Notes from our Paris vacation

We're back from Paris. It was a wonderful vacation. We saw all sorts of great places and have so many amazing pictures from Musee Du Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Seine River, Arc de Triomphe, Versailles, Sainte-Chapelle, the Orsey museum, the catacombs, etc... 8 days of heaven. I loved the art museums and was thrilled to see the originals that I had studied in college art history classes. But with three kids in tow, we had to keep the pace up pretty quick in order to survive museum etiquette. The French were extremely polite and friendly and we never had any problems asking for directions and getting around the city. We used the metro for several days and also an open tour bus for several days.

The food was amazing after the bland Mediterranean diet we've eaten at restaurants for the last 8 months, but expensive!!! We spent anywhere from $75 to $130 per meal. Ahh, the food was soo good, every time! However, breakfast was usually cold cereal or muffins and juice in our apartment and we made picnic lunches for four days. I also brought a bunch of snack food and trail mix that worked out perfect for all the walking and touring we did each day. Travis cringed every time he had to pay $7.00 for a soda - needless to say we didn't drink many. Crepes are heaven! Some Nutella (chocolate spread) and a banana on a hot crepe for our nighttime snack was delightful. They eat crepes all day long. Sometimes with eggs or ham in them, or just about anything you can think of. Delicious.

Like in Spain the French stay up until 0100 or later, so we went to bed later than usual every night. The sun didn't even set until almost 11:00. The weather was perfect. A little misty one day, but the temperatures were excellent every day. The first few days I felt like we were walking in a huge postcard. The buildings are so big and so ornate and there are so many of them that it hardly felt real. It was awe inspiring. The bus tours had headphones and commentary so each time we jumped on the bus, we'd hear about the city history and listen to french music. It was lovely.

I'll post some pictures and hopefully not go overboard here. When Travis was in the U.S. he bought me a nice scrapbook with papers and European stickers so I can scrap all our postcards, ticket stubs, and memories of Europe. So, I better focus on that for the next couple weeks while the memories are fresh. But I wanted to include a few thoughts here too. This was a vacation of a lifetime for us! By the way, yesterday I was perusing some of my favorite blog sites and found that one of my "blogger friends" was in Paris the same time as us. Too bad we didn't meet! She expresses her thoughts so poetically, artistically and spiriturally that I just have to include a link to her site to share her observance of Paris. Here are a few direct links:
http://aholyexperience.com/2008/06/thankful.html
http://aholyexperience.com/2008/06/lasting-monument.html
http://aholyexperience.com/2008/06/still-and-see.html
http://aholyexperience.com/2008/06/living-in-heart.html
http://aholyexperience.com/2008/06/brave-strokes.html

Now we are happy to be back home and enjoy the long, lazy days of summer in Spain. Since this is our first summer here, it continues to feel like vacation most of the time. I wonder if we'll ever get to the point where we feel like this is where we belong and everything is normal, more or less, or if it will always be "foreign to us". I'm still not used to the European lifestyles (don't even get me started on the beach scene...eek!) Life is definitely an adventure!