Paris

We arrived into Paris after a terrifying drive through the city to return our rental car.

We stayed in Le Marais and fell in love with the city. It felt magical.

We started off with a family Brasserie dinner. Max really wanted to try escargot and french onion soup. (And Ratatouille, which we never found.) We all tried the snails except for Andy. Everyone liked them except for Davis, who really hated them.

 

We headed out for a walk to explore Le Marais and headed to the Notre Dame area.

Cutest buddies

We bought a watercolor from a street artist (we got the flowers in the top left corner for Violet).

And of course had to get some dessert crepes.

We started off the next morning with a visit to the Eiffel Tower. We had stairs tickets and walked all the way to the middle platform.

We hopped on a Seine River boat tour. It was a bit rainy and cold, but was so fun to see the city from the water.

Ham and cheese baguettes basically every day for lunch.

And lots of chocolate croissants. We had to pick them up every morning in France.

We visited Rue Cler, at Chat GPT's recommendation. Such a cute street! Pictures from this day make me laugh because Cameron and Max opted to not bring jackets that day and were freezing but trying to act like they were fine. And then Max was NOT fine and wanted to buy a sweatshirt in every store we stopped by.

Of course it was pouring rain when we got to our Eiffel Tower picture spot haha.

Davis, always chasing pigeons. (Which is a bit terrifying as a parent when you're in a big city and there are cars very close to the sidewalk.)

Arc de Triumph

We did some shopping on the Champs d'elysee. I spent some time in Zara, we loved looking through the big Nike store, we wanted to go in the big Louis Vuitton store but the line was too long. Not pictured: we ate dinner at McDonald's and it was actually fantastic. Once we got home the kids told Kasee it was one of the best parts of Paris, haha.

Davis always had a stick in his hand.

Sunday morning we woke up and tried to get to church. It was a bit of a transportation disaster, so instead we headed to the city of Versailles to grab lunch (more ham and cheese baguettes) and then headed to see the temple.

Made it to the Paris Temple! It's very close to Versailles. Since church didn't work out, we had a little family testimony meeting on the temple grounds. It was very sweet.

Then we headed to Versailles!

By this point of the trip, the kids had already been through a lot of pretty castles and palaces and were less impressed. They headed straight to a bench in most rooms. :)

Versailles Chapel

Lots of silliness

Davis being pulled through the Hall of Mirrors.

Another bench was found.

Andy was having more teen moments by this point of the trip and was maybe a bit sick of his family, lol. 

We made it out to the gardens!

Last time we were here Cameron and I did a bike ride through the gardens and loved it, so we knew we had to come back and bring the kids!

Davis wasn't a very confident biker a month or two before the trip so we bribed him with extra Zelda time so he'd be ready. 

A magical bike ride! It was a perfect day. French families were picnicking everywhere.

Davis found a snail (and a stick, of course). Not pictured: the moment we realized we had a 30 minute walk from the gardens to where an Uber could take us to the train station. The kids were very tired; I think this trip toughened them up a bit and they were troopers.

And really wanted to go to the Paris Stussy store and it happened to be on the same street we were staying on! I walked with him over and he picked out a sweatshirt for his birthday. (I think it was $160? Insane. Don't worry, we made him pay for part of it.)

We woke up Monday morning and headed to the Louvre. It was so, so busy. (Really, everywhere was very busy. It was clear we were there in the busy season.) 

Reading the map in the Louvre. :)

The kids all really wanted to see the Mona Lisa. Violet really wanted a picture and was very disappointed that it was hard to get a good pic.

More bench finding.

Maybe the most accurate depiction of our trip? hahaha

I think it's clear we'd been in Europe for 2 weeks by this point and were tired and over museums. :)

We really hyped Davis up on the Egyptian part of the Louvre and then it ended up being closed. Except we found this guy so we had to take a pic!

There was a very cool Rodin/Michelangelo exhibition that I really loved. And the family was patient with me when I wanted to find it because they really wanted to leave. :)

Andy spotted an NBA star, Bam Adebayo, from our Uber. I think it was his whole Paris highlight.

We visited Saint Chapelle, which was stunning. Somehow I'd never been here before on previous Paris visits? 

Our official visit to Notre Dame.

We went inside! Andy was clearly loving it.

I found a vendor on the street selling old French books and I bought this Voltaire book. Something that the vendor said really excited Davis and he carried the book around for a long time and talked about how he wanted to learn French now. :)

We finished the day with a visit to Luxembourg Gardens. They have these cute sailboats that kids can rent and push around with a stick. It was so fun. 

We left the next morning. Most of the family was ready to go home (not me--I loved Paris and could have stayed much longer). It was a magical trip, just over two weeks long. It had plenty of hard moments (it's no joke carting 4 kids around Europe), but was full of special moments and memories. I'm so grateful we were able to explore and make memories together. I think the trip really expanded the kids' horizons and showed them a whole new corner of the world.