Una mesa para seis - Table for Six: 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.