Paris: Saturday

Saturday morning, we took the métro back over to the Louvre and wandered through the Louvre's Cour Carrée. The girls ran some races in the courtyard.

We saw the pyramids from up top, then crossed the street into the Jardin des Tuileries.

This is the first in Tim's series of birds sitting on statues.

The girls insisted on posing with a couple of statues of naked ladies...

Cora very much liked this statue of a tiger killing a crocodile.

Number two...

It was a bit chilly and damp, but the city has a lot of what we called "relaxy" chairs set up in the park around the fountains. The girls had fun trying out all of them...

Number 3...

There was a carousel.

For her scavenger hunt, Maya had to find this statue commemorating the author Perrault. He was the author of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, and many other children's stories. Can you find Puss in Boots on the statue?

Maya's scavenger hunt also had her search out these trampolines embedded in the grounds of the Tuileries. The girls had a blast.

Next, we rode on the ferris wheel that's on the Tuileries's side of the Place de la Concorde.

It gave us some very nice views across to the Eiffel Tower and up the Champs Élysées.

L'Arc de Triomphe in the distance.

From here, we walked to lunch. Unfortunately, Tim didn't have any restaurants pinpointed in this part of town. So we wandered into a place called Le Grand Palais. It's just up the street from the building of the same name. It was good. We were later told it was quite Parisian.

After lunch, we walked up the Champs Élysées. We were mostly unimpressed. The most impressive thing was the line of about 50 people waiting to get into Abercrombie and Fitch. We walked on up the  hill. Cora rode in her pack and napped. When we arrived at the Arc de Triomphe, there was an enormous line (and even a sign indicating that it would be about an hour wait). We decided to wait. It actually only took about a half an hour (again, security), and then we headed up to the Place Charles de Gaulle for the line for the steps.

After another security check, we started up the steps. But one of the security guards stopped me and asked if I would like to take the elevator (I was carrying Cora). I said, "I thought it was broken?" (There was a sign saying as much.) "Oh, no, it's not." Then to Maya, "Would you like to go with mom or dad?" "Mom." So Maya, Cora, and I hitched a ride to the top. Tim took a photo of what we missed...

From the top, you can see twelve of Paris's roads spread out around you in a star.

Back down at the bottom of the arch, we walked around a bit, looking at the eternal flame and the statues decorating the arch.

We had some dinner plans on Saturday night, but we still had some time before we needed to be at the restaurant. We decided to duck into L'Église Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois. However, it was late afternoon and it turns out the girls weren't in a temperament for a church.

So instead we walked over to the Centre Pompidou. We went up on the top floor to get a different perspective of the rooftops of Paris.

From the top of the Centre Pompidou, we noticed that there were some people with huge buckets of bubble mixture making bubbles on the plaza in front of the Centre Pompidou. This, it turns out, is what our girls needed. We went down and spent the remaining half an hour before dinner chasing and popping bubbles.

For dinner, we met Audrey's cousin Carole and her daughter Nadège, both real Parisians, for dinner at a (delicious) place that Nadège had discovered nearby our apartment. Carole and Nadège were very fun, and it's always nice to meet new family.