Cold, wet, crowded with tourists - ah, must be Paris in the summer...

Well it's a lot colder here than in Provence. I think we may have a repeat of our summer trip last year where we were in Scotland (temp ~50 degrees) after going to London (temp ~60 degrees) and Denmark (temp ~80 degrees). I made the kids re-wear their jeans three days in a row because we had no other long pants. Amara still remembers that!

Of course we were in hotels that trip (see previous post on the laundromat experience in Copenhagen). This trip, our apartment has a washer/dryer combo. The washer takes 2 hrs to run and so far, the dryer has managed to achieve a damp dry after running for another 2 hrs. Now there's drying laundry attractively draped all over the apartment. One day, I will have the "doing laundry on long trips" thing completely mastered. Right now, I'm trying to figure out if my jeans will dry in 2 days.

So back to Paris - one of my favorite places in the whole world. Despite the cold, rain and general state of being overrun with clueless tourists, it's still beautiful, fascinating and a unique combination of history and modernity.

Amara and I wandered out our first morning to search for a boulangerie and a grocery store. I love our location - it seems to be in the center of everything. The boulangerie was excellent and just a few doors down from our apartment. We think they use triple the amount of butter than any other boulangerie that we've found so far - which resulted in lovely croissants, pain au chocolats and the big panier cookie that we bought.

After breakfast, we walked over to Notre Dame. The line for the tower was long and the Parvis (square in front of the church that signifies Point Zero for all of France) was packed with large throngs of tourists. A sure sign that the summer high season has begun. It took us about an hour to get into the tower, but it was well worth it for the views. The kids enjoyed discovering all the various gargoyles and Mei counted 381 steps on her way down from the top of the South Tower.

After a lunch and snack break back at our apartment, we headed out to Amorino for some gelato. We noticed rather long lines there yesterday, and when we actually went there ourselves, we understood why. They serve gelato in a cone and shape it to look like a lovely flower. Which is great but the throughput definitely suffers. Then again, no one is really in a hurry here in France.

We took the Batobus over to the Eiffel Tower. It was almost 6 pm by the time we got there. Silly me - I thought that would mean that the crowds would have thinned out. I was wrong. My old trick of bypassing the lines by getting a reservation for a meal at Altitude 95 was also a bust - they had been booked up for 2 weeks. Clearly, my travel tricks for Paris do not apply when the peak season starts.

Mei had been looking forward to visiting the Eiffel Tower for some time and she pronounced it "better than what she had thought". That's no small feat, considering we waited in line for some 90 mins to get up there. We only went up to the second level, choosing not to wait for the additional 30 mins to get up to the top level. It was very windy and our choice of wearing skirts that day did not pay off at all. After all that waiting, we spent quite a long time up there. We descended from the 2nd level to the 1st level using the stairs,which is a fun way to see the inside of the tower.

Finally, we had the requisite carousel ride, were rained on (I had inexplicably left my umbrella at home for the trip to the tower) and rode the Batobus back to the Marais. It was very late but I wanted to try out a famous falafel place around the corner from our apartment. L'As du Falafel came highly recommended and I have to admit that at 11 pm that falafel, lamb schwarma and fries hit the spot!