27 November - Musee D'Orsay and Paris by Night

Another day, another early wake-up.  A certain someone is growing  more teeth and is a bit unhappy :( Aside from us wanting more sleep, it wasn't the worst thing in the world to be up early as we had a lot of packing and cleaning to be done.

Our real estate agent was 'helpfully' showing the apartment to someone else and it looks a bit like a bomb hit at the moment. We were simultaneously trying to pack some bags and clean up, while keeping a small child out of our way. Luckily she thinks that playing in boxes and suitcases is pretty funny! After a few minutes of silence we found she had put herself in a box, in a drawer.........hmmmm, toddlers!



After getting the apartment to a respectable state, we headed out to Musee d'Orsay.  It was getting late (10am) so we decided to metro down. We wanted to take the stroller, which is always a pain with the metros, but we picked a route that mostly gave us a chance to use escalators, so not too much stroller carrying was required.  Before long we rocked up outside Musee d'Orsay to see a huge line up. The advantage of strollers is that you can usually queue jump in Paris. Sure enough we got waved through the 'reserved ticket' line, despite having no ticket, and avoiding at least a 20 minute queue.  We also got waved through security, since baby bags never contain anything you want to scan or even inspect (apparently).

Once tickets were purchased and we were inside we struggled to find some lifts (the downside to having a stroller). But, Anto managed to understand an entire conversation in French and we finally discovered the lifts were all well hidden in walls, with just the odd sign belying their presence. The Musee d'Orsay is on the left bank of the Seine. We have walked (and cruised) past several times but were keen for a visit before we departed Paris.  The Musee is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, which is an impressive Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915, including paintings, sculptures, furniture and photography. It is best known for its extensive collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces (the largest in the world).

No photography is allowed of any of the exhibits, but we had fun wandering around and looking at them. A lot of the paintings, especially the Monet's we had seen a few years back in Canberra, but this was a more extensive collection and some paintings we had never seen. After we covered off the top floor, Astrid was getting antsy for morning tea so we headed to the 5th floor cafe, which was an impressive looking cafe with cool chandeliers, funky art and the inside of the impressive clock faces. We had coffee, hot chocolate and the world's biggest chocolate eclair (and probably the most expensive, but it was huge!). Astrid was a fan of both the hot chocolate, which was good, but not as nice as Laduree or Pauls and she also seemed to enjoy the eclair.


Fueled up on chocolate we headed down to the lower floors to look at the furniture and sculpture. After minimal whinging she fell asleep in the stroller so we could happily wander in peace. We got most of the lower floors accounted for while she was asleep and enjoyed some of the sculpture. We really enjoyed walking through the building and it is an impressive space to house a museum. The inside of the clock faces, funky couches and steel frames are really fun (and you could take photos of these)!.



Sadly Astrid woke up and was not happy. We tried to look through the photography exhibits (which we were looking forward to) but she was a bit grumpy and not willing to play.  We headed outside and distracted her with the large animal statues in the courtyard, which were fun to look at.



Hoping she would go back to sleep on our walk back to the apartment we headed off, walking back over the Seine and through the grounds of the Louvre. We know this area well now and it's always fun to walk around, even when it is cold and starting to rain.  Astrid eventually had a bit of a nap but was still unhappy and waking up every few minutes so we alternated between looking in some shops while she was sleeping and walking back towards the apartment every time she woke up. Once we hit our street we stopped for some baguette and patisserie and she was happy to be carried and just wanted cuddles. Sadly for her she is getting very heavy these days and is hard to carry around for long periods!

Back in the apartment we had some lovely cheese and baguette lunch and tried to finish operation bag pack-up.  We think we can fit everything in that is getting shipped to London, but it's going to be tight. Astrid improved her mood with paracetamol on board and helped 'pack'.  We were packing the last of the chocolate up and she was being a bit grumpy so we let her try one of the cheaper (not hand-made) Belgian truffles. She was a huge fan.  About 20 mins later we were finishing off clearing out some cupboards and I turned around and let out some expletives when I found that Miss A had gotten into a bag, unwrapped a plastic bag and pulled out one of the truffle boxes, opened the box and was shoving handfuls of dark chocolate truffle into her gob. Of course she had picked the nice hand-made ones!  She did look proud of herself but we didn't get a photo in a rush to stop the chocolate destruction.

It was a rainy and cold afternoon so we took Miss grumpy pants out for a walk down the street to buy some more dinner groceries and paracetamol for Missy. We also paid one last visit to our favourite chocolate store on our street and collected some more chocolate to take home. I don't know exactly how much chocolate we have collected but it is a lot......... and we still have 3 more days in Belgium. It would have been a lovely afternoon to sit tucked up in a cafe, but Astrid was not in much of a mood for that.  Back to the apartment as Anto had to head off for his night bike Tour.

My evening was far less exciting than his. One tired, unhappy and teething baby that need constant attention.  My plan was to spend the evening catching up on photo editing and blogging while working my way through some of the food products we weren't taking home with us and needed eating. Sadly, miss Astrid wasn't keen on that.  Luckily Anto had a more productive and fun evening and he can fill in the rest of the night.......

While Nic enjoyed her night of forced pantry cleaning Anto wandered down to the metro towards the Eiffel Tower - the meeting place for tonight's Fat Tire Bike Tour. It had rained earlier in the day & there was a general feeling that the night would involve us getting wet (and probably cold to boot) the tour had 13 participants about 1/2 of which were Australian with a smattering of other nationalities to round out the group. The tour involved some easy riding around the centre of Paris, visiting (the outside of) Notre Dame, the Louvre and most of the other museum's and heritage buildings we had previously seen during the day. Paris at night is rather lit up - it was no problem to see any of the buildings at all.

A highlight of the tour was the 'dominate the taxi' portions of the tour - most of the time we were riding in shared bus / taxi / bike lanes - we would stop to let the buses past (as they have little choice but to sit behind the bikes as there isn't enough room for them to go around) however the Paris taxi's seem to delight in being a little 'annoying' (perhaps not the actual word our guide used) and the only way to stop them being stupid is to 'take the lane' and make it clear that there is no way for them to sneak through the lane. This resulted in us riding around like we owned the roads - which was the exact effect we were going for.

Halfway through the tour we stopped for Berthillon ice cream (even though it was about 4C) the salted caramel was just as good when you were freezing to death as when you are eating it in a nice warm cafe. After a little more touristy looking at stuff, with some interesting history thrown in to make it 'educational' we made our way down to a dock on the Seine to commence the more aquatic portion of the evening... Included with the tour was a 70 minute boat tour of the river Seine - now just cruising up the river a 9pm would be OK - but in more traditional French style our guide pulled bottles of red wine from his panniers and opened a few before passing cups around. We thought that three bottles of wine might not be quite enough for the 12 drinkers, until it was explained there was actually 8 bottles available if we 'needed' that much. When one of the Aussies (who happens to own a vineyard) asked what type of wine it was she was told 'red from a bottle' - which apparently was as much info as we needed :) The wine tasted quite acceptable and before we knew it the time had come to re-mount our bikes and wander 'home' to the tour company shop. After that it was a couple of quick metro's back to the apartment - they are almost as efficient at 11pm as other times.

4 November - The toddler versus The Louvre.....and the toddler won!

We have been planning to do some museums during our trip. We aren't huge museum people, and not great art lovers but we HAD to go to the Louvre. It just isn't a very baby/toddler friendly activity. Our original plan was to tag team wandering around the Louvre with Astrid playing in the park (Jardin des Tuileries).  Unfortunately, with Astrid being sick and it being quite cold out, we wanted to   keep her inside.

The first Sunday of every month in Paris is free National museum day.  November is the only month we are actually in Paris for the first Sunday of the month, so we figured we might as well take advantage of it and go to a museum. If we were going to go to a museum it might as well be the grand-daddy of museums, the Louvre. It is the world's biggest museum with 35,000 exhibits and 60,600 square metres of exhibit space. It will reportedly take you 9 months to look at all the exhibits. We knew we were only going to get to see a small fraction of the exhibits in our visit but we were hoping to at least get a small taste of the Louvre.

The Louvre opens at 9am, and figuring that it would get busy we headed down there early, arriving just after 9am.  Nothing is ever busy in Paris in the morning but the lines were already stretching all the way around the central courtyard, and given how big that courtyard is, the lines were huge. We had taken the stroller and had read that you can skip the queues if you have a stroller. Sure enough we were 10m from the front entrance and were waved over and directed straight through and onto the very trendy open circular lift that takes you down to the main foyer.

Astrid had fallen asleep on the walk down to the Louvre and we were keen to get some museum viewing done while she was asleep.  The Louvre is enormous from the outside and the inside is just as overwhelming. It is a gorgeous building with lots of open space, divided into wings.  We grabbed a map and headed to the Sully wing, as it was nearby and not looking too busy. People were streaming in and we were trying to avoid the tour groups.

The Louvre was originally built in the 12th Century by Phillip II as a Fortress. We were keen to see some of the Egyptian exhibits and the remnants of the medieval (original) Louvre from the 12th Century and moat relics. We happened to encounter this straight away and it was impressive.


Astrid continued to sleep as we found some of the Egyptian antiquities and looked at the mummies and scarophaguses, and sphinx.  We now discovered that the downside of the stroller is that many of the exhibit areas are linked by stairs and any lifts generally only go between 2 floors and you usually have to back track through exhibits to get out, and often go up and down stairs anyway. We frequently got lost, but that meant we got to see a variety of things.  Just walking through the building with it's high ceilings and huge windows was impressive. You realise how huge the building is you wander through and it just goes on and on, and you have only been in one fraction of one floor in one wing.
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Astrid woke up and was happy to wander with us for a bit. Then she realised she was hungry so we promised morning tea and attempted to find our way back to the main foyer where the cafes were located. It took us a good half an hour of wandering all over the place, through exhibits, up and down lifts and carrying the up and down stairs to finally find our way out. We did eventually get better at making sense of the map. Astrid was getting pretty grumpy so we were walking pretty quickly through exhibits but we did get to see quite a bit of stuff, if only briefly.

We found the cafes and grabbed some coffee, pain au chocolat and a flan. It took awhile and Anto got to witness tourists getting cranky at the cafe staff and baristas, which only makes them go slower, so you just have to be patient. Even our baby has learnt she has to be patient, although she doesn't always put this into practice.  Refueled by food and coffee we decided to head back and look at some more exhibits.  People were streaming in everywhere now and the main foyer was quite busy but because the building is so huge it wasn't too bad once you got into the exhibits.

Prior to heading back in we located a baby change area and made use of it. It was the holy grail of baby facilities in Paris, a baby change, in a male toilet (they are often only in the female toilets) and it was free! We have done so many nappy changes in the stroller or on park benches that this was a treat.

Astrid was wanting to wander through the Louvre and was causing no end of trouble trying to walk through crowds of people and resisting being in the stroller. We did manage to see some of the very impressive Roman statues in the Richelieu wing and then headed into some of the apartments of Napoleon. Napoleon had lived in the Louvre for a period and his apartments have been preserved/restored and lets just say he didn't rough it! Total OTT grandeur, with velvet, ornate paintings, huge chandeliers and massive dining tables. It was pretty spectacular...... and then there was the ceiling art!

Unfortunately at this point Astrid decided she wasn't keen on doing anything other than wanting to touch exhibits and wasn't going to sit in the stroller any more so we thought we should head out. We knew that if we put up 20 mins of protesting she would just go to sleep but it wasn't ideal in a museum and it was almost lunch time and time for her medications so we headed out and back to our apartment. On the way though, we went through the children's bookstore and found the most gorgeous children's books, with exquisite pop-ups and cut outs. We could have bought half the store but did restrain ourselves to just a few purchases.  Astrid better get better at French (or at least her parents need to, in order to read the books to her)!

In the afternoon we had thought about going back to the Louvre as we could skip the lines with the stroller. We were a bit weary though and decided to look through the shops at Le Carousel de Louvre, the shopping centre under the Louvre. At least here Astrid could run around and be noisy. When we got there it was wall to wall people but we had a little wander and Astrid had fun. She might not like museums but the girl knows how to shop! So we probably saw about 3% of the Louvre, but we might go back later in our trip. Today Astrid won the museum war.

We decided that since we were having vegetables for dinner in the apartment we might 'need' some dessert. Being a Sunday afternoon not many of our usual Patisseries were open but we went to one in our street we hadn't tried before and obtained a Pistachio eclair and some creme brulee. We let Astrid try the Pistachio eclair and she did seem to like it!  You'll note that we now think that when we walk around all day AND eat vegies for dinner we deserve 2 desserts! For the record both were extremely yummy :)

29 October - Notre Dame and walking around Paris in the afternoon

Nic and Astrid are still sick. Snuffly and gunky eyes. Hoping we get better soon as it's not much fun. We decided to go on a short morning walk to Notre Dame as it was on our sightseeing list.

 It's only a couple of kilometres from our apartment so was an easy walk down and across the river. We aren't overly into looking at Church's but it is a very very impressive piece of architecture. The amount of detail in the stone work, internal and external and the statues and stained glass is mind blowing.

 We enjoyed a short walk around inside and managed to get a few good photos before Miss A decided she had enough, meaning there was no point going up the towers. We had a walk around the outside, avoiding the throngs of tourists and then headed for some morning tea.

 We were suckered in by the smell of freshly cooking crepes at a street vendor outside a cafe. At about half the price for takeaway we grabbed a couple of crepes and some takeaway coffee and sat on a park bench on a bridge over the Seine. The was the quintessential Parisian experience. Crepes overlooking the Seine, with an accordion player in the background. For the record, Astrid is not a huge fan of lemon and sugar crepes but nuttella and banana were a winner. These crepes were much more delicious than the ones we had a couple of weeks ago near the Moulin Rouge!

 We headed to the BHV shopping centre to get a replacement pair of gloves for me, as mine had gone missing while chasing a small child's mittens around Zurich Zoo. We happened upon a great sale and got gloves cheaply and a whole heap of clothes for Astrid. Not everything we like was on sale but we managed to score a few bargains. Home for our baguette and cheese lunch (how nice it is to eat cheaply at lunch times again) and Astrid's sleep.

 In the afternoon it was nice weather so we headed down to the Louvre to see it at a different time of day. Paris has 27 million visitors a year. Sometimes you hardly notice the tourists other times you seem to find all of them. The area around the Louvre and the Jardin Des Tuileries was full of tourists this afternoon. It was a different experience to when we were last there in the early morning and it was deserted. We wandered around and got some photos and generally avoided the throng of hawkers (who weren't there when you are there pre-dawn).

 We then wandered down to the park adjacent to the Louvre, Jaridn Des Tuileries, as it was also pre-dawn last time we were there. There were kids out sailing boats on the pond today and ducks to look at in the ponds. Astrid had a good run around and was being quite cute, and got a few French people to come and kiss her hand. Always the charmer!  We only got to explore about half the park as it was getting close to dinner time.

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We headed back along the Seine and it was a lovely evening so we grabbed a few snaps of Paris in the late afternoon.


Tonight's dessert was a Citron Tart we had been eyeing off for awhile. It was delicious and lived up to our expectations, which are getting increasingly higher.