Paris for my birthday

My 30^th birthday was on Thursday.  It feels a little weird to say I’m thirty, and on Wednesday night, I started thinking about all I did in my twenties.  I started dating Tim, and  graduated from college twice, from Missouri S&T with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, and from St. Louis University with a Masters in Business Administration (MBA).  I got a really good job after the first degree, and continued working during the second.  Also during that time, I married a wonderful man, we bought a house and sold it five years later in order to move across the pond, to the beautiful country of Italy.  And of course, Ben came into our lives, and what a blessing he was (and is) after over a year of trying.  A lot of stuff happened in my twenties, but we still have our family and many of the same friends, along with some new ones.  That night I fell asleep with Tim McGraw’s song in my head.

I think I’ll take a moment to celebrate my age

The ending of an era and the turning of a page…

My next thirty years will be the best years of my life

Raise a little family and hang out with my wife…

Find a world of happiness without the hate and fears

Figure out just what I’m doing here, in my next thirty years…

 Our first Christmas together after graduation, 2004

My actual birthday was uneventful.  Go to work, go home and pack.  The highlight was getting birthday wishes from you all!  And Tim got me an awesome cute little baby laptop, and it’s teal!

Friday we flew to Paris.  Only an hour flight!  And, Ben slept the whole way.  We first went to our hotel.  It was a little tight, but not as bad as I expected based on reviews of several hotels.  All of Europe has small hotel rooms, but apparently Paris’s are extra small.  The first thing we did was go to the Louvre.  I’m still not sure how to pronounce the name.  The r is mostly silent, but I am terrible at saying anything French.  Every single word either has several silent letters on the end, or has added letters that aren’t really there.  On the other hand, it made me feel better about how far I have come with my Italian.

Ben fell asleep on the way to the Louvre, and woke up on our way out more than two hours later.  We were moving fast, and still only saw about one quarter of the museum.  Highlights were the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and The Winged Victory (Nike) of Samothrace.  The collection is housed in a 13^th-17^th century royal palace, and the glass pyramid was added in 1989.

 Venus de Milo

 One hall of the 16th century palace.

 Mona Lisa

 Mona Lisa behind the glass, and Ben sleeping

 Afterward, we met up with my cousin Kathleen and her boyfriend, Michael.  It was great to see them!  Kind of crazy how we met there.  Months ago, shortly after we decided to move here, I decided that I wanted to go to Paris for my 30^th birthday.  Also months ago, Kathleen and Michael decided to take a Europe trip and stop in and see us in Milan.  We knew nothing of each other’s plans.  About six weeks ago, she wrote to me and said they would be in Paris, gave the dates, and asked when would be good for them to come to Milan.  I about flipped out when I saw that, because it was the same time we were planning to be there!  We made sure to choose a hotel that was close to theirs, and arranged to meet.  And it worked perfectly!

That evening, we had dinner and took a night Seine river cruise together.  I really think monuments look more impressive when lit up at night.  Other than the monuments, we saw crowds of Parisians on the banks, so we made plans to do that another night.  This was also when we first saw the Eiffel Tower.  It is huge!  1050 feet (the Arch is 630’).  The tallest man-made structure in the world at the time, Parisians hated it when they built it for the World’s Fair in 1889.  It is impressive by day, and beautiful at night.  It is lit up all night, and for five minutes at the top of every hour, it sparkles with the flashes of thousands of tiny strobe lights. 

 The gold lights are on all night, the small white ones are the sparkles.

The next day Tim, Ben, and I took a bus tour on one of those double-decker open top buses.  Again, Ben slept for about two hours, most of the tour.  (He really needed the sleep after a late night and a 6am screaming session.)  We got off the bus at Notre Dame, where we walked around for awhile and got ice cream (not as good as Italian gelato) before meeting up with Kathleen and Michael for Mass inside Notre Dame.  Unfortunately they closed the church when mass was over, so we didn’t get to walk around as much as planned, but we drug our heels on our way out.  

Arc de Triomphe, and Ben right before he fell asleep.

 Notre Dame from the side; I liked it better than the front.

 Notre Dame from the front.

 Pont Neuf, the "New Bridge", which is now the oldest bridge across the Seine, finished in 1607.

We hit up a grocery store (ah, planning ahead) and went to dinner.  At this point, we were trying to figure out what “French” food was.  As with most nice restaurants around here, the menu was limited to a handful of choices.  Duck, steak, stewed chicken, and raw ground beef seemed to be common at most restaurants.  None of us tried the raw ground beef, but everything else was pretty good, though we thought not as good as Italian.  Yes, they had French fries, but no that’s not what they were called.  We never saw French toast, though crepes are sort of close (if you can imagine French toast without bread).   Sadly, we only saw one beret, on a tourist.  The one stereotype that is totally true- baguettes.  We were highly amused by the number of people that were carrying them around, poking out of bags and bicycle baskets.

After dinner we took our wine and baguettes to the river bank to enjoy the glimmering city of light like a local.

Sunday we all met for breakfast.  In addition to crepes and croissants, the other big breakfast item is the croque madame.  It is a grilled sandwich with ham and cheese topped with a fried egg.  

After breakfast, we went to the Bastille area for more walking around.  We found a market and did a little shopping.  They made the best crepes there!  We tried one with bananas and Nutella, but other options were Grand Marnier or tomato basil mozzarella.  We also tried fresh macaroons.  Pistachio was our favorite.

Saint Chapelle, built to house the crown of thorns, with beautiful stained glass.

 

The Euro Cup Championship game was that evening.  We bought sandwiches on baguettes from a corner shop, and a pack of beer and a few bottles of wine from a grocery store.  The beer was Kronenbourg, basically a French Bud Light.  It was good, but with no cooler, we had to drink it European style.  Actually, I think all of the drinks we have ordered over here have been served cold (other than wine), which was a nice surprise since we had braced ourselves for warm drinks.  They had set up a fan park with a huge TV in front of the Eiffel Tower.  We took our picnic to a park nearby where we could see the TV but not be inside all the craziness.  The game was Italy vs. Spain, and it did not go as the Italians and we hoped.  But we had a good time anyway.  Luckily there were no fights, since there were so many fans from both sides.

 Watching the game in front of the Eiffel Tower

Our plan after the game was to go up in the Eiffel Tower, but we arrived at the line a few minutes too late.  Our only option was the stairs.  There are always towers an church domes to climb in every city, but we never do it because of the stroller.  This time Kathleen and Michael said they would watch Ben, so off we went.  There is a platform at 200 feet and another one at 400 feet.  We climbed to both, over 600 steps!  The view was really cool, but the second one wasn’t that much better than the first, and probably was not worth the extra effort, at least at night.

We left the next morning.  We had a wonderful time in The City of Light!  Thanks Kathleen and Michael for making it extra memorable!