Died and gone to heaven...

Forgive me if this post comes out a little confused, but tonight we ate the most amazing creme brulee - the kind of dessert that makes your eyes roll back in your head and a little moan escape your lips that you instantly are embarassed about... that kind of good. What always amazes me is the lack of embellishment - just a simply terracotta pot on a plate. No mint, no raspberries, no fancy drizzle around the edge to make it look fancy. Just good. This, my friends, is why I love Paris!

This morning the kids made up for lost time by sleeping until 11 a.m. Actually, Julia slept until then and we had to pry Chloe out of bed a few minutes later. They took great delight in eating breakfast for lunch - Jeff and I were hungry and antsy by that time and again he proved himself a great forager by going out and procuring us the makings of a fabulous Parisian petit dejuner. Fresh croissants, baguette, butter, jam, juice and coffee. No complaints from this end! Forgive me if I talk too much about food but really, the food enchances the experience, non?

After prying ourselves away from our accomodations we hit the Louvre (that's the picture you're seeing above.) Now, looking at various Italian paintings from the 17th century and ancient greek sculptures doesn't exactly pique the interest of the average 5 and 7 year olds, but it certainly did when we made it into a scavenger hunt. The four of us each chose a postcard from the gift shop and then set out to find our paintings. I won't bore you with the details of the paintings aside from saying that Jeff took the easy route and chose the Mona Lisa.... (admittedly if he hadn't taken it I would've!). So, off we went in search of our paintings. We quickly found the Mona Lisa (not hard to do, just follow the crowd) and happily enough found Julia's giant, wall-sized painting in the same room. Score! I then pretended to be in the Amazing Race and used my super-sized brain to decipher the clues and find Chloe's painting not far away. (Sorry, I should be more humble, I know.) Her painting had a head made out of vegetables and was painted in the mid 1500's... anyone know what it is? So, to make this exciting story into a sad one I'll finish it by saying that we never did find my painting. We looked until the kids were on the verge of a mutiny... to placate them we took them to look at Napoleon's apartments and his furniture. Right, they loved it. (Note sarcasm). But, Jeff and I found it fascinating while feeding them gummy candies to keep them interested.

After spending hours at the Louvre we thought the kids would love to take the train out to Versailles and look at more paintings, old furniture and gold. Well, the train ride was the most exciting part because we arrived at Versailles 10 minutes before closing so we couldn't go inside. None of us were really that disappointed - we took a picture to prove we were there and to make the kids want to actually pay attention in grade 8 social studies class when they learn about the French Revolution. Who knows if it will pay off. Julia was certain that she saw a secret gate we could sneak through so we followed her through it and promptly ended up in a back alley - but the back alleys in Versaille are much 'fancier' than ours so it took a few minutes for her to realize that we weren't actually in the courtyard but instead in front of a tobacco shop and tavern. This ended our trip out to Versaille... still worth the train ride because what else is there to do other than explore?

So now we're all nursing tired feet and ready to move on from here tomorrow. At dinner tonight Jeff and I were discussing the fact that it already seems like we've had a whole vacation while in fact we still have 3 more apartments to stay in and 2.5 weeks to go! Next stop - Cassis! Paris has been rainy and on the cool side, while the weather report for Cassis is hot, hot, hot. Bring on the beach!

Bon nuit!