanese artist there who has been living in Paris for over 40 years and loves it so much he will never go back to Japan.  My parents almost bought one of his paintings, but it was a little pricey.  Cole kept expressing interest in different paintings, causing brief moments of hope for some poor artists who thought I would buy my 6 year old a painting.

Walking down towards rue de Clichy, we stopped at an Asian restaurant to grab some lunch.  Probably not what my parents had in mind, since they eat Asian food all the time, but the kids saw Vietnamese salad rolls in the restaurant window and so we had to go in.  We love Vietnamese food and we have not had any since we moved to Spain so it was a real treat for them.  So far since we arrived in Paris, we have eaten Turkish food, Israeli food, McDonalds, a lot of canned ravioli (this is another things we can't get in Spain and my kids really miss) and now Vietnamese food.   We didn't realize how difficult it would be do eat French food in France.

Dad wanted a picture in front of the Moulin Rouge, I guess just to say we were there.  I kind of wanted to leave the general area before the kids saw something they shouldn't.  Next we headed over to the Jardins de Luxembourg.  I had heard that there was a really nice playground there.  When we got there the playground was crawling with kids and the admission was a little pricier than I expected 2.60 Euros for each child and 1.60 for the adults.  Since we had come all this way, I just paid for all the kids to go in.  It's a great playground for young children, but not so great for older kids.  Nathan and Ciara were a little disappointed because there was nothing challenging for them and there were way too many little kids around.

After an hour in the playground we headed over to the circle shaped basin where you can sail toy boats.  There are a limited number of boats and a pretty long line-up to rent a boat.  My parents were going to visit the Musée du Luxembourg as they had an exposition on the Tudors, but again the line-up was too long, so they gave up.  It seemed like every tourist in Paris had the same itinerary as we did.

We decided to make our way back to the apartment, but first I thought it would be nice to pass by the Rodin Museum since it wasn't too far from where we were.  On the way we came across the church of Saint Sulpice and decided to go in.  Yet another beautiful church inside and out as well as the second tallest church in Paris after the Notre Dame. Somehow we completely missed the Rodin Museum but ended up at Les Invalides.  The walk was a bit longer than expected and the kids were kind of tired by this point, so we quickly saw where Napoleon was buried and then walked right through the Army Museum to the other side where we found a metro station. 

Monday night we decided would be the one night the adults would go out for a nice French dinner and the kids could stay in the apartment and have canned ravioli.  It doesn't seem fair, but in reality the kids were pretty happy to just stay in and watch movies for one evening.  There were quite a few restaurants in our neighbourhood, but as always, when you don't have a plan, it's hard to find the right restaurant.  We ended up at an Italian restaurant, the food was good and the service excellent as we were the only people in the restaurant at first.  We felt like we saved the waiter's evening and also attracted more customers as no one wants to eat in an empty restaurant.

After climbing the stair to reach Sacré Coeur

 

In front of the basilica

 

Inside the basilica

 

View of Paris from the steps in front of Sacré Coeur

 

Place du Tertre

 

Playground in Jardins de Luxembourg

 

Kids watching boats in the basin in Jardins de Luxembourg

 

 

Saint Sulpice

 

Inside Saint Sulpice

 

The inner courtyard - Les Invalides



The dome where Napoleon is buried

 

 

 

 

 

Paris Trip Day 5 - Versailles

On Sunday April 5th, we set off for Versailles.  I purchased the Versailles passports from the official website at €25 each, the kids were free.  This would give us access to all the palaces including the fountain show in the gardens.  Although the children can enter the palaces for free, they do have to pay to enter the gardens during the musical fountain shows, so we had to pay an extra €7 for each child over 6 years old.

The plan was to leave early enough to arrive at the entrance by 9am in order to beat the crowds.  Unfortunately we missed the train we had planned to catch, and had to wait another 20min at the station for the next train.  The RER to Versailles was full of tourists, there wasn't even a place to sit.   So over 500 tourists poured out of the train and arrived at the palace at the same time as we did, it was around 9:45am at this point.  When we arrived at the palace entrance, there was already a pretty long line of people with tickets waiting to get through security.   The problem was, that there was no one doing crowd control, even though there were security guards and Versailles staff everywhere.  The line was a mess, people didn't know where the end of the line was, so they just kept joining the line wherever they could.  The line kept getting wider instead of longer, so the people who were already in line were getting angry as newcomers tried to bud in.  As the chaos and confusion began to mount, finally one of the security guards decided it was time to intervene and put some order into the line.  He randomly decided how to separate the crowd into thinner  lines, making many tourists angry as they saw themselves all of a sudden much farther from the entrance then before.

We waited close to 2 hours in this crazy line up that never seemed to end.  At least it wasn't raining, but it wasn't that warm and the kids were complaining about the cold.  Fortunately we had brought sandwiches and lots of snacks, so we could keep the kids distracted with food.  We were very disappointed in the Versailles staff who seemed to be doing nothing while all this was going on.  At least there should have been some barriers so that people would no where to go.  I'm sure it's not the first time a large crowd of people have arrived at Versailles at the same time, you would think that they would have been better organized :(

Once we got past the security check point, we made our way into the King's Grand Apartments.  It was crowded inside, but not too difficult to get around.  It's definitely a palace like no other in the world.  Once you see the extravagance and excess that fills each room, it's not hard to imagine why the French Revolution started.  I was really amazed by the paintings on the ceilings.  Why the kings needed to have such ornate ceilings, I don´t know.  I found it kind of annoying to have to tilt my head backwards all the time to admire the ceilings.

As impressive as the main palace is, the gardens are like a whole other world.  Just walking to the Grand Trianon took us almost 40 minutes.  The Grand Trianon is an amazing palace as well and not as busy.  We didn't have time to visit Marie Antoinette's estate because we had to make out way back to the main gardens for the musical fountain show that started at 3:30pm.  We walked around for 1.5 hours, but I think that we only managed to see about a quarter of the gardens.  By 5pm, we decided to call it quits.  If we had a little more time, and if the weather was nicer, I think that it would have been fun to spend a day just visiting the gardens of Versailles.  It is free to enter the gardens as long as it's not during the musical fountain show.

Waiting in the long, long line up.

It is hard to tell where the line begins and ends.



Cole trying to keep warm in line

 

Each room had amazing artwork on the ceilings 

And check out that crown moulding! 

Napoleon's coronation looks impressive here, although the original is in the Louvre.



The Hall of Mirrors

You can tell that Ciara was pretty excited to be in the Hall of Mirrors

The Battle Gallery with huge paintings of the greatest French military victories over the centuries

Ciara was more happy to hug an ornamental bush in the gardens

 

The big hall in the Grand Trianon

The Grand Trianon with its pink marble exterior.

Enceladus, the fallen Titan

Bosquet des Tres Fointaines

Apollo's Bassin

The Orangerie

Overlooking the Bassin de Latone, tapis vert and grand canal

 

Grandparents and Grandkids

Our family in front of the palaces, and finally some sun!

Paris Trip Day 4 - Île de la Cité and Pompidou Centre

My parents thought it would be nice to take a boat trip down the Seine river, so I checked out a bunch companies and booked a Seine river boat tour online through Vedettes du Pont Neuf.  It was €9 per adult and €5 per child for a typical 1 hour trip up and down the Seine river past some of the most famous bridges and monuments.  Fortunately it wasn't raining during our boat cruise, but it wasn't sunny either.  Still, it was a quick and easy way to see a lot of Paris and the kids enjoyed the boat ride.

After we finished our boat trip we headed to the Notre Dame cathedral on l'Île de la Cité.  The crowds had already started to form a long winding line outside the cathedral.  Fortunately the line moved fairly quickly.  We decided not to buy tickets to climb to the top of the cathedral.  Entrance to the cathedral is free, and it was enough for us to just see the inside.  Even though we have visited quite a few cathedrals now, I am still amazed at the work that must have gone into building these churches.  The cathedrals in Europe are so ornate and detailed.  With so many sculptures and paintings, each one is like an art museum.  You just don't see churches like these in Canada.

After Notre Dame, we headed towards the Pompidou Centre.  I figured that the kids would enjoy the Pompidou Centre because it's all modern art and a little strange.  I also read online that there was a children's gallery that made modern art a little more accessible for young children.  Well, we happen to come at a time when they were renovating a big part of the museum, so the entire 4th floor was closed because they were in the middle of a rehanging and the children's gallery was empty.

We did get to see the Jeff Koons exhibit though, and it was pretty interesting.  I think the kids will remember it for awhile.  Just this past week Rylan brought home the Guinness Book of World Records 2014 and found out that Jeff Koons' sculpture Balloon Dog sold for $58.4 million, making it the most expensive sculpture by a living artist.  Rylan was excited to say that he got to see the Balloon Dog sculpture in person.

Even though the 4th floor was closed, there was still quite a lot to see on just the 5th and 6th floors.  Everything was so bizarre and didn't seem to make any sense, but that's what makes modern art so much fun.

The kids have been asking to visit the Eiffel Tower since we arrived in Paris, but since the weather was so bad, we kept putting it off.  It wasn't raining very hard when we left the Pompidou Centre so we decided to pass by the Eiffel Tower on the way back to the apartment.  Well, even in the wind and rain, there was a significant line to get up the tower, so we decided to postpone the Eiffel tower for another day, but we still got a picture.

Waiting for our boat tour to start

Cruising down the Seine

A view of the Eiffel Tower from the boat.

Passing by the Notre Dame Cathedral

Going under a bridge covered with thousands of locks.

So many locks

Grandma and Grandpa don't need a lock to stay together.

In front of Notre Dame Cathedral

Stain glass window inside Notre Dame

Another stain glass window 

More stain glass windows

Centre Pompidou

Jeff Koons'  Balloon Dog

Jeff Koons' Michael Jackson and Bubbles

Going up the escalators in the Pompidou Centre

Another Jeff Koons work of art

Do you get it? I don't get it.

Grey skies and the Eiffel Tower