Paris: Sunday

Sunday... Happy Easter! We got up in the morning and headed to the Trocadero métro stop. Over dinner the previous evening, Cousin Nadège had assembled us a plan that included a stop for breakfast and an adorable walking route. On the way...

We had breakfast at Carette. It was delicious. We spent some time trying to convince Cora that croissants are called croissants and not brioches, but I think that the Trento term for a croissant (brioche) has broken her for good. Luckily, she's cute.

After breakfast, we crossed the street for the great views of the Eiffel Tower.

Maya snapped a required photo for her scavenger hunt.

Well... almost. This is actually much harder than it looks. We gave her credit for it.

The lines to get up the Eiffel Tower were immense. However, the line to walk up the stairs was much much shorter than the line for the elevator. In fact, the line for the stairs was just really about security. So we did the security, and headed up.

First, though... we spotted the bust of Gustave. Also required for the scavenger hunt.

Looking out through the glass floor on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower.

Then on up to the second floor (we didn't go all the way to the top; you can't walk all the way up, and the lines for the elevators were really really long).

In the distance here is the École Militaire with the Champs de Mars in front. The crowd of people? An Easter egg hunt. (We had already planned to head there next.)

A view to l'Hôtel des Invalides:

Le Sacre Coeur

Back to Trocadéro...

The Arc de Triomphe...

Back on the ground...

I find this view strange... they had trimmed all of the trees around into rectangles.

Then we went egg hunting. This was a great event. We waited in a line about three people deep. Then we paid 5 euros each for the girls to get a "hunting license." On this piece of paper were marked three colors of eggs that they had to find. Then they went out in the grass to find the correctly colored plastic eggs. Which they then returned to another table to exchange for a little cardboard carton of goodies. It contained a bottle of water, an apple, and three kinder eggs. (For the record, kinder eggs cost 1 euro each in the grocery store across the street from our apartment.) They could also do any of the other activities with their 5 euro admission fee, but we skipped them. This was a crazy well organized, fun, and memorable event for everyone. With no tears. :)

From here, we continued to follow Nadège's recommendations, exiting at the other end of the Champs de Mars.

We headed down Rue Cler in search of lunch. We happened on Café Central, where we stopped for lunch. I had a delicious brunch, the kids shared an omelet and salad (they might have eaten two of them), and Tim had a Croque Monsieur. The service was impeccable. The waitress gave the girls *more* chocolate eggs at the end of lunch.

We continued down Rue Cler to Rue Saint-Dominique and up to the l'Hôtel des Invalides. We decided not to go into any of the museums or even Napoléon's tomb, but we did wander through the complex (obviously, after passing through another security bag check).

We then walked up the street to the Musée Rodin. We waited about 45 minutes to get through the security (the bag checking guards did jokingly threaten to steal the girls' chocolate eggs) and ticket lines. We opted just to view the gardens and not also the museum; there was a line wrapped around the building for that.

So we saw the statues in the grounds. The Thinker(s):

This dude is getting ready to eat his almost dead children. To get the reference (if you so desire), I guess you should look up the story of Ugolino and his children, specifically as told by Dante in the Inferno.

This is Jean d'Aire. He is in Rodin's famous Burghers of Calais, which depicts the six citizens who offered themselves as hostages (to be executed) in exchange for the English to lift the siege on Calais. This particular sculpture is a nude study for the (clothed) Jean d'Aire in the final sculpture of all six citizens.

Look! Cora found a Bluebonnet!

As we reached the Gates of Hell, it started to rain. We still studied them a bit before opening our umbrellas...

Then we opened our two umbrellas. The wind simultaneously destroyed them both. So we ran to the restrooms for cover. By the time we had used the facilities and consolidated our Easter spoils, the rain had stopped. We walked back past l'Hôtel des Invalides and then across the Pont Alexandre III.

We went inside le Petit Palais, a small (free) art gallery. Unfortunately, it was mostly closed for Easter; they had only two galleries open. Fortunately, the building is beautiful and the two open galleries were wonderful. There was this "Woman with Monkey" by Camille Alaphilippe that you can't help but adore:

This is "Amour e Psyché" by Rodin:

This is "Coco" (a sculpture by Renoir of his son):

We went from Le Petit Palais to Au Père Louis for dinner. This restaurant was good (in fact, the onion soup was fantastic). But the quality of the meat was not as high as we had become accustomed to, so we were a bit disappointed.

We weren't a terribly long way from our apartment (about 2km), so we decided to walk back.

I think there's some unwritten rule that one cannot pass by Notre Dame without taking at least one photo:

And again, in case you haven't been following, is again l'Hôtel de Ville.