Our Travels: September 29th, 2011

The temperature here is becoming somewhat comical.  As I mentioned before, we brought many layering clothes to transition from Fall to Winter while we're travelling.  What we didn't expect was Summer.  For the past week, the temperatures here have been in the high 20's, officially making it the warmest weather we've experienced since leaving Texas.  Somehow, we've annoyed Mother Nature, and she's getting back at us by denying us a summer in Canada, and giving it to us here instead when we're unable to dress for it appropriately.

Today we attempted to walk down the the Jardins du Luxembourg.  We left at about 2:30pm and started walking south.  By the time we reached the river, we were all very hot, and so we stopped for some ice cream at one of the many take away windows at restaurants along the way.  Apparently, when it is hot out, ice cream is a popular way to offset the heat here, because ice cream was available "everywhere".  While I'm comfortable with Nicholas munching on snacks, and drinking water behind me in the backpack, ice cream wasn't something I wanted down the back of my neck, so we stopped in the shade beside the Siene river. 

Nicholas got to watch as many passenger and cargo boats went by.  Nicholas was amazed as the 2 boats carrying "sand" went past.  He couldn't understand why so much sand was in a boat.  Seeing the boat captains made me realize that it would probably be a pretty great job, floating up and down the river with their houses below them... one even had a car on the back of the boat.  We didn't take any pictures unfortunately.  It looked like a pretty low-stress career... I'll have to keep this in mind for the future.

After we finished our ice cream, we decided it was too hot to head the rest of the way to the park, so we turned around and headed back towards the apartment.  As usual, Laura went in for dinner groceries while Nicholas got to ride on the rocket again.  This evening, I spoke with the ride operator and discovered you could buy a book of tickets, which also counted as credit towards free rides.  He inquired how long we were staying, and then suggested we purchase this instead... a good idea.  As much as Nicholas likes riding on it, it will definitely be cheaper in the long run.

 

 

After Laura finished shopping, and Nicholas had his fill of riding for the night, we headed back to the apartment, had dinner and relaxed for the rest of the night.