Vacation à Paris

We are settled in a hotel. We are comfortable. We are secure. We are happy.

Time to explore.

I take the kids on a tour around Les Halles. We go to the mall, my son is a swimmer and they have a great indoor pool. We go to St. Eustace. We go to the Fontaine des Innocents. We go to the Pompidou Centre. I'm basically trying to squeeze days 1 & 2 into one day to make up for lost time as much as possible. We explore the 4th arrondissement (Marais) and love it too. My daughter finds a Hello Kitty store and now she is happier than I've ever seen her. I thought she loved Louis Vuitton, no she loves Hello Kitty.

My son is happy too. We walk around the Jardin de Tuileries and the young French girls find him interesting.

HIM: Are they looking at me?
ME: Yes, they think you're cute.
HIM: What?! Really?!

He took another glance as he passed them and they were whispering and giggling.

We are looking at the art, some of which are nymphs. My son is a little embarrassed about all the nakedness. Later he asked why all the men statues have such small private parts. I told him, so that the statues are still artistic without being too obnoxious....what? it might be true. He accepted that answer anyway. We ate at one of the outdoor cafes in the garden. I had a chicken salad, the kids sandwiches. That French bread is tough. They fed some bread to the birds and hoped the birds would not choke.

From my research I knew that my son could get entrance to most museums for free because he was under 16. Yay!

We headed back to Rue di Rivoli, towards the hotel. Stopped by the Palais Royale, some shops then went back to our neighborhood.

We hung out in the Fontaine des Innocents courtyard, visiting shops and bookstores. My daughter loves bookstores. The kids saw a McDonalds. We got food there.

*** SIDEBAR: I hate McDonalds. The food at the Paris McDonalds was not like in the US. It was not greasy. We had baguettes. Actually not bad. We got Frites (French Sprites, but french fries too) then went back to our room.

We ate and watch French cartoons....funny. The kids wanted to explore more so they went out for a little while. That neighborhood is so people-friendly that I felt comfortable with them going out. But made sure they knew to still be aware of their surroundings.

While the kids were out, I started revising the itinerary and emailed some pics to their dad.

This vacation is back on track.