Day 12: Lovin’ the Louvre

We take the Louvre’s Muse tour with our guide Guillaume. The cost at first seems rather exorbitant, but it’s highly recommended by two friends (Suzanne and Hera), and is named by all of us as a highlight of the Paris portion of our trip. The tour is organized as a treasure hunt where kids solve clues along the way. Highlights include the Code of Hammurabi, the Arago line marker (basically the French version of the Prime Meridian before it was moved to Greenwich), and my favorite, the massive Mesopotamian sculptures. The latter I would never have thought to go out of my way for, so kudos to Guillaume. After the tour we play the card game Guillotine (appropriate for Paris) for a bit, and then attempt to see the Louvre on our own. We have a new appreciation for how easily Guillaume maneuvered around the complicated museum layout. Eventually we find the Egyptian sarcophagi, but by then we’re DEAD tired…

Julia and James in front of the Arc du Carousel.

Julia on one of the Arago medallions marking the Arago Line in the Louvre. The Arago Line was the French rival of the Greenwich Meridian. Funny that we also visited the Royal Observatory at Greenwich on this trip!

James touches the upside down Louvre pyramid.

Can you tell Kathy loves mustard? (But not French's. That's an abomination.)

From the Louvre we pass through the gauntlet of Eiffel Tower replica sellers to the hedges of the Tuileries Garden. James LOVES hiding inside the hedges and to his delight we agree to play hide and seek. During the game we keep stumbling on replica sellers peeing in between hedges. (Le gross.)

Mark channels Sean Spicer. James: "What was Daddy doing? Peeing?" (This would be because of the number of people we stumbled upon peeing in the hedges.)

James plays hide and seek in the Tuilieries Garden.

James and Julia run to play hide and seek in the Tuilieries Garden.

Dinner is at Le Petit Cambodge, a hipster Cambodian restaurant in our neighborhood, recommended by new best friend Guillaume.

James: “I can balance my fidget spinner on one hand for 74 seconds.”

Julia: “So? I can do 75 seconds.”

Julia’s favorite thing of the day: Private tour of the Louvre, the “Mona Lisa”

James’s favorite: Dog painting next to the “Mona Lisa” (the first known painting where dogs
were the protagonists)

Day 11: Sailing Boats and Shell Games
Day 13: Foiled by Trump!

Day 11: Sailing Boats and Shell Games

We start the day at Le Jardin du Luxembourg, and the kids sail boats in the pond. It is the highlight of Paris for me. Mark and I simply relax on chairs to watch and it’s so peaceful. An American tourist asks to take a photo of our kids, and I wonder if it has anything to do with them being dressed in an old-fashioned way (beret! driver’s cap!) for an old-fashioned activity. Could they think Julia with her beret is French? For the record I only spotted one beret the whole trip (on someone who wasn’t Julia), and I think it was a tourist.

James and his boat. He chose the Argentine one in honor of his Argentine friend back home, Matias.

Julia sails her French boat.

Big boats can be hard to carry.

Kathy, Mark, Julia, and James with their French and Argentine boats at the pond at the Jardin du Luxembourg

I have such slow walkers who have to climb everything they see, it feels like everything perpetually takes longer than it should. And as I think this I notice Mark balancing while walking on a raised curb. I wonder where my kids get it.

Mark and Julia goofing off in sync. (Also, right about now I was like, "We have a lunch reservation!")

We have our first of two modern French meals at highly regarded restaurants that are kind of let-downs. We make the mistake of ordering cuttlefish for one of our entrees, and discover we are not fans. It’s like eating scallops mixed with rubber, with a tentacle for effect. Thankfully, James doesn’t mind it (we don’t call him “the garbage disposal” for nothing), and we happily pass off the cuttlefish onto him, while we dig into the steak.

Kathy poses with her new enemy, cuttlefish.

Thankfully James tolerates cuttlefish.

We eat a snack at an Algerian tea house (Tea: you can take the girl out of London, but you can’t take London out of the girl), and sip mint tea and try all sorts of Algerian sweets.

On the Pont des Arts (and basically every bridge in Paris afterwards) we see a shell game
being played. It’s pretty easy to pick out the shell game guy’s friends as the ones actually
playing the game. Shell game guy tries to get Mark to play, and when he demurs the kids
keep asking, “Why not?” As we explore Paris, this is Mark’s Achilles Heel. Between Mark
stopping to watch every shell game and the kids having to climb everything, it’s a wonder
we ever see anything.

Locks on the Pont des Arte. A few years ago they cut off all the padlocks on the bridge because of the structural damage they were causing. When we visited, the locks were only visible on street lamps and on a thin pipe on the stairs underneath the bridge.

Right after I took this photo of a shell game on the Pont de Arte, this guy told me "no pictures." (A friend said, “He probably wants you to shell out for the photo.”)

Julia climbs on one of the many rings on the wall next to the Seine. They were constantly drawn to these like moth to flame.

Julia’s favorite thing of the day: Boats at Jardin du Luxembourg (especially the “boat fight” between her French boat and the U.K. one - their boats briefly got stuck together)

James’s favorite: Boats (especially his boat fight with the U.K. and Russia. I termed the fight
between his Argentine boat and the U.K. one “The Falkland Islands War, Part II.”)

Day 10: Exploring Passages in the Rain

Day 12: Lovin' the Louvre

Day 10: Exploring Passages in the Rain

(This will all be downhill after my Paris sex dungeon apartment post.)

We begin with lunch at the Google Paris office, complete with a cheese course (it’s
France!), and top that off with macarons at Laduree in the Printemps department store.

Julia checks out the Google Paris office.

Lego Eiffel Tower at the Google Paris office

James eats a chocolate macaron from Laduree.

The exquisite Art Nouveau (my favorite period of art!) dome at the Galeries Lafayette department store

The family that berets together, stays together. (For the record, we only tried these on in the shop.)

To avoid the rain, we explore the Grand Boulevards and particularly the sheltered passages. The passages are basically glass-roofed shopping arcade alleyways from the mid-to-late 1800s, some with impressive iron work and mosaics. We explore Passage du Panoramas and Passage Jouffroy, where my book warns that you can lose yourself here for a few hours. I can see why. There are fascinating stores with antiques, rare books, and old-fashioned candy, and I finally have to drag Mark and Julia away from the boxes of antique postcards.

James at the entrance to the Passage Jouffroy

We just liked that the "for dummies" series here was "pour les nuls."

For a midday snack we Uber to Angelina and share a tea service. (Yay, tea!) It’s not the same as tea in London though. (Boo!) But Angelina is known for their hot chocolate, which is made by basically melting down a chocolate bar. Since they’re known for that I had no choice but to try it. I would have been “le rude” not to. (We end up getting hot chocolate three times in Paris. Angelina’s was the best.)

You might think because we’re in France, Julia is done with her English accent but you would
be wrong. Now Julia specializes in speaking her three French words - bonjour, merci, and
sortie (exit) - with a British accent. Much has been said (by me) of Julia’s British accent
because she’s more daring and excited to talk to people in it, but James’s accent is worth
noting as well. He’s always been an excellent mimic and he floors me when he says his
go-to words for showing off his British accent, “Harry Potter” and “Daddy.”

Not sure I want to eat here... (enlarge image)

Julia’s favorite thing of the day: Laduree raspberry macaron, seeing Eiffel Tower from quite a distance away, tea (salmon sandwich and madeleine)

James’s favorite: Sylvanian Families at toy store

Day 9.1: When You Stay in the Apartment of an Erotic Photographer Or Our Family-
Friendly Sex Dungeon

Day 11: Sailing Boats and Shell Games

Day 9.1: When You Stay in the Apartment of an Erotic Photographer Or Our Family-Friendly Sex Dungeon

When I found our Paris apartment on AirBnb, it was literally at the highest dollar of our price range. (If it was one dollar higher I’d never have seen it!). It included pinball, foozball, and billiards, as well as a working traffic light, and we decided to splurge on it because the kids would love it (they did), and it would be memorable. Well, it was memorable all right…

Unfortunately the slot machine didn't work but everyone loved playing pinball. You can see some of the decorative neon lights here, too. The fact that there's a woman's torso wearing underwear almost goes without saying since there are a few of those.

My friends said, “Imagine the action that thing has seen.” I replied, “It's just a harmless pool table compared to the rest of the apartment!”

Fast forward two months to our Paris arrival. As we enter the apartment there’s a suit of armor with a pink feather boa, and in the living room we’re surrounded by cheap-looking red velvet upholstery and there’s even more of it hanging from the ceiling. It looks like a bordello, plus the apartment is completely inundated with leopard and zebra prints. Our bedroom has little natural (or artificial) light, and is almost completely taken up by a giant leopard print platform bed. The bed is topped with a few stuffed jungle animals and there are more throughout the room. Everything looks custom made with leopard fabric, even the bookcases and TV stands. And the platform surrounding the bed is covered in (of course) more leopard fabric, which means it’s never really cleaned. Mark says we should take a black light to it, and I say I REALLY don’t want to know.

Our Paris bordello... er, apartment

The tiger and leopard print bedroom. Note the print on the bed platform, the bookcase, and the TV stand (on the far left but you can't see the TV).

So far the sex dungeon effect has been subtle, but then we notice the bedroom knick-knacks. The letters S-E-X make for a bookend. Among other things there’s also a statue of a woman on all fours, with her dress up and no panties. Also, a plushie topless woman’s torso. Without even seeing the plushie, Julia asks why there are so many things here with women’s private parts.

Just in case you didn't get the hint, here's a bookend to tell you.

Bedroom knickknack

Um, gimp mask and wig?

Doesn't everyone have a plushie woman's torso? (Mark suggested stars or googly eyes on this picture over the nipples, but I thought that it took away too much from the stuffed nipple creepiness factor.)

And then James finds the chain cuffs attached to the headboard. James asks, “Why are there chains attached to the top part of belts?”

The bed with chain cuffs bolted to the headboard.

Chain cuff close-up!

Mark notices a book of erotic photography by our host on top of a stack of books by the coffee table. I take a look and immediately recognize some of the chairs and backdrops, and of course leopard and zebra print props. And then I take pictures of those photos in the book and pictures of where they were photographed.

In case you want to go check out our Air BnB host's book of erotic photography... That's his name on the cover as the photographer.

I saw this picture in the Air BnB host's book of erotic photography and looked up from where I was sitting and saw…

...the same backdrop!

(I only chose examples with no nudity.) I know I've seen this chair before...

...Oh! There it is!

For the record, a 6-year-old boy usually lives here, and the kids slept in his bunk bed. So it’s both family friendly and a sex dungeon.

Nice wholesome bunk beds

Day 9: Taking the Train to Paris

Day 10: Exploring Passages in the Rain

Day 9: Taking the Train to Paris

Back to reporting about our July trip to Europe. I was very passionate about the London leg of our trip (Tea! Cotswolds! More tea!). So I apologize in advance that the Paris leg won’t have the same verve. But I promise that tea will reappear at some point.

We go to the St. Pancras station to take the Eurostar train to Paris, and arrive 35 minutes
before the train leaves. We see a sign that says you must be there 30 minutes before
check-in, and we have yet to check in. Gulp!

James's postcard to Bubby and Grandpa, sent from the train station

Of course on the 2 ½ hour train to Paris we pass through the Chunnel, one of the things the
kids were most looking forward to this trip. So I tell them we’re in the Chunnel. They glance
outside at the blackness and immediately turn back to their tablets.

We check into our AirBnb in the hipster, non-touristy Canal St. Martin neighborhood
(between the 3rd and 11th arrondissements). Like our London AirBnb it’s another
fourth floor apartment with no elevator, but because of the high ceilings and steeper
staircases of our live-work building, it feels more like the fifth floor. Thankfully
everyone’s a trooper and it’s really not an issue except when carrying luggage.

Canal St. Martin

Julia watches Kathy and James walk next to the canal.

Look at those muscles!

Kathy with a portrait of herself (covered in freckles) by Julia.

Even the McDonald's in Paris have macarons. (We never tried them but we kind of wanted to.)

Julia’s favorite thing of the day: Exercise park (weight training machines) along the canal

James’s favorite: Exercise park

Day 8: Ropes Course, V+A, and Harrod's

Day 9.1 When You Stay in the Apartment of an Erotic Photographer Or Our Family-Friendly
Sex Dungeon