Walking down from Sacre Coeur.
Sacre Coeur...we did go all the way up to it and walk through it--what a beautiful church! It is stunning on the outside as well as in the details of decoration inside.
Waiting for the metro.
Jonathan surprised us by announcing that he wanted to go down and join this group of African drummers on the banks of the Seine River...we gently asked, "Um, can you play?" He assured us he could and managed to talk his way into a front row seat and playing position, and banged away for a good while. Pretty impressive! Unfortunately, Jack missed his Uncle Jonathan's debut as an African drummer...naptime!
Jonathan is in the front on the left, in the white shirt.
The newlyweds, under the Eiffel Tower.
Our "Marti Gras" hotel in Paris.
The inside...notice the very brightly painted walls!
They have the most fantastic subway system in Paris. You can get just about anywhere using it...and we used it every day!
Marika, Jack, Jonathan, Eric, and Annika outside the Picasso Museum in Paris.
The Eiffel Tower at dusk...it was so big I couldn't even fit it all in one picture, but the architecture was just amazing.
The growing Whitaker-Durbin-Bennett family!The story continues...
So, we get to the airport, and find a bus to take us into the city (we're about an hour outside Paris). We get on the bus, and put our things in the overhead compartment and the pockets in front of us, and as I'm falling asleep I notice our wallet with our passports, driver's licenses, insurance cards, credit card, debit card, and LOTS of cash sitting the pocket and I think to myself . . . "We canNOT forget that!!" (Can you see the terrible foreshadowing here?) When the bus arrives an hour later, I am groggy from sleep and it's so dark . . . Eric has the baby, who's sleeping, so I grab all the baby paraphernalia and we stumble off the bus. Everyone is half awake, and we have to now take numerous subways across Paris (with all of our heavy luggage) to get to our hotel. We are halfway to the station when Eric suddenly turns around with this horrible look on his face and just says, "ANNIKA!" I knew immediately that we had left the wallet. You can imagine how we all feel. And then I just started laughing. I mean, come on! Thankfully, Jonathan is clearheaded enough to tell us what to do and a few members of our party head back to search around, not finding much. It’s currently 2:30 am . . . we stumble to our hotel, which happens to be on one of the, well let’s just say livliest, streets in Paris (kind of like Marti Gras or something!). The hotel is nice and we all fall into bed. My sister and Eric went back to the parking lot at 5:30 am (three very short hours later) and make contact with people from the bus company, and when Eric calls this one driver's cell phone later that day (not our bus driver, though), he miraculously has found our wallet!!! We were so very thankful, as we were down to, well, NO money at that point. Thank GOD!
So we spend a lot of that day resting, but finally get ourselves together and head out for a late “lunch” (4 pm) at this sweet little café on a corner, overlooking the river and Notre Dame. We spent a little bit of time at a park across the street and Jonathan visited a Shakespearean bookshop. Later that evening we visited the Eiffel Tower. . . I really wanted to go up it, but the lines were so very long. It was really neat just to be under it and see it so close up. We walked around until dark, and enjoyed more crepes. Yum.
The next day we went to Sacre Coeur, which had a great view of the city (and is a beautiful church as well!). We met the rest of the family at the Picasso Museum, which houses the most extensive collection of his works. Then all seven of us went to my dad’s friend’s apartment for dinner. This guy was my dad’s college roommate at Wheaton and has been one of his best friends all his life. He is a very well-known conductor, currently with the Paris Symphony Orchestra. As we talked, we discovered that John (my dad’s friend) grew up in the same area of Costa Rica as Jonathan did . . . so they have a lot of mutual friends and memories. It was so great to see them and hear about their year, as well as stories from the “old days.” J
Our last day was spent packing, looking for formula at the local market (the label was in French . . . I was so nervous about giving it to Jack), enjoying our last crepes, and taking final pictures. We said goodbye to Jonathan and Marika (who were staying in Paris a few more days to end their honeymoon—isn’t it so gracious of them to share so much of it with family!?), and headed (on foot, again) for the airport. It was such a blur that I don’t remember much, except that Jack was extremely hot and very lethargic . . . which, if you ever read my updates about him, you’ll know is very out of character for him—he is very active and wiggly. Just about the entire flight he either slept in my arms or just laid there staring at us. We were really worried (when we took his temperature at home that night he had a fever of 101.3) but I think this was all due to teething, because he got two teeth the following week. Or heat exhaustion? It was his first fever, though, so we were probably more worried than we needed to be . . . but being so far away from home was hard, too. On the one hand, it just felt like: What a way to end the trip! But, it also made for a very pleasant flight (i.e. no fussy baby!) …we got so many compliments from people when we landed on what a well-behaved baby we had!
We got home late Friday night . . . we were SO glad to be home again. For the first few nights, whenever I heard Jack cry I would race to his room in a sleepy stupor, for fear that he would wake up my parents . . . only to realize that there was no one else in the room. We had roomed with other people for 17 days straight, so it took me a few days to get over this.
So we spend a lot of that day resting, but finally get ourselves together and head out for a late “lunch” (4 pm) at this sweet little café on a corner, overlooking the river and Notre Dame. We spent a little bit of time at a park across the street and Jonathan visited a Shakespearean bookshop. Later that evening we visited the Eiffel Tower. . . I really wanted to go up it, but the lines were so very long. It was really neat just to be under it and see it so close up. We walked around until dark, and enjoyed more crepes. Yum.
The next day we went to Sacre Coeur, which had a great view of the city (and is a beautiful church as well!). We met the rest of the family at the Picasso Museum, which houses the most extensive collection of his works. Then all seven of us went to my dad’s friend’s apartment for dinner. This guy was my dad’s college roommate at Wheaton and has been one of his best friends all his life. He is a very well-known conductor, currently with the Paris Symphony Orchestra. As we talked, we discovered that John (my dad’s friend) grew up in the same area of Costa Rica as Jonathan did . . . so they have a lot of mutual friends and memories. It was so great to see them and hear about their year, as well as stories from the “old days.” J
Our last day was spent packing, looking for formula at the local market (the label was in French . . . I was so nervous about giving it to Jack), enjoying our last crepes, and taking final pictures. We said goodbye to Jonathan and Marika (who were staying in Paris a few more days to end their honeymoon—isn’t it so gracious of them to share so much of it with family!?), and headed (on foot, again) for the airport. It was such a blur that I don’t remember much, except that Jack was extremely hot and very lethargic . . . which, if you ever read my updates about him, you’ll know is very out of character for him—he is very active and wiggly. Just about the entire flight he either slept in my arms or just laid there staring at us. We were really worried (when we took his temperature at home that night he had a fever of 101.3) but I think this was all due to teething, because he got two teeth the following week. Or heat exhaustion? It was his first fever, though, so we were probably more worried than we needed to be . . . but being so far away from home was hard, too. On the one hand, it just felt like: What a way to end the trip! But, it also made for a very pleasant flight (i.e. no fussy baby!) …we got so many compliments from people when we landed on what a well-behaved baby we had!
We got home late Friday night . . . we were SO glad to be home again. For the first few nights, whenever I heard Jack cry I would race to his room in a sleepy stupor, for fear that he would wake up my parents . . . only to realize that there was no one else in the room. We had roomed with other people for 17 days straight, so it took me a few days to get over this.
