Viva La Paris

We are back in Paris. Actually have been for a few days. We left Pittsburgh 6/27 and arrived in the early morning the next day. The flight wasn't bad, got all of our luggage on board including Zach's violin. Our flight from Charlotte, NC to Paris was delayed by an hour due to one of the runways being closed due to thunderstorms. We tried to get the kids to sleep some on the plane but they were too excited - free movies of your choice! Asia ended up getting sick on the arrival to Paris - not sure if it was the slight turbulence or the sugar from the breakfast pastry and the lollipop to suck on during the descent. I was a little worried about Zach too because of the lack of sleep possibly bringing on a seizure, but he was fine with the 1 1/2 hours of sleep he got on the plane. Another difficult part was the lugging our big suitcases on the train. I'm not sure how we're going to do that on the way home since we plan on having an extra suitcase. We actually nested one of our smaller suitcases in our biggest suitcase (we call it "Big Greenie"). So we had Big Greenie, plus our new silver Samsonite with the really smooth gliding wheels, a cute blue striped wheeled carryon that consisted mostly of food like a box of Cheerio's and instant noodle packages, my laptop case that also was a wheeled case, Zach's violin in a case that he could wear like a backpack, and an actual backpack. Again, the tough part was taking those suitcases up and down the stairs and trying to fit them on the trains. A few nice people would help me with one of the suitcases as I waited for John to come back up or down the stairs.

We're staying in the same apartment in the 11th district that we did 2 years ago. The owner has renovated the kitchen and the bathroom. He replaced the tub with a modern shower with a huge square rainbath showerhead. He also has a washer AND dryer. Last time, I had to hang the wash on a drying rack that took forever and gave you stiff underwear. He also got new appliances for the kitchen - stainless steel fridge, builtin microwave and oven. He left us a welcome note and mentioned that maybe one day, he'll redo his patio. So on this first day of arrival, we settled in and took a nap. So much for trying to get on to the Paris timezone. Even today, it's already 9 AM and everyone but me is still asleep. We usually get rolling around 11 AM for whatever we have planned for the day. Bedtime seems to be around 11 PM for the kids, midnight for John and me.

So far, we've visited our old park in the area where the kids played soccer 2 years ago. The pictures below are from what we call the Art Park.  It's basically a riverwalk with different statues on it. The kids were encouraged to climb most of them.

At the end was a little park, but as you can see, who needs a park when you have cement?