Thoughts, Tips, Links, etc.

Here's a whole bunch of information that would maybe be helpful if you are planning on doing a trip like ours, or even just to one of the cities.

Best purchases for the trip:
Shoes.  I was really happy to have bought a pair of sneaker-style Rothy's.  Yes, expensive, but we walked a lot and the really held up comfortably.  Easy to travel in as well.

Clothespins.  We packed very light, so had to do some laundry along the way, and only had a dryer in one place.  These made it easier to hang up underwear, socks, etc. 

Laptop.  While it was a pain to lug around, it was really nice to be able to easily stream some TV during downtime, and it was way more convenient to buy tickets, etc on the computer than on our phones.

A good international plan.  We didn't have a ton of data available to each of us, but we had enough that we could turn on google maps, look up where we were going, and then turn off data roming again.  It was really helpful getting around, as the city maps we bought often weren't detailed enough to be of much use.

Luggage.  I think that Pete's suitcase was probably the best of the four.  Jax and I took our backpacking backpacks, which I didn't mind but he hated.  The combination of backpack+roller bag+built in carry-on was really great, although it was definitely snug.

Things we didn't need:
Travel pillow.  Yes, it made the plane ride marginally more comfortable, but then we had to lug them around the rest of the time.  Not worth it.

Places we stayed:
We used Airbnb in every city, and generally had good experiences.  The one thing that really got me was the total lack of fire safety in the apartment buildings.  We were never on the first floor and there was never a fire escape.  I am not normally paranoid about this kind of thing, but it's just something to be aware of. 

Getting around:
Pete booked all of our train trips, so I know very little about the logistics of that.  However, I do know that if you book in advance there are some really amazing deals (I think we got from Amsterdam to Paris for something like $30 each).  With one small, flukey exception, train travel was incredibly easy.  (Definitely be on time for your train.  If it says it's leaving at 8.32, it's pulling out of the station at 8.32).

We also exclusively took public transportation (three exceptions: our tour to Terezin started in Prague, our windmill tour started in Amsterdam, and we took a taxi to the airport in Paris).  Berlin's system was the most comprehensive and cost effective, but they were really all good.  In every system trains/trams/busses ran frequently and took us very close to where we wanted to go.  Amsterdam's was the least efficient, and Paris' had the most detours and the most warnings about pickpockets, but there was really no reason to get a car or use a taxi in any of the cities we went to.

But we don't speak German/Czech/Dutch/French:
Yeah, neither do we.  Pete learned a little German before we went, and we all learned how to say please and thank you in each of those languages.  However, in the tourist areas, everyone speaks English.  Even the menus were in English.  In some cases having greater fluency with German or French would have been helpful, but it really wasn't a problem. 

Tips for the best things we did:

Vienna: 
Get the ViennaPass.  It really covers just about everything that you want to do, and definitely saves money.

If you want to eat at Figlmueller, make a reservation.  We bypassed a line that was at least an hour long.

In Vienna our favorites were the Schonnbronn Palace/Grounds/Zoo, climbing the tower at St. Stephen's Cathedral, and Prater Park.

Prague:
We had a really good dinner at U Medviku, a traditional Czech place in Prague 1.  It's a little distance from the main tourist area, but definitely walkable and worth it.

If you want some Holocaust history without the emotional devastation of visiting Auschwicz, I recommend seeing Terezin.  We booked our tour through TripAdvisor, and thought that the 6 hour was just the right length. 

We had heard that Prague was going to be cheap, but I think that's a holdover from travel in the early 2000's.  We didn't find it more or less expensive than any of the other cities.  They don't use the Euro, however, so it does make converting the cost in your head a little trickier.

In Prague our favorites were the Prague Castle complex (it's worth climbing the tower) and the synagogues in the Jewish Quarter.

Berlin:
Visiting the Reichstag Dome is free, but requires a reservation, which can be done online.  I highly recommend both making the reservation in advance and going here.

The public transportation system in Berlin is extremely comprehensive, easy to use and safe; there is really no reason to get around any other way.

In Berlin our favorites were the the East Side Gallery, the Spy Museum, paddle boating in Treptower Park, and lunch at KaDeWe.

Amsterdam:
Tickets for the Anne Frank house become available two months before the visit date, and the timeslots go quickly, so if you want to go, definitely book online in advance.  That said, it's still very crowded, so be prepared. 

There are a thousand possible canal cruises.  We did this one because it was open air and a smaller boat, and I would recommend it.

Definitely eat at Pancakes Amsterdam.

I cannot say enough good things about That Dam Guide's windmill tour.  It was my favorite day of the whole trip.  Just a wonderful wonderful adventure, and absolutely worth the money.

If you want to try traditional Dutch food, we had a delicious dinner at The Pantry; reservations are required.

The "escape room" at the Rijksmuseum was a really cool way to see the museum, and definitely kept the kids entertained.  We saw lots of families doing it, but plenty of adult couples doing it as well.  There's a limited number of spaces each day, so definitely book in advance.

Our favorites in Amsterdam were the Windmill Tour and the escape room.

Paris:
There are so many great places to eat and the city is so huge that it doesn't make a ton of sense to travel from one part of the city to another just to eat somewhere.  However, if you're already in one of these areas, we had excellent food experiences at
Cocorico, very close to the Musee d'Orsay/Tuileries Garden.  Get the roasted chicken.
Ice cream, in Montmartre
Chinese noodles, near Hotel De Ville
If you're near the Catacombs, stop by Moisan LeClerc for bread, specifically the brioche.  It's a small bakery and they don't even have a website, but it was the most amazing pastry we had the whole time we were in Paris. 

I cannot say this enough: get tickets in advance for everything in Paris.  We walked past so many lines and did not pay a cent more to get into Saint Chapelle, the Louvre, the Musee d' Orsay and the Catacombs.

If you want to see Versailles, absolutely, unequivocally, book a tour.  We were really happy with our choice to get a tour of the palace itself but we were free to explore the gardens on our own.  We did this one, but I'm sure there are others.  It was a little more expensive than just going on our own, but skipping the line alone made it worth it.  We didn't find it difficult to get to Versailles on our own, and it saved us a lot of money and gave us good flexibility (just triple check to make sure all of the train lines are up and running).  We found it worth the money and the wait in line to rent a golf cart to tour the grounds.

Do a food tour.  We'd heard really good things about Paris By Mouth, but they weren't running the days we were in town.  We did this one through With Locals and had a really great experience with Zoltan.  The price included tons of food for each of us. 

Our favorites in Paris were the Louvre (a real surprise to all of us), the Catacombs, the grounds at Versailles and, of course, eating.

I think that's it.  It's a little weird to be home and have this epic thing that I'd been planning for so long be behind us.  It was a wonderful experience.

Last day in Paris

Our last day in Paris didn't go entirely the way that we had planned, but that's bound to happen on such a long trip.  I'm posting this from my kitchen table, having slept in my own bed last night, extremely grateful to both be home and to have had such an amazing time.

The kids had wanted to do the Paris Catacombs since they heard about them.  I, not a lover of small dark spaces, had no interest.  So Pete took the kids down into the dark and I walked about for a bit, stopping to sit at a cafe and have a cup of coffee, after having found a bakery with the MOST delicious brioche ever.  So we all enjoyed our time.

Pete and the kids said that the catacombs were really cool.  About 1800ish Parisians realized they were running out of room to bury their dead.  So they dug up a whole lotta people and moved their bones here.  Later on they got a little artsy with things.

bones

This doesn't make the kids look creepy at all.

Fancy bones 

The trip through took about an hour, and then we went back to the apartment to pack up for our trip home.  After hanging out a bit we decided to head over to the Champs d'Elysee to see what it was all about and to see the Arc de Triomphe.  Lea was psyched because she really wanted a Paris St. Germain sweatshirt and there was a who St. Germain store.  Jax was psyched because we got to see some very fancy cars (available for rent).

Lamborghini Aventador 

This was probably the highlight of the trip for Jax #notkidding

Yup.  That's a big Arc.  Very Triomphy

This whole time Lea was battling not feeling so great, but was generally being a sport since it was our last day. We were on our way over to stand under the Arc when Lea really started feeling unwell.  So we made a change of plans - back to the apartment and to a very close restaurant for some pho, skipping our trip to the Eiffel Tower.  A bit of a bummer of a way to end things, but such is life.  We had a nice evening hanging out, and were then able to get up and out early for our long travel day.

Aside from the length, the trip home was quite easy.  Paris -> Philadelphia was about 8.5 hours, a 3 hour layover that involved clearing customs, and then Philadelphia -> Boston was the fastest flight ever, with barely 45 minutes in the air.

About 7 hours in.  Thrilled to still be on a plane.

Mom met us at baggage claim with a homemade sign (and breakfast food in the car, which was so nice) we went home and had pizza, made it until about 9.30 (so 3.30am Paris time) and collapsed into bed.

Not surprisingly we were all up pretty early this morning, and we're spending the day doing home-from-vacation things like laundry, vacuuming, and endlessly smushing the dogs.

We missed this nugget so much.  And the other one, but she doesn't like to pose for pictures.

There will be one more post with some thoughts and links, but this is pretty much the end of the adventure.  It was a lot, and it was great.

Food, food, and the Louvre

I am writing from our last day on this trip.  It has been a long, mostly fun, journey and I'm so glad we did it.  Today holds the Catacombs for Pete and the kids, packing up, and the Eiffel Tower will be the final stop on our adventure. 

But I am getting ahead of myself.  First, yesterday.

We have done some kind of planned tour in just about every city.  Some have been awesome (Amsterdam) some meh (Berlin).  We thought a really cool way to see some of Paris would be to do a food tour.  A little history and a lot of eating.  The one we booked was in the Montmartre, which is a trendy section of the city situated on a large hill capped by the Sacre Coeur Cathedral. 

Anyway, we met right outside the Moulin Rouge cabaret.  We had thought about going, but the tickets are crazy expensive.  So the outside of the Moulin Rouge was it for us.

Because I am the best mom in the world I did not sing Lady Marmalade the whole time we were here.  

And then we started walking.  And shortly after we started walking, we started eating.

Our first stop was at a cafe that was featured in the movie Amelie (which is on my "to watch" list but I haven't seen yet).  So that "cool factor" was a little lost on us.  We started with escargot.  After insisting that no one was going to eat them, 3/4 of us did.  Lea tried, but just couldn't bring herself to do it.  Verdict: not bad.  A lot like very garlicky mushrooms.  Not sure I'd go out of my way to eat them again, but I have definitely eaten far worse things.

Escargot

She tried, she really did.

More bread than snail, but he did it.

From there we continued on to a famous fishmonger, where oysters were on the menu.  This one I skipped.  Pete has had and likes oysters, so he ate mine.  Lea tried and spat hers out.  Jax put forth a good effort, encouraged by a very funny and friendly waiter, but also skipped it.  So this stop had Pete eating three oysters and the rest of us passing on the experience.

Jax was extremely skeptical

Even the friendliest waiter in the world couldn't convince him to eat it.

However, we went from there to ice cream, which has won awards for being some of the best in France.  It was really delicious.  Pete had smoked vanilla (which really did taste smokey), Jax had millefeuille, Lea dark chocolate and I had coffee and cardamom. 

Verdict: better than oysters

(At this point we were starting to get full, which wasn't ideal since there was a lot of food ahead of us).

Next stop, pastry, specifically eclair.  Our guide explained how it came to be that eclairs in the rest of the world aren't like French eclairs, which are made with a firmer choux pastry than our donut versions.  The kids got chocolate filled and I had pistachio and cherry.  Really really yummy.

I did not take one of everything, because I am the master of restraint.

Now we really needed a break from eating, so we stopped by a little garden that has been "touristed up" by the addition of the "love wall," with "I love you" written in something like 210 languages.  Definitely not worth visiting on its own, but since we were there and needed to digest, it was a cute stop.

The children still don't like it when we kiss, apparently.

We then walked by a fruit stand and each tried fresh figs.  I had had fresh figs before, but no one else had.  They were a marginal success, but at least we can say we ate something healthy. 

We were making our way up the hill, stopping for a few historical anecdotes and pictures of the city below us. 

Eiffel tower in the far background

Nearer to the top of the hill we popped into a little sweet shop and each had a macaron.  Two chocolate (not surprising), but I had coconut and Pete had currant, and they were very good. 

Four very full people eating cookies.

At this point, we were wondering how we could possibly eat more.  Typing it out, I'm wondering as well.

Our next stop was in another little cafe, where we tried some cheese and I had a beer.  The cheese was good, although truthfully nothing particularly special (we were definitely in a place that caters primarily to tourists, which I think factored in).  I'm rarely going to say no to cheese, so we all sampled some and agreed it was good, but nothing to write home about.

The last stop was at a creperie.  We were all so full that we split a couple traditional butter-and-sugar crepes.  They really were delicious, although I don't know how we managed to eat them.

That basically brought us to the steps of Sacre Coeur and the end of the tour.  We had a great time, and vowed never to eat again.  (Shocker, that vow was quickly broken).

Paris

Sacre Coeur

I wanted to go to see Sacre Coeur in the morning, but the other three family members felt like it would make for too long of a day, so I deferred.  We looked at the line waiting to go into the church in the afternoon and I was outvoted in terms of waiting to see it.  There is so so so much that we're not seeing in Paris that I am just going to have to add it to my "when I someday come back" list.

We lucked out in that we just had to walk down these steps.

We returned to the apartment for a little downtime and digestion before going to the Louvre.  When we first started planning this trip we were going to skip it, and the closer we got the more we felt like we should really go, if only to say that we went.  It is insanely busy, so timed tickets are required.  The museum is open late on Wednesday and Friday nights, so we decided that we could spend just a couple of hours, see part of the museum, and that would be good.

One teensy slice of the Louvre

Honestly, I don't understand why people don't buy tickets online in advance.  It costs no more than buying them in person.  We zipped right in through the famous pyramid and found ourselves in the biggest art museum in the world.

We had scouted out the floor plan in advance.  We figured that the kids would be most interested in the ancient Egypt stuff, so that's where we decided to start.

The collection is amazing, both in terms of what is there, but also in terms of its sheer size.  Room after room after room of Egyptian artifacts, some in absolutely amazing condition.  It took us an hour just to get through the Egypt section.

Isis, I think

Life imitating art

Took a while to get to the mummies, but then there were so many.

We then wanted to see the French crown jewels, so upstairs we went.  Here we could really see the beauty of the building itself.  Again, I found myself lamenting the fact that I wasn't born into royalty.  Beheading seems a small price to pay to live like that.

Unfortunately we found that the crown jewels had been moved for renovation.  Bummer.  So we went through Italian and French paintings, only being mildly irreverent about the many depictions of Jesus and his pals.  Again, the art was impressive, but the _amount_ of it was what was mindblowing.

Hipster Jesus telling everyone to just chill

Inspirational.

Oh Napoleon.

Lea found the Room of Requirement!

Inverted pyramid on the way out.

So that was that.  We left the Louvre and went for an entirely adequate dinner, and then back home for our last day.  Which is today.  And now we've come full circle on this post.  

Versailles

Versailles was everything that people said it would be - inconvenient, insanely crowded, and amazing.

I've been teaching the French Revolution for a long time, and I have wanted to see Versailles for about as long.  I know that there are so many incredible things to see in Paris, and we are going to miss so many of them, but I really wanted to get to Versailles to see it for myself.

However, I did not want to wait in line for hours and hours and hours.  So we booked a tour that enabled us to skip the line.  I vacillated between one that would take us directly from Paris and one that started in Versailles.  Ultimately I looked at where we are staying and determined that it wouldn't be too difficult to get to Versailles via public transportation and decided to save the money, do a short tour of the palace itself, and then we could spend whatever time we wanted to in the gardens.

This was the line to get in when we left at 3.  It snaked around at least 3 times.  People must have waited for hours.

This was an excellent plan, and ultimately it worked out very well, but a small wrench was thrown in the works by the fact that a huge chunk of the metro line that would have very easily taken us from where we're staying to Versailles is entirely shut down for improvements right now.  Thankfully we discovered this the night before our trip, which enabled us to use the Paris route planner to find an alternate way to get there.  It involved a long bus ride, followed by a metro ride, which found us cutting it so close that we basically ran to meet our tour group, but we made it (and didn't have to pay any more than the metro cards that we already bought, which feels like a steal!).

The tour itself was very interesting, traveling through the main sections of Versailles where the king and queen did most of their official duties.  I am a little bummed that we didn't get to see the sections where the nobles lived, but I also knew that if we were on tour any longer than we were the children would revolt.

This picture was actually taken at the end of the tour, so you can see how everyone was doing. 
Yes, this is the best shot that we got here.

Artists rendering of the famous Estates General that led to the start of the French Revolution

The chapel.  We couldn't get into it, just see it from the second floor.

The ceilings were absolutely amazing.  Every room a masterpiece.

Louis XIV, in his younger, handsomer days.

Bust of Louis XIV by some famous sculptor whose name I am forgetting.  Louis wanted him to redesign the Louvre, but didn't like his sketches.  He ended up doing this bust instead.  Feels like kind of a step down.

Hall of mirrors.  It was, as I expected, too crowded to really get a sense of its majesty. 
But it was very impressive nonetheless.

Family portrait of Louis XIV and his brother Philip

Queen's official bedroom.  She didn't always sleep here, but she did have to give birth here.  Publically.  

Marie Antoinette and the kids.

After about two hours in the palace itself, we were taken out to the grounds, where our group split up.  Our plan all along had been to rent a golf cart to explore the gardens.  The line was fairly long when we got there, and the kids wanted to skip it.  But I knew that they wouldn't want to walk very far, and part of what is so amazing about Versailles is how expansive the grounds are.  So Lea and I waited in line while Pete and Jax ate some sandwiches that we brought for lunch, and then just a little bit after that we were happily ensconced in a golf cart and ready to see the grounds.

Happy to be sitting and happy to be about to eat.

The flower gardens are close to the palace itself, but the canal is quite a distance away. 

Flower gardens.  

Even further past that are the Trianon and Petite Trianon, little palaces where the king and queen could get some time away from the hustle and bustle of the court.  We didn't go into either, as they required a separate ticket, but they were beautiful even from the outside.

Petite Trianon

Trianon

Even further away is Marie Antoinette's mock village, where she could go with her friends and pretend to be a shepherdess.  In fact, it's so far that we couldn't even get to it by golf cart.  Bummer.

So we had a good time driving around the grounds, stopping periodically to see a little more by foot and take some pictures.

Posing with apple in a grassy field in front of the Petite Trianon

In front of the canal.

Canal in front of us, Versailles behind us.

And that was that!  We returned the golf cart and made our way back to the train, to the bus, to the apartment, where we had dinner at home.  (We popped out for some ice cream and saw some amazing breakdancers, but sadly I got no pictures). 

We leave shortly for our food tour, and then have tickets to the Louvre tonight.  We're trying to make the most of our time here, but are also getting very excited about heading home.