Day 10-Heading home

We are heading home today. The first thing we had to do was pack our things and cleanup the apartment. It was a big job to get everything packed and organized to go. We brought an extra duffle bag to bring home souveniers for us and my dad and brothers who couldn't come. We took some pictures of us in the apartment before we left.




Then my mom and I went out to get milk for breakfast and couldn't resist making one last stop at the corner bakery for fresh baked croissants. They are SO good, and I especially like the Pain de Chocolate, which is croissants with chocolate melted inside (translates to bread with chocolate).


After getting ourselves ready we headed to the RER station to catch the subway to Charles De Guille airport for our flight.

It was hard to get all of our luggage down the flights of stairs to the underground train platform and the escalator was broken so it was a trick with a bunch of suitcases and my two year old cousin in a stroller, etc. But we are a resourceful bunch so we managed. When we got to the airport it took forever to get through passport check points, security and customs. We had to stop and be questioned, show our passports, etc. at like six different places as we went along.



We finally made it on the plane and had a 3900 mile/9 hour flight home. It was long but it was kind of nice to sit and watch movies and read and relax for a while. When we got to the airport in Detroit my dad and brothers and uncle and cousins were all waiting for us at the airport.

They made signs to welcome us home and we got to tell them a bunch of our traveling stories. When we got home there were more cool signs and flowers on the table.

We gave them their souveniers and caught up on what everyone at home has been doing while we're gone too. It is 6 hours later in Paris than it is here so it feels really late to us. I am happy to be home but sad that our trip is over. I learned a lot and LOVED Europe. It was so old and historical and the people and foods and customs were really interesting to see. I hope to go back again some time with my whole family. On the plane ride home my aunt gave my two year old cousin some gum and she told her mom "Merci" which means Thankyou in French. I guess we ALL learned a lot in Europe!
Thanks for reading my blog, MERCI Beaucoup!
Christian

Day 9-Montmarte/Sacre Couer & the Louvre

This morning we took a train to the outskirts of Paris to a place called Montmarte. Montmarte is built on the sides of a hill and was the coolest little French town. It is kind of an artsy place, home to artists and musicians, etc. There are cobblestone streets and little shops and restaurants and street artists drawing people's portraits and things like that. The highest point in Paris is at the top of the hill (420 feet up) and at the summit is a beautiful old church called Sacre Couer. It has a huge dome and a crypt in the basement. You have to take hundreds of steps to get up the hill but it was really worth it. On the way up we saw a guy doing Chinese yoyo tricks on the steps and gave him some coins because he was really good.



When we finally got up the hill to the church we discovered they have had a perpetual prayer going there 24/7 since 1919 when the place was built!


During World War II there were thirteen bombs dropped in a line near the church and not one person was killed so ever since people believe the church protected them and there has been a lot of reverence for Sacre Couer. Inside we lit a candle for my Grandma and Grandpa Huber who died when I was little and for my dad's cousin who died of cancer last fall.
After exploring Montmarte for a while and a pizza lunch we headed back to central Paris for a tour of the Louvre. It is the biggest art museum in the entire world and used to be a Royal Palace. It is HUGE! Our tour guide showed us what are considered to be the most magnifcent works in the Louvre. We saw a 4000 year old Egyption sphinx, two very old Greek goddess marble statues called Venus d'Milo and Winged Victory, several huge oil paintings and of course we saw the Mona Lisa by Leonardo De Vinci.




I liked the Mona Lisa best and the tour guide told us all about it, but I was kind of surprised how small it is compared to a lot of the paintings we saw. It is only about 18" X 24" or so! It was amazing to see it in person though! After our tour we looked around a litte bit more and saw the inverted glass pyramid added to the Louvre several years ago.

We also did some shopping in the Louvre boutiques and then headed took a long walk back along the Seine River, to the Latin Quarter where our apartment is. By the way, the Latin Quarter is where Paris' Sorbonne University is so there are a lot of college students and it is a very busy part of town. I like that about it because it is very lively and there are people on the streets and shops open no matter what time of day or night we are out.

We are heading home tomorrow. Will probably post this and a brief post about our trip home all at once tomorrow. We've had a great time in Europe and I am kind of sad to leave, but it will be nice to go home and sleep in my own bed too.
Au Revoir~
Christian

Day 8-Notre Dame and Musee d'Orsay

Today we did a bunch of site seeing. We went Notre Dame, the Crypt, St. Chappelle and Musee d’Orsay. It was a fun filled day!

The first thing we did was go to the Crypt at Notre Dame. It was full of ancient roman ruins from the first century. It was very cool!


Notre Dame Cathedral is right next to it and they are both on a small island in the center of Paris called Ile de le Cite. In the square between the crypt and the cathedral is a stone sunken into the ground that marks the exact center of Paris.

After the crypt we went to Notre Dame Cathedral and into the high towers. We trekked up all 386 steps and got a magnificent view of France! We saw all of the awesome gargoyles, including the ones that became famous in the Disney movie Hunchback of Notre Dame. The one with the wings is the most photographed gargoyle in the world. It was really fun to see them close up and we went into the bell tower too. The bell was huge! When we were done exploring we had to come back down the 386 steps so we did 772 steps altogether, whew!






After that we went across the street to a fun little playground.


We had baguette sandwiches for lunch and then walked by a bush full of sparrows. We had some bread left so we held it out to the birds. The amazing thing was that they were so tame that they came and landed on our hands to eat the bread! It was SO cool.





After they birds ate all of our bread we headed across the street to Saint Chappelle church. It has a huge upstairs room with stained glass all around. It had over 1000 bible stories shown in the glass pictures. It was awesome and really bright colors.

We went from there to Musee d’Orsay, which is a famous art museum. We mostly looked at the impressionist paintings and some of the sculptures. We saw famous paintings by Van Gough, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Goughin and lots of others. My favorite were the Van Gough’s, especially the famous ones showing places he stayed in in Paris and some of his self portraits.


When Musee d’Orsay closed at 6pm we took the subway back to the apartment and relaxed for awhile. Then we went out for a traditional French meal of escargot, cheese and meat fondue, French onion soup, crème brulee and chocolate mousse. It was really fun and tasted amazing!


Now we are all stuffed and ready to go to sleep. Tomorrow is our last full day in France and will be heading home the next day. We have had a great time but looking forward to seeing friends and family again soon!
Christian


French Words we’ve used a lot
Merci = thank you
S’il vous plait = please
Bonjour = good day
Beaucoup = very much
Pardon = pardon me
Pain = bread
Crepe = thin pancake
Bon Soir = good evening
Bon Nuit = good night

Day 7-Touillere & L'Orangerie

I woke up today still tired because I couldn’t sleep well last night. When I finally did manage to crawl out of bed it was at least 10 o’clock, then we all had to eat and dress. And by the time we got out of the apartment it was more like 12 o’clock so we got a late start today. We changed the agenda so we didn’t have that much going and got to kind of bum around. The first thing we did was to do a little shopping. My sister and my cousin got some Parisian shoes, not so fun for me but they had a good time.




We are paying for everything in Euros so that is a new experience. See my sidebar for info. on how the money converts to US Dollars, but it is about 1.5 dollars to 1 Euro so things seem expensive when you convert it!

Next thing we did was go to the Louvre complex and get our museum passes. Tomorrow we are going in the Louvre to see all of the art work, but that will be a story for tomorrow.
After getting our museum passes we went to the Toulliere gardens, which is part of the Louvre complex and spent about an hour there. Once again I went for a run and the others relaxed by the fountain while I did that.


After that we went across the street to Angelina’s for lunch, they are famous for their hot chocolate so we got some. It was like melted chocolate in a cup but it was a little too rich for my taste. We had a nice lunch though and the place was very fancy.

After lunch we went back to Toulliere gardens for more fun. This time we saw carousal and went on it for a couple rides. It had a spinning car that all of us kids went on and we had a blast. Then the coolest thing happened. We started walking away but there straight in front of us was a bunch of mini trampolines! We went in and jumped for a while and it was so fun! When we were done we sat by the fountain and relaxed for about 10 minutes.



After that we walked up the path to L’Orangerie, which used to be the greenhouse of Napoleon’s palace and is now a small art museum. It was very cool and had art from Monet, Picasso, Renoir, Matisse and many others. My favorite painting was Monet’s Water Lilies collection. It was huge and I found out it was based on his own pond and he painted it over 300 times during his lifetime.

We left and started toward the 10 story high shopping mall by the name of the Gallery Lafayette. On the way there we passed many large super expensive stores like Channel, Cartier, Tiffany’s and that kind of thing. We finally got there and found out the galleria closed at 7:30 and we had gotten there at 7:25 so everything was getting locked. We headed back towards the nearest RER (subway station) a little disappointed. On the way there we passed an H&M store and just had to go in. We spent about 15 minutes in there and then came home on the RER. We just finished dinner and are getting ready for bed. Once again farewell from Europe!
Christian

Day 6- Luxembourg & The Eiffel Tower

Once again howdy from France. We woke up this morning after the best night’s sleep yet and got ready for our first full day of site seeing in Paris!
We took the Metro (subway) to Luxembourg Gardens and spent most of the day there. We looked around a bit then I went for a run while the other kids went to the playground.


After my run, I had a part of a crepe, and a ham and cheese baguette. Once I had eaten something we bought tickets for a puppet show there. Unfortunately the whole thing was in French so we couldn’t understand the words! But we got the general idea of what was happening and it was a lot of fun to watch.

Oh and I think that I forgot to mention that my aunt is pretty fluent in French so that’s basically how we communicate. But anyway we left the show and watched some boys play soccer and then a little bit of a chess tournament in the park.


We left Luxembourg and went to St Sulpice one of the oldest churches in Paris. We didn’t stay too long but we did have a discussion about the Divinci Code because some of it took place there.
After that we took the Metro to Rue de Cler, a busy street of shops and cafe’s near the Eiffel Tower. We walked around for a while trying to find a place to eat. Since its Sunday lots of the stuff was closed. We did manage to find a nice little café which was very full. We had a nice dinner consisting of cheese, meat, bread, salad and ravioli, for dessert we had crème brulee. It was unbelievably good!
Next we walked to the Eiffel tower. We went at night because the tower is lit up and at the top of every hour it twinkles for ten minutes. This was absolutely amazing! We took the elevator up to the second level and got some souvenirs and gifts. Then we took the elevator up to the tip top, it was very exciting. We were up at just the right time so the lights were twinkling and it made a strobe light affect (which got very annoying, but we ignored it). We were so high up that we could see things for miles and miles. It was beautiful to see Paris all lit up at night. On the way down I wanted to take the stairs so my mom, my cousin and I went down all 586 of them. I know there were 586 steps because we counted!

After that we took the Metro back to our part of town and got some delicious gelato ice cream. Now we’re getting ready for bed and its late so I should probably go. Please don’t forget to comment and I’ll tell you all about our adventures tomorrow. As the French would say, au revoir or good bye.
Christian

Day 5-Gay Paris!

Here I am again except now we’re in France! We woke up early this morning and started to pack up our belongings, after about a half hour of packing a few of us went down to breakfast while the others kept packing. When we were all ready and fed we took a cab to the train station to head out to Paris.





We took a grueling two ½ hour train ride on the Eurostar international rail but it was kind of amazing how we could be in a totally different country in that amount of time. We live near Canada, which is another country, but when you cross the border it is pretty much the same as the United States. France is not at all the same as England! We got off the train and all the signs are suddenly in French and everyone is speaking French too. We exchanged our money to get Euro’s to spend and took a cab to our apartment and unpacked and got settled. We are excited to be staying in an apartment for this part of our trip so we can feel more at home than in a hotel.

Once we got settled a little, we took a walk around our street and went to a sandwich place and got a gyro and shared it, it was delicious! Next we went to the bakery on the corner and got some baguettes and croissants for dinner tonight and for tomorrow morning. Then we went to the “crepe man “and I got my first crepe. I chose the Nutella filling which is hazelnut flavored chocolate. It was very good but a little too sweet. We live in a very busy area of shops and restaurants. We crossed the busy road safely and hurried into the grocery store for some essential items such as toilet paper, cheese, cereal, milk etc.






We were planning to go to the Eiffel tower tonight but we were all so tired that we decided to take the evening off and enjoy our little French apartment and a homemade meal. My sister and my cousins took a long hot bath in the deep tub and my mom and I made a dinner of spaghetti, and baguettes with cheese melted on top of them. For drinks the kids had water while the adults had red wine. One interesting fact that you might not know is that wine is actually cheaper than water in France! After dinner my sister Grace cleared the table and my cousin Maddie and I washed and dried the dishes. It took us forever because we had to do it all by hand and we had never done that before. We got a scolding for taking so long, LOL.


Now we are all getting ready for an early night getting a good night’s sleep. I am sleeping in a loft bed. We are looking forward to seeing many cool French sights tomorrow! Bye for now, or as the French would say bon-nuit.
Christian