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The second half of our story finds our heros in France. (That sounds quite grand, right?) On Friday morning we took the Eurostar train from London to France. The train only took 2.5 hours and was a lovely way to travel.
The station, in France, however, was not so great. It wasn’t a great neighborhood and we had tons of people approaching us asking for money and offering taxi rides. It was a bit too stressful for this Mama. I was already a bit on edge because the tragedy in Nice happened the day we left for London.
We eventually found our lovely Airbnb apartment just in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. The location was spectacular, it was decorated with beautifully, hand curated, art and it had fans and water pressure. Heaven!
On Saturday we started our time in Paris by taking a Segway tour around the city (Enebo Rating: 5 out of 5). What a kick! We met our guide two blocks from our apartment and got our basic training in the ways of ‘Segging’ (Apparently that’s a verb.) After we were all experts our guide took us on a 6km route showing us many of the top sites in Paris. We saw museums, bridges, military schools, palaces and the Eiffel Tower with plenty of history shared at all of our stops. We did this tour with Fat Tire tours and we can’t recommend them enough. (In fact, we liked them so much we went back to them for our Eiffel Tower tour too!)
After a quick lunch we hopped on the train to go visit Versailles (Enebo Rating: 1 out of 5). This was a late addition to our schedule because it had been recommended by so many people. Unfortunately this was not an original idea (especially for a Saturday). We had to wait a long hour in the brilliant sun before joining the cattle call moving through the large house. As I’m sure you can guess, they weren’t so into air-conditioning back in the day! As you can see above, Versailles rated a 1 on our scale and that was simply a nod to it’s age. No telling what it would have rated if it had only been 300 years old!
On Sunday we went to the boulangerie (bakery) for pain au chocolate (chocolate croissant) before heading out to Vanves to check out the marche aux puces (flea market). We really enjoyed walking down the tree lined streets checking out all the tables and we each came away a treasure to remember our trip by.
In the afternoon we went back to Fat Tire tours for our Skip the Line Eiffel Tower tour (Enebo Rating: 4 out of 5). This was totally worth it! The lines were super long so not only was it great to jump ahead, but our tour leader was a 25 year old guy who had grown up in Paris. We loved hearing the history and then his extra tidbits. (Like the fact that not only did Parisians dislike paying a BILLION dollars for the glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre, but Parisians like lines and they like things to line up (check out this link) and the entrance does NOT line up!) He was very charming!
In the afternoon the girls and I want back to our apartment for some dinner and down time and Allen continued to check out the final day of the Tour de France. (Because of Nice I did not want to take the girls to a huge, unsecured place where 100,000 people were planning to congregate. I admit I am a total weenie but better safe than sorry.) Allen had a great time taking it all in!
On Monday we walked to the Seine and took the Batobus (Enebo Rating: 2.3 out of 5) down the river. It was nice seeing a different view of the city. We hopped off at the Louvre, took a quick picture outside (Fun fact – our Segway tour guide told us if you spent 30 seconds looking at each piece of art you would have to spend 12 days touring, non stop, to see everything. Clearly this was intimidating to us so we did not go in. Ha!)
We spent some time shopping and lunching before coming back to tour La Musee de l’Orangerie (Enebo Rating: 2.7 out of 5). This museum was originally built in 1852 to house the orange trees in the Tuileries gardens. In 1922 Claude Monet donated his Nymphaes series of paintings and he helped redesign this museum to house them. There are two HUGE oval rooms that have the canvases adhered directly to the walls. You can stand in the middle and spin around to see the whole thing. (Except that you might bang into all the people with stupid selfie sticks taking pictures of themselves with the paintings. Seriously?) This turned out to be a good stop because, while we were in there, it started dumping rain. The storm lasted for 15 minutes and then completely cleared up. Kind of amazing to see as we hardly ever see rain come down so hard and then completely disappear.
We ended our day with a dinner of crepes. We we so hungry that I forgot to take a before picture of them. We had raspberry, nutella, chocolate, caramel and sugar. Yum! Later that night Kate and I snuggled into our beds while Allen, Jill and Ellie headed back to the Eiffel Tower at 11pm to see if light up the night. They were not disappointed!
Tuesday morning was our last morning in Paris and we just had a few hours before we flew off to Nice. We decided to walk along the Seine where they have the Paris Plage (Paris beach). It was pretty funny to see that they’d brought in sand and had tons of chairs for beach goers to rent. Yes, there were people in swimsuits sitting in the middle of the city!
We eventually made our way to the Passerelle de Solferino bridge (Enebo Rating: 3.85 out of 5). This is the ‘Love Lock’ bridge. While we were at the flea market we bought a cute little red padlock. We then locked it onto the bridge, kissed the key and threw it into the Seine sealing our love forever and ever amen. Kate was a good sport about this one because she has an irrational fear of bridges (not heights, just bridges). We appreciate her coming with us!
Wednesday was our first day in Nice. If we thought it was hot in Paris that paled in comparison because we added the element of humidity in Nice. Good thing our first day was spent at the beach. ALL DAY! It was awesome! We rented some umbrellas and lounge chairs at the beautiful Ruhl Plage (Enebo Rating: 4.5 out of 5) and happily spent the day reading our books and enjoying the shade. We went swimming in the clear blue water and tiptoed along the burlap runners back to our chairs.
The beaches in nice are made up of rocks, not sand, and these are not pebbles either! That is why they have the burlap runners…to protect your feet. (They also have a wooden dock on wheels that you can walk down to jump in the water. It seriously hurts your feet to walk on the rocks even in the water!) This was just the kind of day we needed after so much touring around.
On Thursday we gave ourselves a bit of a later start and then headed out to Monoco (Enebo Rating 2.25 out of 5) on the train. The train ride is short but spectacular. It only takes about a half hour but the train goes right along the water so the views were amazing. We spent some time walking through the marina with HUGE yachts and then up the winding hill to the casino. This probably wasn’t the best activity for us at the end of a long trip on a hot day, but there was ice cream at the top so that made it all better! We were hoping to have dinner there before making our way back to Nice but that was harder than we expected. All of the restaurants close around five and don’t open again until after 7:30, when our train was leaving. D’oh! Luckily we found a cute little dockside cafe with misters right by the train station!
Friday was our last day. We had some hours to kill before our plane ride so we had some lunch in Old Nice. What a charming part of town! We poked around a farmers market, walked along the beach and finished up with a bit of shopping following all of our tried and true rules. (Only shopping on the shady side of the street and only going into air conditioned stores.) It’s probably not great to go shopping once your bags have been packed but we couldn’t resist. Good thing we are creative!
We brought home treasures old and new, got plenty of new stamps in our passports and two complete sets of funny money for the girls. (Coins anyway.)
We had an amazing time on this trip. It 100% lived up to our expectations! We were excited to go, we had a great time while we were there and we were happy to come home. Win. Win. Win.