Europe Trip: 2nd Day in Paris

The next day, after a terrible nights rest, Daniel made me breakfast in bed (scrambled eggs and juice) then we got ready and headed out for the day. Note: This was my one and only “good hair day” of the entire trip! Daniel took the boys down to the small park right next to our apartment while I got our bag ready for the day. John was having so much fun that he didn’t want to leave until we mentioned we were about to go on the train. He then ran over to the stroller and buckled himself up.

We traveled to Notre Dame first and I got to ride on my first actual train (not just the subway). It happened to be a double-decker train which I was super excited about (I’ve always wanted to go on a double-decker anything since I was little). John had a blast looking out of the window and watching the opposite trains go by.

Notre Dame was just as beautiful as I thought it would be. The lines were too long so we decided to wait to go inside for another day. We stayed outside and let John chase the birds and play at a little park to the side of the Cathedral. We had plans on meeting a friend around lunch time so we just took our time walking around and Daniel finally got to tell me all about his trip with the choir. We walked over the bridge behind the Cathedral where they have all the “Love Locks”. Apparently people put padlocks (or smaller key locks) on the bridge to signify their “everlasting love in Paris”! It was amazing how many locks were on the bridge. Daniel (joking) said we should just take a sharpie and write our names on the backside of one of the locks so that way we can leave our mark but not have to give up one of our locks!! When we got to the other side of the bridge Daniel just happened to see one of his friends that he made in a Hostel in Tours, France a few weeks before. It was so random to see him there because Daniel never thought he would see this guy again. He was originally from Japan and was in Europe drawing pictures. He was an amazing artist and even gave Daniel and I free postcards that he had drawn himself.

We kept walking down to the McDonalds where we were going to meet Daniel’s friend that he use to be in the LA Children’s Choir with when they were little (her name is Julia and she is great!) and jet lag hit the kids and they both fell asleep. This was one of the only days we didn’t bring the stroller with us because Daniel thought it would be more difficult to get on and off the trains and subway with. It is more difficult that’s for sure but after carrying sleeping babies all day we were exhausted and decided to never forget the stroller again! We ate at McDonalds while we waited for Daniel’s friend Julia to get there. When she arrived we sat and visited with her for a little while then walked through the “Jardin Des Plantes” together (which is the main botanical garden in France). We walked through the garden (which was huge) and John saw a merry-go-round that he couldn’t pass up. We let him ride it once and he was ecstatic. Julia then took us over to a little café across from the garden for drinks. It was the cutest little place. There were these cute little birds that kept flying all around the café looking for crumbs. John was in heaven and wanted nothing more than to catch one of the birds. He never got close but he would get so excited when a bird would land close to our table. We walked Julia back to the Metro and said goodbye then sat in the garden a little longer to feed the birds some of the hardened croissant I had in my bag.

We decided to make our way over to the Eiffel Tower but didn’t want to go up to the top until another day because we were getting hungry by that time and didn’t want to be there too long. It took us a while to finally get a good picture there because the Eiffel Tower is so big we had to figure out a good angle for the camera. We ended up putting a blanket on the ground, setting the timer on the camera and then Daniel would move the blanket with his foot in order to get the right angle. Like I said, took a while but well worth the trouble! We bought a few souvenirs then headed back to our apartment. By the time we got there we were all really hungry so we stopped off at a pizza place on the end of our street. We decided to keep it simple and order just a cheese pizza and we both ended up hating it. They threw on a bunch of French cheeses that smelled like stinky feet. I was definitely not a fan of the French so-called “pizza” so we decided never to order pizza in France again!