We made it to Paris! Now for the good stuff

Despite the tenor of my last post, I want to state here for the record that I am in a state of delirious bliss and have been since our airport shuttle van entered the Paris city limits. Of course some of my delirium is due to the fact that I’ve had about seven hours of sleep since Thursday night (it’s almost 11 Sunday night Paris time right now). The large and very comfortable apartment we rented turned out to be above a sports bar and I was up with the boys for much of last night.

But mostly it’s because Paris is just such a fantastic place. Of course, I knew this, having spent my junior year of college here, gulp, 18 years ago. But I had forgotten just how much I love it here. And being here with the kids is even better than it was to be a mopey 20-year-old with such a small imgination that the Boulevard Saint Michel was my go-to destination.

It’s late and I want to let our lovely au pair go to bed (yes, we brought along help – I’ll post more about that later), but I wanted to share a few highlights of the past two days:

My first real croissant in almost two decades;

The Jardin de Luxembourg where the children ran wild for hours in a wonderful playground and watched toy sailboats soaring around the pond;

Every single thing about the Place Monge food market, which is steps from our front door (Perfectly ripe strawberries and peaches! Thirty kinds of olives! Preserved lemons! Twelve different kinds of greens to choose from! Tiny potatoes! Cheese piled upon cheese!);

Seeing Tommy use a stick to catch the brass rings on the merry go round;

And perhaps best of all was walking into the bathroom to find Tommy silhouetted against the large windows while he gazed dreamily out at the red tile rooftops beyond.

Hope you enjoy the pictures – I’ll write more coherently and completely tomorrow.

Please see Paris in its proper order if you’re interested in a chronological list of posts from my family’s July 2008 trip to Paris.