One of the many advantages of HEing is that you can go on holiday outside of the really busy holiday times and it's all a learning experience. Last week we had a fantastic time putting our French language learning into practice along with some wonderful experiences and meeting some family members for the first time.
First we spent a few days in Paris itself and did some of the tourist stuff that you really can't not do! We visited Notre Dame, went on a boat, saw (but didn't go into) the Sacré Coeur and wandered round Montmartre with ice-creams (the weather was amazing for March!) on our first full day.
The following day we went to the Musée d'Orsay in the morning (by the way if you are planning on going take a small child - we went to the end of the rather long queue but were told we could go in by a different queue-free door as we had children, who incidentally got in free!). On the suggestion of an acquaintance, which I would thorougly recommend, we went to the gift shop first where we had a look at the postcards and each chose our favourite. Having bought these we then went in search of them in the museum. We found mine and K's easily enough in the main Impressionism section and A's soon after but struggled to find M's, so went and asked at the information desk only to be told that it was en réserve but M quickly chose a postcard of a large polar bear sculpture we'd already seen and all was well again once we'd visited it again.
After lunch we went to the Eiffel Tower having pre-booked tickets with a time slot in order to avoid the queue. We went right to the top (the last people to do so that day before they closed it!) and talked about some of the famous visiters that there are pictures of up there and spotted some of the places we'd already visited in Paris.
Eating doughnuts up the Eiffel Tower was definitely a high-light for K & M!
We had been talking about our planned trip to Paris for several months before we went, but we had kept part of it as a surprise and on the 3rd full day we went on rather a longer ride on the RER than usual to 'a different part of Paris', which is to the east of the centre. It wasn't until we actually arrived that K clicked where we were and we had to tell M that we'd brought them to Disneyland! I had been a bit sceptical as to whether it really was a good idea to be honest, but despite an awful lot of walking and quite a bit of waiting (I really would hate to be there when it's really busy!) we had a really good time. M was a bit upset at being too small for some of the more 'vigorous' rollercoasters, but fortunately she was big enough for several that I found rather stomach turning (she declared a couple 'Quite relaxing!'). K surprised me by being willing to try the more adventurous rides, although she much prefered the more gentle ones. We talked about how many shops there were compared to the number of rides and how it's all about making money, but that we didn't need to in order to enjoy our stay and in fact we bought nothing apart from food the whole time we were there.
After two nights and two and a half days at Disneyland (which was plenty, there was a lot of walking involved and we were all shattered at the end of that, and we'd done pretty much everything we wanted to do that we could, although there were a few things closed for refurbishment that we would have liked to do), we had an evening visiting my cousin and her family. E and I hadn't seen each other for about 12 years and we had both got married and had children since then (2 on my side, 3 on hers), so we were all meeting relations for the first time. It was a shame that we could only manage an evening together, but I am sure it will not be 12 years until the next time we get together!
Finally we headed back for one more night in Paris and in the afternoon managed to squeeze in a trip to the Natural History Museum, where both girls were very pleased to see that they had a Smilodon (to the uninitiated among you that's the closest that actually existed to a sabre toothed tiger).
Before our late afternoon flight home we headed to the Musée de l'Orangerie to see the waterlillies and a look at the outside of the Centre Pompidou and a gauffre avec chocolat, when we had the only rain of the entire week.
We arrived home on Sunday extremely tired, but all in agreement that it had been a very successful trip. At the moment K has agreed that we should try to continue learning some French, so we don't forget it. I'll keep you posted on that one.
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