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.