Here we are, at the top of the alps –this part of the alps, at least

L’aiguille du midi is the A-1, gold star attraction here. It’s not the top of Mount Blanc, but it’s pretty close.  And it’s as far up as you can get here without mountaineering gear.

Unlike yesterday at Grands Monets, there are plenty of people in line for the gondola here. We have to get a reservation number, but the isn’t wasn’t long.  It’s good that we arrive early, We got a little after 8 am.

We’re going to the very tip of the peak behind the girls.

No waiting time at the midpoint.  We go right into line for the cable car to the top — and what a cable car ride it is.  The thick black cords arch upward along a sheer face of rock and snow, and the large cars shrink to almost invisibility — to those watching and waiting anxiously on the platform — as they make their trek to the top.  By the end of the trip, the trajectory is almost completely vertical.

The ride takes exactly 180 seconds.  I count as I look at the floor. Even Jen is a little uncomfortable with this trip.  “Who even Thinks about putting a cable car here?” she asks.

Mountaineers on the ridge

I actually look out the window as we get near the top, who knows why. Here, incredibly high off the valley floor, are more mountaineers navigating a tightrope ridge of snow.

In excruciatingly slow motion, the car ascends the final 20 feet and docks at the landing.  We are as high as we could go..or are we?

The station at the top promises us 360-degree views.  It also features several viewing decks at various levels, many connected by grate (virtually see-through) stairways. There’s a bridge — thankfully solid and opaque — over a 200-meter precipice, and just when we think we’ve seen it all, we notice there was an elevator that would bring us up to another platform, 100 meters higher than the cable car landing.

Oh, and then there ae the views (if you can, click on the pictures to enlarge them):

At the top, 12,602 ft

Three of us make it up to the top (though I only stay there long enough to prove I was there and to peek very meekly over the railing at Chamonix far below — it is like looking out the window of a cruising airplane). The others stay in the gift shop and cafeteria. The air is thin here and it’s understandable to want to rest.

I actually get a burst of energy, though.  I wander around the station.  There’s a tunnel through the rock, a big metal tube with small windows that made you feel like you were looking out of a space station onto a frozen exo-planet, a small museum on mountaineering, an exhibit that teaches about the dangers of hypoxia, and several viewing platforms.

It is crowded here, and most people want to get closer to the edge than I do, but my exploring pays off.  I take Lanie for a tour while we wait for Zoe and Jen to come back down in the elevator. They’re in a very long line at the top waiting for Zoe to “step into the void,” which is to say she wants to stand in a glass closet affixed to the side of the station.  It allows for great views horizontally across 180 degrees. and terrifying views straight down into a kilometer-deep precipice. Literally there is no ground beneath you for 1,000 meters.

Rock climbers join in the fun

Zoe is excited about this because she is Zoe. Jen and I think it’s kind of cool because it costs 30 Euro, but it is included in our multi-pass.

Sadly, the wait proves to be too long. They exit the elevator without the any Pavliks stepping into the void, and I am able to give those guys a tour of the facility. By now I can show them extra things that Lanie and I found, like the ice cave that we can walk through. There is also an icy portal onto the mountain that you need to be wearing cold-weather gear, foot spikes and a rope attaching you to several other people before you can go through it.

Signs near the portal warn skiers of the dangers of these high-altitude snow fields. You must be a red-level skier (which we think equates to expert, black-diamond level here) and have a professional guide to ski here. Nobody is trying it today. It must be more of a winter activity when you can ski all the way to the bottom (maybe 11,00 feet of vertical drop — amazing).

We also pass the landing for gondolas that ferry people from the l’Aiguille du Midi about 50 minutes across mountaintops and glaciers to the Hellebroner peak on the France/Italy border. From there one can descend into Italy. Cool way to travel, in theory at least. These gondolas are closed down while workers repair storm damage. Not a big deal to us — it wasn’t included in the multi-pass.

Hot chocolate with a side of oxygen

That completes our tour of the top. I count up to 180-one thousand on the way back down the cable car, and once again it’s like we’re back on Earth. Farther down we go into Chamonix to a cafe that promises more than a dozen kinds of hot chocolate. That sounds fine when you’re up in the snow fields and the temperature is near freezing, but back in the valley, it’s about 80 degrees. Two people still get hot chocolates out of guilt because we walked all over the place in 80-degree heat to find this particular cafe. On the plus side, there seems to be plenty of oxygen down here.

Just when you think we’re done adventuring, remember that we’ve still got the multi-pass. Plus, the cafe is not far from the train station. Here we pick up seats on a cog railway that takes us on a leisurely run up the north side of the valley to another glacier, the Mer du Glace.

We are not entirely prepared for this trip, partly because Jen has told us we are quit of hanging from cables, yet there is another gondola here on the side of the glacier, to take us down to the ice. It is not mentioned in the guide book. We all decide that one more gondola ride beats walking down and up a hill, so on we climb.

Wait, another gondola?

This gondola is not particularly scary in terms of altitude, but it is part of a very depressing descent. It was built 50 years or so ago to take people down to the glacier; but when you get out of the car. the glacier is still several hundred feet below you.

As you descend the dozens of flights of stairs to get down to the ice, you realize that it wasn’t meanness or an engineering miscalculation that deposits people from the gondolas so high in the valley. Signs along the trail indicate the height of the ice in past years. Even since 1985, the first sign posted on the trail, it has descended steadily, melting away into the river that runs cold and strong through Chamonix even in the middle of summer.

Indeed, the Mer du Glace (or “Sea of Ice”) glacier used to reach up to the solid, three-story stone building where the train terminates and the gondolas start. There is a photograph of this from the late 1800s, when they measured the glacier to be 270 meters deep. We learn when we finally got down to ice level that there is perhaps 90 meters of ice left.

Depressing.

But they’ve continued adding flights of stairs down so tourists can get to the ice cavern.  This is a very interesting experience.  Yesterday we walked on top of a glacier, today we get to walk inside one.

Although the disappearing glacier is a bit of a downer to end our time in the alps, it is also a sobering reminder that we need to do as much as we can to help stop the warming of the planet.  The views are some of the most dramatic of the trip, as well.

All that is left is to give the kids their fondue fix — they make their own simmering beef-broth bath in the electric fondue pot conveniently stocked by our apartment’s owner.  The parents slip out to eat in the main square downtown.

Then it’s time for packing.  We will have little time tomorrow to get ready to leave.  Our flight leaves at 12:30 from Paris.  We have a six-hour drive to get there.  We’ll need to be on the road by 4 am.

Au revoir, Chamonix.  Au revoir. France.

This trip is not lacking in variety.  Colmar seemed quite distinct from Paris — in architecture, cuisine, number of Americans (we rarely overheard anyone in Colmar speaking English, while Paris seems to practically be a bi-lingual city).

Chamonix is worlds away from both of these places, totally dominated by the surrounding natural beauty and the exercise of getting on up to interact with it.

Zoe’s bird’s eye view upon take-off

“Up” is  the operative word here.  There is lots of altitude to be gained, and the favorite sport seems to be going skywards. The valley is striped on both sides by gondolas and cable cars en route to the middle or top or bottom of a mountain.  Even in summer, when most of the ski lifts are still, there is much lifting going on.

Nadia and guide in bottom left corner.

We purchased a “multi-pass” this morning to allow us to go on just about all of them for two days.  It was quite an investment, but the cable cars don’t come cheap and our plan is to put as many as possible to use for us.

The girls got us off to an early start with their paragliding adventure.  We’re a little surprised and very impressed that they all went through with it, but none of them expressed anything but excitement about the experience.  In fact, Lanie is asking if they sell paragliders in the US. Her guide, who told us Lanie has definite pilot potential,  said in France you have to be 14 to fly solo; but you can practice with some  kind of “wings”  — we’re not entirely sure what he meant — when you’re younger than that.

No waiver necessary for your 10-year old to do this in France.

Given that we didn’t have to sign a single waiver for three kids paragliding in Chamonix, I’m guessing the rules about the sport are slightly different in the US, where we have to sign wavers just for the trampoline park.  So she may have to wait a little longer than 14, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be searching for “wings” on Amazon as soon as we get home.

This took us to Le Brevant peak.

With paragliding behind us and the whole valley at our disposal, we headed right back up the mountain as soon as the girls were disconnected from their pilot guides.

A gondola and a cable car (bridging a great void)  took us to our first peak, Le Brevent.   We didn’t spend too much time at the peak here (the cable car ride was enough altitude adventure for the moment), but we headed down a trail that swiftly brought us across…snow.  Not everything has melted here, even in mid-July.    We slipped and slid in our sneakers through several snowy patches.

The back side of Le Brevent

Less sun on this side means there’s still snow on the trail.

That was only part of the appeal of the hiking trails.  Across the valley we got magnificent views of Mount Blanc, gleaming with its glaciers and snow fields.  It never melts up there — good ol’ white Mount Blanc.

Our trail took us in the opposite direction, though, as we bucked the up/down trend and went across the south side of the valley.  The Grand Balcon Sur trail had us clinging pretty close to the valley wall,  picking blueberries on our left and avoiding a long tumble into Chamonix on our right.

Lunch break

We ate lunch at the edge of a huge alpine meadow filled with wildflowers, and made our way to the next way station, Le Flegere.  Here, we had the option to take a six-person chair lift to the summit, but decided instead to descend and head further into the valley.  We wanted to make sure we had time for our next adventure, building heavily on the snow theme.

A short bus ride (the bus is also covered on our multi-pass) took us to the village of Argentiere, where a gondola and cable car at the Grands Montets ski resort carried us to an actual glacier.

Clouds were already starting to form around some peaks by late morning.

Up Grands Monets

Generally, the idea here is to get to the summits as early as possible in the morning, when skies are more likely to be clear and the views of the valley at their best.  By this time of the day the afternoon clouds had already rolled in, so our views were limited.   We were essentially in the clouds for a lot of the time, but we got to walk right out onto the glacier.

Cloudy cable car ride

Our visibility was good enough to see mountaineers a few hundred meters above us on the glacier, but generally there were few other people walking around on this outpost.  For this we have Zoe’s paragliding guide to thank.  She was the one who recommended this trip, expressing amazement that more people don’t find their way up Grand Monets.

For us it was a great choice. There was a little snow ball fighting, and we worked hard to keep Zoe from following the stream of mountaineers zig-zagging single file up into the thickening clouds.  This trail was not meant for running shoes, but it was still very inviting for Zoe.

You can ski right off the mountain.

Apparently this is another launch pad for paragliders, particularly in the winter.  The ski trail map indicated a section where you could ski right off the mountain and ride your paraglider down.    We would have to settle for taking the cable car and gondola to the valley floor.

As if all that were not enough adventure for the day, we followed these ramblings with a circuit of downtown Chamonix looking for a fondue dinner.  Unfortunately, while the place was thick with establishments offering cheese fondue, we could only find one that offered the beef in broth fondue that was such a hit last winter in Quebec, and the one place was prohibitively expensive.

Lanie is in for it.

So we changed gears, deciding go to a microbrewery tonight and then tomorrow utilize the electric fondue pot in our apartment to recreate the beef course.

Not really sneaker conditions

Stay tuned to see how that adventure turns out.

Roadside view in Switzerland

Gold-plated macarons

We didn’t exactly get up and at ’em this morning.  Checkout time for our airbnb was 11am and we barely made it.  Bob and Zoe had to run, and Lanie and I had to walk into town for various supplies for the day.  We’d had our whole picnic planned out based on items we’d seen in shops on previous days, but alas were thwarted by the fact that it was a Sunday morning and apparently the whole town shuts down.  Luckily we eventually found a large market featuring local foods that opened at 10am, and were able to procure various sandwiches, pretzels, fruit, and carrots.  Oh, and we found a bakery selling macarons and bought a box, which practically required us to take out a mortgage on our house.

Swiss picnic

In any case, at 11:00 we were on the road.  We’d considered taking a scenic route, but decided to stick with the comfort of our GPS and minimize the length of the drive.  As it turned out, it was plenty scenic in any case.  The most direct route between Colmar and Chamonix, in the Alps, is mostly through Switzerland, so we got to add a new country to our list.  We admired the rolling farmland and picturesque villages along the

Roadside view from the rest stop

highway, and stopped to have our picnic lunch at a rest stop with picnic tables under the trees.  We passed by several towns that have become namesakes for what they produce: Gruyere, Emmenthal, St. Bernard, Evian.  We eventually came upon Lake Geneva, an enormous blue-green lake with mountains towering in the background.

Hiking at the Swiss hotel

At that point the road abruptly changed.  Our comfortable highway disappeared and in its place was a narrow, two lane road climbing a series of switchbacks up the looming mountain.  It was quite…invigorating being on the cliff side of the car, with inadequate guardrails, and I’m sure it was not any better for Bob in the driver’s seat.  It didn’t take long for Nadia to start to suffer from carsickness, and the rest of us were a bit queasy as well.

Hiking at the Swiss hotel

Luckily when we’d summited the mountain we found a little Swiss hotel/restaurant with a parking lot and some amazing viewpoints that made an excellent stopping/recovery point.  We took a few short walks and admired the scenery before hopping in the car for the final half hour drive to Chamonix.

The scenery here is breathtaking.  The road and towns are on the floor of a valley, with dramatic, snow-capped peaks rearing up on either side.  Everywhere has a view, and our rented townhouse is no exception.  Chamonix provides more evidence that the French know how to build resort towns better than we do.  The buildings are lovely, the winding streets

View from our home in Chamonix

full of charm and flowers.  There are restaurants, cafes, and bars with outdoor umbrella-ed tables on pedestrian streets.  There is a bus that will take you up and down the valley and cable cars that will bring you high up on the mountainsides on either side.

We strolled into town along a pedestrian/bike path, alongside a rushing glacial river.  The girls

No screens in France!

decided they could use a relaxing night in, and we actually managed to find a sizeable grocery store in town, so we picked up supplies for them to make dinner.  Of course, we got rained on again on the way back home — and up here in the mountains, it’s cold when the rain starts.  (It’s even colder when you’re walking next to a glacial river.)  Nevertheless, Bob and I made it back in (this time bringing raincoats, which ensured that it didn’t rain again) for an adult dinner in town.  Tomorrow we have to arise early for the girls’ paragliding adventure!

Beautiful downtown Chamonix with Mer de Glace glacier in the background

Glacial river in Chamonix

Our decision to return the bikes early proved to be a good one.  Heading out to the patisserie for breakfast the next morning, we found ourselves getting rained on again.  (We still apparently haven’t learned our lesson about always bringing our raincoats.)  The rain continued unabated throughout our walk to the rental car company, but fortunately we were able to secure the car without incident.  Best of all, it had a built-in GPS!   Ah, the joy of always knowing where you are.

We decided to attempt on four wheels what we hadn’t managed on two wheels the day before, and set off once again up the Route de Vin.  Our first destination was the village of Riquewihr, and it did not disappoint. Nestled into the green hillsides, straight out of a fairy tale — like something you’d see in Disney World, but all authentic.

Pretzels make everyone happy

The whole Route de Vin is lined with wineries and vineyards, and Bob and I decided we had to at least experience a bit of it.  The girls had shown a propensity to linger long around this fountain containing many large goldfish and koi, so we set them up there with soft pretzels and slipped off to do a wine tasting nearby.  A good time was had by all.  And it didn’t rain at all!

The next village up the road, Hunawihr, promised a “stork and otter reintroduction center”.  (Storks are VERY big here.  They’re native to this region in the summers, but due to

Wine makes parents happy

various human activities had dwindled to single digits around thirty years ago.  The region of Alsace made a huge effort to save them and

Stork nest atop the church

achieved great results.  One of the things we noticed is that many buildings have a circular platform built out on to the roof to host nesting storks, and may of them are populated.  There is stork-themed merchandise everywhere.)

Dinner time for the ROUSs

Anyway, this place was way more fun than we had anticipated.  There were lots of different aquatic-related animals on display.  None of the bird habitats were enclosed, so there were storks, ducks, geese, and cormorants wandering around and flying through the air everywhere.  We saw giant hamsters (not actually sure if they fit with the aquatic theme) and these large aquatic rodents called ragondins that we couldn’t identify but

Nest-building stork

decided were most likely the famed Rodents Of Unusual Size.  There was this cool “parcour” walk that never would have flown in the US because of the likelihood of some tourist falling off into the water.  (All of us managed not to fall off into the water.)  When we climbed the observation tower above the trees, we saw that the treetops were full of stork pairs, preening and working on their nests.

On the parcour course

Very creepy sea lion

Best of all was a really cool show that featured various animals that fish.  We couldn’t understand a word of the presentation in French, but it didn’t really matter.  The presenter brought out, in succession, storks, cormorants, otters, a sea lion, and penguins.  They jumped into a tank of water with clear sides.  Instead of doing human-taught tricks, the staff would throw live fish into the pool and we could watch — above and below the water — while the animals caught them.  It was fascinating, particuarly when watching the

UFC championship: cormorant vs. eel

cormorant do battle with an eel.  (The cormorant won, but it took some time.  After appearing to swallow the eel, the cormorant opened its mouth again to eat a fish, and the eel re-emerged and had to be caught again.)  I’m sure from the fishes’ perspective, it was much like being thrown into a Roman gladiator ring.

We made an attempt to make one more stop in Ribeauville, where we were considering doing a hike to some castle ruins — but there was a

After seeing what happened to the eel, you’d think Lanie would keep her distance.

festival going on and we couldn’t find parking.  (One downside of the GPS was that before we realized what was happening, it had led us down into the very narrow warren of cobblestone streets that seem to only be made for pedestrians.   Luckily it was also able to get us out again.)

All that remained to cap off a great day was another trip to the park for Zoe to run, and a sunset dinner in Colmar, followed by delicious gelato.  Tomorrow, onward to the Alps!

Colmar sunset

In Paris, we paid little regard to the weather, except to notice that it was hot and dusty.  It remained this way for the entire duration of our stay there.

We did not bother to check the forecast.   Even it if did decide to rain, there were dozens of indoor places — museums and such — to ride out the storm, or there was the Metro to get us home in a relatively dry fashion.

Here in Colmar, the lovely capital of the Alsace region, we quickly noticed it was not as dusty, but the skies were still sunny.  We proceded in our charmed vacation existence not giving much thought to the weather report.

On the path to Turkheim

Tiny oversight.

Today dawned bright again.  We hustled out to rent bikes and zip out of the city on dedicated lanes, looking for a trail that would take us through the famous Alsacean wine country.  Stocked with multiple maps and general directions from the bike shop staff, we cruised along…until Turkheim,  which is a lovely town, but it lacks seriously for  coherent bike route signage.

We circulated through several key intersections multiple times trying to figure out what the painted arrows on the ground and the nice signs with grapes and bikes were trying to tell us.  Whatever it was, it did not synch with our Haute-Alsace a Velo map, which suggested we should find a cushy, two-laned bike path.

Again, I feel the need to comment that we were in lovely surroundings.  Turkheim, like many of the towns and villages here, has buildings and architecture that seems to go back to the middle ages.  Here, like in many towns we’ve seen, there is a large church central to the downtown, with a roof of grey tile latticed with bright green in a style that we’ve only seen in this region.   The hills around the town are quite literally covered with green rows of grape vines, practically every meter used for agriculture.   There was not a ton of car traffic, but a lot of people aobut.  It was a pleasant place to hunt around for a bike path.

Eventually, after ever-widening loops of the city trying to pick up the lost trail, we found a sign with grapes on it possibly pointing up a lane.  We followed, bolstered by input from other cyclists that they were “99 percent” sure this was the route.

It wasn’t a dedicated bike path, and it was rather steep, but we climbed and hoped.  We also were agog at the scenery when we managed to take it in.  For 270 degrees of our view, rows of vines covered the hillsides in patchwork sections. For the remaining 90 degrees, Turkheim wrapped around its central church in the valley, and beyond that lay Colmar in the distance.

Zoe is happy about making it to the top of the hill.

It was still sunny.  And rather hot on the way up.

On the other side of the mountain was a lovely little village called Neidermorschwihr, which, while somewhat sleepy, will henceforth go down in history as the place where we discovered tarte flambe.  It sounds like a dessert set on fire, but it’s really kind of an Alsacean pizza with no tomato sauce and a really thin crust.  Most have cheese of some local variety, onions and bacon pieces.  Mine had mushrooms, too.

The tarte flambe in Neidermorschwihr is worth climbing a hill for.

As we had lost a little time in Turkheim and we weren’t really sure how to find the actual bike path (we decided over lunch that the grape sign we followed up the hill was for the automobile Wine Trail, which was nice, but a little to narrow and car-travelled for our liking).

Still, we would not be deterred.  There were villages out there to be explored and we got directions from our waitress to a nice-sounding one.

Blackberries are in season and plentiful on the roadside.

Down the hill we rode, via a different route from the one we ascended.  Through a town, around a few round abouts, along a road that wasn’t too narrow. We veered off onto what looked like an underpass and, viola, it was the bike path!  Clear signs, fellow cyclists and everything!

We happily started following it to the next town — we could see the steeple of the church not five kilometers away.

Then it started drizzling.  Over the mountains had seeped grey clouds that were rapidly overtaking the blue sky.  Dark grey clouds.  Kind of black in places.  There was some thunder, clearly on the other side of the mountain from us.  And maybe a flash of lightning.  We hoped to reach the village and ride out the storm in a cafe, but then the path let us down.  Suddenly there was a no-bike sign and the paved path turned to grass.  We were riding along the outskirts of a residential neighborhood, and apparently we were supposed to navigate this to the center of town,  but there were no signs to guide us.

The skies got darker.  The drops of rain persisted.

We had to fold.  We reversed our direction and followed the bike path back to where we discovered it.  There were signs for Colmar  We could follow the bike path all the way back to our base camp, and that’s what we did.

Still outrunning the storm, but not for long

But the rain would catch up to us.

We got pretty wet .  And some of us got pretty excited about riding through vinyards (this was where the bike path was hiding all this time, in the vinyards!) during a thunder storm.  The wind kicked up, the rain grew in intensity and we sloshed through about 10 kilometers of bike path, then city roads to get back.

On the plus side, we did it in pretty good time.  People who were not at all anxious to ride up a hill in the sunshine, were quite keen to ride quickly in the rain once they saw a few lighning flashes (it should be noted that we did not see lightning touch the ground — all the flashes were way up in the sky and if they did strike the ground it was on the other side of the mountain from us).

This adventure cured us of our weather complacency.  As soon as we were in dry clothes, we checked the weather report.  It confirmed that there were “a few showers around” today and that there would be same situation tomorrow.

Sadly, this meant some changes in plans.  Although we had rented the bikes for two days, with the hopes of perhaps riding tomorrow to the German border, we decided to return them this evening.  During a gap in the percipitation, we rode them back to the store.

Dry and happy in the wine and pretzel pavlion

Then as the rain started again, we walked to the city center and found the wine and pretzel pavilion.  There was one table left that was mostly out of the rain.  It was good wine and good pretzels.

The rain eventually stopped and we walked home.  The silver lining came not long after we settled back in.  Jen discovered that the car we’d reserved to rent starting tomorrow would actually be available at noon and not at 5 like we’d originally requested.  We’ll have time to poke around a little after we pick it up.

We may get to the German border after all, or perhaps to one of those little towns in the hills.

Rain or shine.

Leg 1 – the Metro

This morning we bid adieu to Paris and moved on to Colmar, in the Alsace region on the border with Germany.

I have to say, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves midway through the day.  We’d arisen at 7am and gotten out the door by 8, without (as far as we know) forgetting anything.  We successfully walked to the Place Monge Metro stop, figured out how to buy five tickets, and sauntered on to the #7 train just as it pulled into the station.

Half an hour on the train and we’d arrived at the Gare de l’Est to catch the train to Colmar.  We were especially pleased that (a) we could take a train in just over two hours, while it would have taken five and a half to drive, and (b) we’d found some kind of budget train line (OUIGO) that got us all there in less than 100 euros.

The canals of Petit Venise

Our luck continued to hold.  The train became available for boarding just as we arrived on the platform.  The OUIGO app I’d installed on my phone was able to pull up our tickets, and they scanned successfully, even without wifi.  We had four seats facing each other with a table in the middle (plus one extra seat across the aisle), perfect for holding the cheese and baguette feast we’d brought along for breakfast, and afterward for playing hearts.  We watched the French countryside whiz by outside the window as we sped comfortably east.

Rosti lunch

The train arrived on time, and there was wifi in the station that allowed me to send a message to our airbnb host saying we’d arrived.  He responded that he was at the apartment ready to receive us.  All that remained was the 1.5-kilometer walk from the station to the apartment.

That’s when it all went horribly wrong.

The first problem is that one of the wheels on our very large roller suitcase (which we’d brought instead of our usual backpacks because of the per-bag fee on WOW Air) has broken off, meaning Bob has to carry our very heavy bag.  (We know it weighs 20.2 kg, because we just squeaked by on the WOW limit of 20 kg.)  Still, we were fairly cheerful setting off, our google directions in hand.

Then we couldn’t find our first turn.  (Later we discovered it was a street that was blocked off by construction and incorrectly labeled.)  This started a nightmare of wandering back and forth, up and down, asking directions and then getting lost again.  We didn’t have a detailed map or a functional phone and it was extremely hot.  On the verge of despair, we finally found our way to a street on our directions only to be blocked by construction again.  In the end, the ten-minute walk took us well over an hour and we almost got blocked inside a construction site.

Finally, joy of joys, we’d located the address.  It was an old-fashioned house, with a set of modern apartments behind it.  We didn’t know where to go.  After knocking on all the doors and ringing the buzzer for all the apartments, in desperation I left the family sitting in the driveway and set off to find wifi.  Here our luck improved again, with a McDonalds right around the corner.  Upon getting my messages I found that our host had left to get lunch and would be back soon.  (Apparently he drove around in his van for a while looking for us, without success.)

The girls spent some time and money in this visually appealing but exorbitantly expensive candy store.

Finally the good luck gods returned.  The apartment is spacious and lovely (though everything is blindingly white, so I’m very afraid of messing it up).  After a little recovery time, we headed into the nearby town center and were agape at how beautiful it was.  We’re near the neighborhood called “Petit Venise” because of its canals.  Every street seemed more quaint than the last.

The architecture, food, and culture here is more German than French.  For a late lunch/early dinner we found ourselves at a restaurant that almost exclusively served many variations

on a local specialty called a “rosti”, which is a baked meal based on potatoes, bacon, and onions — Zoe’s dream come true.  Nadia tried spaetzle and was pleased with the result.  Bob and I shared a carafe of local Gewurztraminer.  The girls found tiramisu-flavored soft serve.  We found another pleasant park for Zoe to run laps around.  Life was good again.

We may not have gotten to everything in Paris, but we managed a lot in three and a half days.  For everyone who has not been keeping track at home, here is a list of experiences we had:

This was early in the match, possibly during the national anthem.

strolling cobblestone streets
getting lost
witnessing an impromptu national holiday
speaking French
eating baguette
eating French food in a cafe
Paris plage
sitting under a French tree
sitting next to a fountain
eating Italian food
spotting mosiac digital art at street corners
eating Japanese food
eating crepes on the street

Italian wine? Send it back!

drinking wine
drinking syrops
drinking French beer
getting ripped off (most notably by the $6 bottle water and coke guy but probably elsewhere as well)
boat ride on the Seine
sunset boat ride on the Seine
riding the Metro
strolling the Champs-Elyssees
climbing the Arc de Triomphe
climbing the Eiffel Tower
the Centre Pompidou
the Musee d’ Orsay
Palais de la Decouverte
Notre-Dame cathedral and climbing the tower
Crypte archéologique de l’île de la Cité
Sainte-Chapel
Conciergerie
Palais de Justice de Paris (it was kind of in between the Sainte-Chapel and the Conceirgerie)
the Louvre (from outside)
Square du Vert-Galant
Luxembourg Gardens
Jardin des Plantes
Jardin de Tuiliere
Jardin Tino-Rossi (a sculpture garden along the Seine)

It can be said that we’re getting the hang of Paris.  Today was a smoothly executed series of adventures that fit somewhat seamlessly.

Nice way to start the day

One minor snag has been the Paris Museum Pass, which has generally validated its purchase several times over.  It gets us into a lot of things and even promises to get us to the front of the line.  It worked splendidly yesterday at the Arc de Triomphe, getting us in, up and out of that place very quickly.

Sometimes, it’s not clear which lines we get to skip.  Today we thought we could go right up to the top of the Nortre-Dame towers as soon as we were done touring the cathedral; but, no, we still had to get a reservation.

Crepes next to the cathedral

That adventure had to be put on hold for a few hours, but we were able to take in the mega-interesting Crypte archéologique de l’île de la Cité right away. The name of this museum is much longer than the line to get in, even though you may fall down the stairwell if you’re in line for the Notre-Dame and not paying attention.

Right there underneath the large square in front of the cathedral is a museum centered around the exposed foundations, wall, and even door arches of the very early enhabitants of the l’île.

Back on the Batobus

We could not linger too long, even though Zoe and I might have stayed for another hour or so looking at the artifacts they found during excavation.    Because we had a full 24 hours on our Batobus pass from yesterday, we could still squeeze another ride in if we got to the quay before 11:20.  We pulled ourselves from the crypts and, voila: bonus Batobus ride!

See how things are coming together?  Sometime in the morning we even managed to buy four huge ham and cheese crepes.  As a family we could only manage to finish three.  I snacked on the last one as the day went on.

Art hunters, complete with treasure maps

The Batobus ferried us to the Musee d’ Orsay, which is, of course, on the Paris Museum pass.  We didn’t get to skip much of a line here, but we didn’t have to shell out any more money, either.  Then again, I would not have begrudged paying a little for this place.

I believe there are one or two more art museums in Paris, maybe, but I’m not sure there needs to be.   My head and heart were full of wonder and appreciation after our three-hour tour of the d’ Orsay.

Hands off the Rodin, ma’am

We’re trying to get Zoe to post a vitural tour for the blog.  She took pictures of dozens of pieces she liked.  (Can you believe it? They let you take pictures of whatever you want there!)    They even provided us with a menu of diverse and important exhibited pieces in the mesuem guide. That served as a scavenger hunt for the girls.  We told them that if they could find all of the featured items, we would get them syrops on the way home.  (Scroll down to see if the succeeded.)

Ice creams on the midway

Let’s see.  Then we went back across the river to Jardin de Tuliers, which is lovely formal park which has been taken over partially by Coney Island.  There’s a ferris wheel and a flume and a whole bunch of other things Louis X — XVI all would have gone bonkers over, right there in the park.

The shadier side of Tuliers

We got ice cream in the Coney Island part and ate it in the formal park part, under a manicured chestnut tree.

Another art museum

We proceded then to another art museum, this one with a big glass pyramid in front of it, but we didn’t have the energy for any more culture.  Instead, we walked more blocks, crossed onto the l’île.

Here, Jen knew of a “hidden garden” right at the end of the island, and from there we spotted and even more hidden space under a willow tree at the very point where the river splits.  This was perfect for some well-needed shade.  We spent an hour playing hearts under the tree until it was time for our 5:30 Notre-Dame tower appointment.

Playing hearts in the even more hidden garden

See how this is all coming together!

Up the tower — this time all of us made it to the top, despite an interminable period (ten minutes? two hours?) baking in the sun, suspended on a ledge over the entrance doors, while we waited for them to let us up the stairs for the final climb. (It seems there is only one narrow stairway up the last tower and they had to let a bunch of people down before they could let us up.  Man, it was hot waiting.  Jen said it was like we were in Purgatory.)

Then home.  Because the tower tour took so long, we were not able the make the Pantheon before its 6:30 ferme time.  This landmark was two minutes from our apartment and still we weren’t able to fit it in.  So not every puzzle piece fit into place, even today.

But there always seems to be something more to do in Paris, including, much to the girls’ delight, a final Parisian night dinner at the ramen restaurant that they passed longinngly multiple times during our travels.

Top of the Arc de Triomphe

When I reflect back on Paris, I think the thing that will first come to mind is…stairs.

Stairs to the Arc de Triomphe.  Stairs to the Eiffel Tower.  Stairs to the top of the towers in Notre Dame.  This in addition to all the regular stairs one comes across during a normal Paris outing — stairs to the second floor apartment, stairs to the Metro, stairs to the Seine.  Combined with the miles and miles of walking we’ve done each day, I surely have calves of steel by now.  I think the children are nearing mutiny and I’m starting to dream about spiral staircases.

This is a bonus set of stairs we got to climb at Notre Dame, to see the belfry.

I was actually prepared to skip the Eiffel Tower, when I saw the size of the line.  (Who knew so many people would be willing to take the stairs?  The line was only marginally shorter — and the tickets marginally cheaper — than the elevator.  I was assuming we’d waltz right in past a long line of elevator people.  I guess that’s Europeans for you.)  Nadia was downright eager to skip it (and ended up only making it to the first level).  Bob was clearly of the same mindset as Nadia, but apparently took it as a test of his manhood to force himself to the top of the tower.

SuperZoe!

At least the stairs didn’t seem all that tiring, because of the adreneline rush you get from climbing inside a flimsy-seeming metal cage, surrounded by views of dizzying drops.  This helped us make rapid time up to the second level.  In the end we were happy we’d gone up and happy we’d done it the hard way.  (See Lanie’s post for photos.)

Breakfast at the local patisserie

I shouldn’t complain that much, though, because Zoe has it much worse.  She has to run almost every day for her cross country team, lest she feel the wrath of her coach, Fergus.  Fergus apparently doesn’t accept any excuses about how you walked 15 miles or climbed 8000 stairs today.  So at the end of our long days, after the walking and climbing, when I can barely hobble across the street to the creperie, Zoe usually has to go out and run five or six miles.  We found a lovely park near our apartment (the Jardin de Luxembourg) where she can run around the perimeter and we can keep tabs on her as she goes by.  Bob has been valiantly running part of the way with her,

On the Batobus

but eventually he loses steam and she has to do a couple more laps on her own.  (Our days are so long that usually we barely fit the runs in before the park closes at 9:30pm.  Luckily it stays light until almost 10:00 here!)

As I mentioned in a prior post, we completely failed in our usual plan to combat jet lag, which involves staying up until 7 or 8 at night then sleeping twelve hours or so and waking up to a normal schedule.  Instead, on our first day we ended up being awake way too late, then slept until noon on Day 2.  Of course, this led to us being unable to sleep at a normal hour that night.  At 2:30am

At the Jardin de Plantes

all the children had wandered restlessly out of their various bedrooms, and Bob and I were still up as well, and this does not make for happy parents.  So I’ve been setting the alarm gradually earlier each day, starting at 9:30 on Day 3.

To give our legs a bit of a break, we bought tickets for the Batobus, a boat that lets you hop on and off at various sites along the Seine.  We

Palais de Decouverte

were able to hop on the boat at the lovely Jardin de Plantes and ride it over to the Champs Elysees, Paris’s famous luxury shopping street.  We took in the massive, glass-walled Grand Palais (constructed for the 1900 World’s Fair).  Tucked on one side of it was the Palais de Decouverte, a science museum.

We figured it would just be a small place, but it turned out to be quite impressive (as well as being housed in an amazing palace).  Our main problem in

Pasteur defeating disease-causing bacteria

science museums is that Zoe likes to read every word of every exhibit, while Nadia tends to glance around for 30 seconds and declare she’s ready to move on.  Since Zoe is working in a microbiology lab this summer, we let her spend a fair amount of time in the excellent temporary exhibit devoted to Pasteur.  Fortunately for Nadia, most of the other exhibits were only in French, so Zoe was somewhat thwarted (though she was willing to attempt to read the French, which made the process even longer).  As it was, Zoe would have happily spent the rest of the day but other activities, and lunch, were calling.

The power of leverage

Then we had to walk again, up the avenue to the Arc de Triomphe.  Throughout the walk we were looking for a creperie for a casual lunch, but such places are thin on the ground on the Champs Elysees.  By the time we’d climbed the Arc, admired the views of the 12 avenues radiating outward, and made our way back down, people were definitely getting seriously hungry.  We decided to go onward to the Eiffel Tower on foot and hoped to find a creperie on the way — but were foiled once again.  Eventually, after going out of our way and doing much fruitless walking, we settled for an Italian restaurant that was well-liked for its food but charged us a small fortune for drinks, which weren’t even alcoholic.  (The kids remember it very fondly, though, since the

Remains of tiramisu

waiter gave us a complimentary piece of tiramisu for dessert.  Nadia went so far as to enter the phone number on her phone, as though she plans to order takeout in the future.  I personally didn’t feel that the tiramisu was worth the almost $60 that we paid for four bottles of water (most restaurants give you tap water for free) and four Cokes.)

Anyway, we were fortified with pizza and pasta and gold-plated water and Coke and tiramisu for our trip up the Eiffel Tower.

Sunset on the Batobus at 9:45pm

Given the line and the climb, we barely made it down in time for the last Batobus of the day at 9:30.  (Zoe had to skip her run this time.)  That was another reason we climbed so fast — after our experience attempting to take the Metro home from the Eiffel Tower on World Cup day, we were highly motivated to make that boat.

Too exhausted and not hungry

View of us buying crepes from our apartment window

enough to contemplate dinner, we made do with sweet crepes (we finally got our crepes!) from the creperie across the street from our apartment.  Jet lag has not totally left us and we’re still staying up too late, but the system has to work eventually.  8:30 alarm for Day 4!