On Tuesday morning, we had a quick breakfast of eggs, heavenly yogurt, granola, and BACON! (a rare treat for us these days).  So we left the apartment much fuller than we did the day before.  Off to a good start.

We headed immediately to the Arc de Triomphe, the famous arch built by Napoleon to celebrate his glory.  Nazis marched under there during their occupation, and then a grand parade passed through five years later when Paris was set free.  It’s also the setting for the Tour de France grand finale.

I suppose it goes without saying, but the thing is huge.  And intricate.  And impressive.  We went to the top, which had a great view of all of Paris.  It was cold and windy, but it was worth it.

The Arc sits in the center of Paris’ famous 12-spoked roundabout (remember European Vacation?), and one of the spokes is Champs Elysses, the city’s most famous and snobby street.  We spent most of the afternoon strolling down this huge, three mile long street, fighting crowds and the cold.  We window shopped some of the flagship stores of well-known designers, like Chanel, Guerlain, Yves Saint Laurent, Prada, and Armani, just to name a few.  I tried to convince Kabob that he needed a 37,000 euro, diamond-encrusted watch from Cartier, but he felt it was more important that our kids have a fighting chance of attending college.  I guess so.

We bought lunch at a deli and hoped to rest inside a bit, but there were no seats.  So we sat outside on a bench, where the kids let us know that they were not happy.  Chickpea was freezing, Garbanzo didn’t like his lunch, and they were miserable in general.  So we moved on a few feet, and browsed the Disney Store.  For some reason, they were now fine.

The kids played with toys and watched Disney blips while Kabob waited in line for eternity to buy Disneyland tickets.  The store looks pretty much identical to the ones you see in the States, but it’s a treat for our kids.

Oh yes, in between the meltdown and the Disney fun, I popped into a well-known restaurant and bakery called Ladurée.  I took one step inside and knew, yeah, our kids aren’t setting foot in here.  They have a counter adjacent to the dining room where you can buy their most famous specialty, macarons.  They’re not the macaroons we’re used to; the coconut flaked cookies.  These are coconut wafers sandwiched with a flavored ganache and then dipped in some sugary, delicious concoction.  You can choose from a myriad of gift boxes and sizes, so I bought a little black box with eight mini macarons.

So after the Disney store, we popped into this little bakery and ordered hot chocolate, coffee, a few croissants and pastries, and cracked open the macarons.  Heavenly.

We continued down the street, which eventually morphed into a seasonal Christmas craft show of sorts, with little white wooden booths shaped like old-fashioned houses.  They had everything from giant chocolate-covered marshmallows to Russian caviar to pashminas from Iran.

These booths went on for ages, on either side of the street.  Finally at the end, we were at the Place de la Concorde, a garden and giant obelisk from Egypt, surrounded by beautiful buildings (of course).  But most importantly, it is home to an enormous ferris wheel.

We coughed up the 25 euro for our family to ride, and we were glad we did.  It’s a slow-moving ferris wheel with fully-enclosed cars, complete with heaters and a radio.  It rotated five times, giving us excellent views of the Louvre, the Arc, and lots of other famous buildings that we know are important but which we can’t identify.  The kids loved it.

Having finished Champs Elysses in one piece, we went after one more thing — Le Bon Marche.  Normally we wouldn’t care to go out of our way to see the world’s first department store, but we read that it has a great toy store inside, along with a fabulous food department selling great edible souvenirs.  So we took a quick metro ride to the store, which is just behind a cute little playground with equipment made for kids our size.  We let them play with the French kids for a good 30 minutes.  The kids all seemed very sweet, which I think Chickpea enjoyed.  Where we live, the kids can be a bit more aggressive than we’re used to, so these kids’ style of play was more her style.

We finally made it inside Le Bon Marche, and making a quick circle of the perfume and accessories section, where Chickpea managed to hop and slip into a display, cutting her chin, we made a beeline for the toy department.  I didn’t want her bleeding on any 300 euro Hermes scarves.

The toy department was indeed wonderful, full of sweet little wooden French toys, like play kitchens, food, riding cars, train sets, and dollhouses.  We were probably in there a good hour, and we managed to distract the kids long enough to buy Garbanzo his first set of Lego for his upcoming birthday.  Lego are insanely overpriced where we live — like $50 for a small kit — so 21 euros for 650 pieces was livable.

Onto the food department, which is actually across the street.  It felt like shopping at Central Market in Austin.  It was mostly French food (duh), but they had different international sections with Mexican, Italian, and Asian foods.  The aisle labeled “Etas Unis” had marshmallow fluff, boxed macaroni and cheese, Oreos, and Dr. Pepper.  We picked up two cans of Dr. Pepper and a box of mac and cheese (or as Chick now calls it, “mac and fromage”).  It’s vacation, we decided.  We’ll let the kids eat freakishly yellow processed cheese.

We were exhausted and famished by this time, so we made a beeline for the metro to head home.  The journey back was stress-free but long.  So when we finally walked in to the apartment, we collapsed.  We mustered up enough energy to make the kids’ mac and cheese, and to throw together a salad for us grownups (no powdered cheese, thank you).  We threw the customary brie and bread on the side, and it was a great dinner.

And like the night before, we had grand ambitions of watching a movie on the computer once the kids were down, but as soon as we were horizontal, we knew it was wishful thinking.  We all crashed at the same time.  I have no idea what time it was.

posted: 09 December 1
under: family, paris, travel