The Goodales Take Paris - Versailles to Eiffel Tower

I woke up the next day at noon.  I was the last one up, but I honestly think that I would have slept all day if Justin hadn't finally allowed Vivian to come climb in bed with me to wake me up.  It was still some time after that before everyone was ready to leave the farmhouse and head into Paris.  Thankfully, that day had been planned as being a little slower anyway.  We elected to spend what was left of the day touring the Palace of Versailles.

It was a little rainy, but not too bad, and despite tales we had heard about waiting in impossibly long lines to get in, there were no such lines there that day.

Outside the main gates

I think this picture is hilarious. I asked Justin to stand there for a picture in the plaza at the same time that my father-in-law asked the family to line up for a family photo.  Hence Justin standing there with the family bunched up off to the side. 

This is the point in the tour where you're  glad that the people finally revolted.  It's just incredibly over the top. 

The security people had some issue with Vivian sitting on her grandpa's shoulders, but she wanted to touch everything, so I think everyone took a turn trying to wrangle her through the palace.

Following the palace, we drove to the construction site of the new Paris, France temple.  it was mostly concealed behind a fence line, which sustained only minor damage when my father-in-law attempted to maneuver the van into a minuscule parking space.  He did manage to get the van parked, and we all piled out of our vehicles for a glimpse over the fence of the smallish temple taking form behind it. 

I didn't realize that I was blocking Grandma out of this shot.  Sorry.

Following the temple we spent a fair amount of time looking for a suitable place for dinner.  We finally settled on a small restaurant where I would say that our hostess/waitress was visibly annoyed with the prospect of serving a large group of Americans.  Additionally, she had a patron or two who took no measures to disguise their irritation that Vivian and Caroline were with us.  On the flip side, Vivian was sitting across the room on Brianna's lap blowing kisses and batting her eyelashes at two middle-aged men who seemed nothing short of charmed.  Somewhere in there our waitress was won over too, and to an outside observer, the parting conversation with my mother-in-law looked like long-time friends wishing each other well "until next time."  We made our way back to the cars, inside a claustrophobia inducing parking structure, and by then it was already a late night.  It got later as Mark tried to use his phone to navigate the group out of Paris (since the freeways were all closed again), and the route selected certainly wouldn't be described as "direct."  It routed us through a series of streets that incited conversations about terrorist attacks and locked doors.  At last we arrived at an unbarricaded freeway ramp, and made it a few miles in a promising direction, before we had to exit for gas and a mass potty break.  We dispersed a group of truckers from the line in front of the lone uni-sex bathroom off to join Justin in the wood line. The rest of the drive was uneventful and at long-last we again arrived back at the farmhouse, later than planned, and exhausted.

The next morning we left fairly early, but made a stop for groceries.  Vivian and I remained in the car napping, but Justin returned to us with tales of an astounding and amazing cheese section.  (I hate morning sickness.)  From there we traveled to a spot where we could get a family photo in front of a mustard field. 

Us, in front of the mustard field.  These fields are beautiful, and they are everywhere in the countryside.

Our next stop was the Disneyland Paris parking lot, where we left our cars and rode a train into downtown Paris.  By then it was lunchtime and we stopped for food at a Pizza Hut, then continued on to a place where we could procure ourselves a museum pass.  The pass had a list of museums in Paris so long that it left me with the impression that I would need to become a Parisian to see everything there is to see and do in that city.

With museum passes in hand, we set off for the cathedral of Notre Dame.  Although Justin actually found the cathedral in Rouen to be more impressive, I preferred Notre Dame.  To a large extent I attribute that to having read the Hunchback of Notre Dame.  Actually seeing the edifice described in the book materialize in front of me was better than any movie.  Justin remarked how he found the loud "SHHH" blaring over the sound system followed by "quiet please" in ten different languages to be the loudest noise in there by far, and he has a point.  It was kind of distracting.

Outside Notre Dame, waiting in line the first time.  We had to wait in line twice since Steven and Justin took an untimely bathroom break and weren't back in time the first time through the line.

The pictures cannot do the stained glass in this church justice.

The afternoon had already been a gray drizzly one, and on our walk through the city we found ourselves caught in a deluge.  We took cover in a chocolate shop, before continuing on our way with a few more shopping bags in tow, to the Eiffel Tower.  

Originally Justin and I had talked about climbing the tower stairs to the middle platform, but pregnancy has a way of making that seem less fun.  Lucky for us, my mother-in-law had booked the family on a tour of the tower via the elevators.  We arrived at the tower earlier than expected and killed a little time strolling around the area.  This is when I first started realizing that for a city, Paris is quite picturesque.  Sure, it's still crowded and loud, because it is a city, but it is also a very clean city, with a certain style that is not without appeal.  Eventually the rain picked up and we decided to retreat back to the base of the tower, which did offer some minimal protection.

At that point Vivian hit a wall of sorts and made it known that the stroller wasn't working for her anymore.  I released her to the care of her father, who decided that jumping in puddles under the Eiffel Tower is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and she shouldn't be deprived.  This is probably why she adores him.  Brianna joined them, and took over "supervising" the activity when Justin had to go off in search of food to tide me over until dinner.  My soaking wet toddler was returned to me with a smile so big that her dimples seemed to have grown visibly deeper. 

She naturally found the flooded storm drain, which provided her with the deepest puddles possible.

Our tour to the top of the tower was interesting, despite the fact that our guide blatantly side-stepped Christopher's queries about the type of steel used in construction, and spoke with a voice that Justin described as "the most annoying voice ever."  Still, we enjoyed it.  I'm not at all big on heights, and was a little freaked out about going up to the top level in an elevator, but it just seemed ridiculous to go all the way to Paris and not go all the way to the top.  For the record, the tower sways in the wind.  I found the sway to be noticeable, but no one else seemed to feel it.  I probably would have had an anxiety attack and involuntarily strangled the life out of my husband if I had witnessed him dangling Vivian's head over the edge like this: 

Justin swears that he just held her up and she's the one that was trying to worm her way through the fencing.

These last two pictures were taken from the second platform, not the very top.

By the time we found ourselves back on solid ground, the sun was setting, everyone was wet, and Vivian was freezing.  We had dinner at a small corner restaurant nearby, where I decided that my best bet was to strip her from the waist down, put on a clean dry diaper, and wrap her in a dry blanket (the only item that had miraculously escaped the rain).  My in-laws thankfully purchased her a pair of tiny Eiffel Tower socks, and decided to push back the trip to the Arc de Triomphe until the next morning.  The trip home that night went much smoother, riding the train in and out of Paris.  Although, I do think that was the same evening that half of the group took their own sweet time getting on the metro, and left a few of us stranded on the platform as the doors closed in our faces.  In a group our size that's bound to happen at least once, and it did.