Our Travels: October 3rd, 2011

We ate in our first restaurant today, kinda big for us. At home we are all about eating out so the fact that it took two weeks in Paris is surprising. We’ve been holding off mostly because of Nicholas. We were worried that we would have a hard time finding something for him to eat as well as worrying about his behavior at the restaurant; he is three and they don’t have White Spot here. But today we had breakfast at a restaurant. Nicholas was very well behaved while he enjoyed his croissant and orange juice and we enjoyed our coffees.

After our breakfast we went down to the Seine to see about taking a boat ride. I had done some research before we went down but I must have missed the part when there were different schedules for different times of the years. The boat we wanted to take didn’t leave for a few hours. So we made a new plan to walk South of the Notre Dame and explore. We didn’t make it very far because there was a park across the street Nicholas wanted to go to. By this point it was getting really hot out and we were debating how far we really wanted to go. We thought it might be better we if went home so Brendan could work for a bit and then go out again after dinner.

On our way back we walked through the grounds of the Norte Dame. When we saw that we didn’t need to wait in line we quickly went in. So far we haven’t done a lot of traditional touristy stuff, it’s just not what this trip is about. We are trying to focus our activities that all of us will enjoy and three year olds aren’t really known for being super quiet and having a lot of patience, both a prerequisite for museums and churches. But because we didn’t have to wait in line we took our chance to go in. It is so beautiful inside even Nicholas was impressed and on his best behavior. He kept getting upset when people were whispering; I guess he took the whole be really quiet talk very seriously! We had a fantastic, very quiet time while looking around the church, it really is amazing.