Au Revoir Bonjourno

Moving on...for those who took us to the airport this means something....this is all we are coming home with.

Jackson makes a great brother and friend he cannot go to the park without making a new friend...this is Leo and Anrea

Walking in the rain

My favorite Paris view with a fair this time.  Check out the ride to the left.

This is the craziest ride I have ever seen.  Yes there are people on it, yes it spins incredibly fast.

Our exciting car ride.

My last run there.

On my run I discovered France Playing Spain in the Euro cup this game unlike the previous was not for contention but there were 5x's as many people there, I guess it only matters who you play.

Sierra in the Disney store...this is how I looked at Abercrombie & Fitch 

Outside the Louis Vuitton 

The last days in Paris were  fun, full of last minute plans and a concerted effort to eliminate  about 3/4 of our "stuff" in order to make our future travel more enjoyable (we still have not recovered from our original metro experience.)  We went out for what turned out to be about a 6-7 mile walk on our last day.  It was pouring rain and I sold our stroller so the kids decked out in rain gear had a worthy distraction from the walking with it being so wet and there being so many puddles to jump in.  Suffice it to say they were completely soaked by the time we made it back to the apartment.  We walked up the Camps Elysee one more time and Todd insisted that I go into the Abercrombie & Finch store there.  So to describe this you have to know there is a line outside large golden gates that lead down a vine covered walkway to the entrance of the store.  BUT there are 4 male Abercrombie & Finch models at the gate...who greet you.  I don't blush often but seriously this is good marketing because I was all too willing to wait in line for my "Hello welcome to Abercrombie & Finch."  Then you get into the store where they have more male models, this time without shirts on mopping the floor (which is wet from all the rain.)  It was really too much but I thought it was super funny.  The store is unreal, it's 3 levels with the all too familiar smell they fill those places with, and it looked like Georgio Armani's living room.  I took a quick whirl through and then met Todd at the Disney store.  It was ridiculous but worth seeing.  ;)  One of the cosmetic surgeons Todd has been working with really wanted to take us out to dinner.  This only posed a small obstacle, or rather 4 of them.  We tried a couple baby sitting services and such but I still didn't feel great about the idea of leaving our kids with some stranger in a foreign country.  But thankfully Dr Cornette de Saint Cry(now say that 10Xs fast)  really wanted us to go so he volunteered his secretary to watch the kids.  She was a sweet young girl who really liked kids.  And they liked her.  Austin turned on the charm the moment she walked in the door and Jackson had anxiously awaited her arrival all day.  Dr Cornette is the very picture of a well known cosmetic surgeon in Paris.  He is dressed perfectly in his designer clothes.  He picked us up in his new Jaguar, turned a corner and proceeded to floor it.  Todd and I had a good laugh as he cut off a runner, sped around a old woman in a cross walk, and then just stopped in the middle of the street to allow us to get out of the car.  It sort of summed up every stereotype about french drivers I have.  I had not been in a car for 3 months.  On the way there we picked up his beautiful wife.  He lives next door to the French prime minister.  So he lives in one of these buildings that is beautiful from the front but what is really amazing is that it backs up to it's own private park.  I knew this because from google earth maps I saw this huge park one day and we tried to go there only to discover unless you live in one of these super cool apartments you cannot even see it.  


Dinner was fun but as Dr Cornettes wife does not speak that much English and we still are not great at French it was a little tough conversation wise. But considering who they are and the life they get to live they are very sweet kind hearted people and we had fun spending time with them.  We made it home to find everyone had survived.  

Triumph

Very early at the metro

Yesterday Todd took Austin back to the Eiffel tower.  Austin kept claiming that he wanted to go back and "redo some of what he did last time."  Recall he is afraid of heights and had a small panic attack last time he went up.  They made it to the top and Austin was proud of himself.  Of course they came home and Todd and he played a joke on me saying they did not make it and how awful it was...nice I have a feeling as time goes on these "lets freak out mom" episodes will become more common.
This morning we got up early(4:00) to get to the airport for our 7:20 flight to Venice.  We discovered it is really pretty affordable to fly around Europe, especially if you are willing to fly really early in the morning.  All these airlines have one or two flights per day that seem to be 25% the total cost of their other flight...it's just they leave so early you almost wonder if it's worth it.  Our flight from Venice will leave at 6:20...and we are on an island....and the airport is not...and there are not cars...it should make a good story.
  
       

   


Anyhow I feel like we could write a book on budget travel.  The other thing we are huge fans of is apartment rentals vs hotels.  Obviously with 4 kids hotels are hard but even if it were just us two I think apartments are way cooler.  You get way more space, they cost less per night, you often get your own personal tour of the place, plus you have a furnished home with a kitchen for the whole time you are there.  But probably the best thing is that you are in a neighborhood, you are living where the people who live there live and get to experience in some small way how it is to live there.  So we made it to Venice.  You take a shuttle bus to get to the one end of the island that is attached by a bridge to the mainland.  It drops you at the Plazzo de Roma.  From there we got on a water bus which is literally a bus in the form of a boat on the water.  It stops at various places.  Our apartment is at the other end of the Island towards Saint Marks Square so we got a little boat tour of the island before getting to our apartment.  The girls who had been up until 12 last night and then were up at 4 were unimpressed by Venice and it's beautiful sights and fell asleep on the ride down.  We met Paola who took us to our apartment and then took several minutes giving us some advise on what to do/where to go.
Todd...took a nap.  I was going to take a nap too but we were all starving and the girls were not tired so we went out to the market for some supplies.  Of course they speak Italian here...which I know very little of if any.  So I kept saying things in french when I meant Spanish but I speak English...so I have reverted back to just being one of those Americans who just blabs in English whatever it is they want or need and hope that some of it is recognizable.

Our courtyard and apartment on the bottom floor below flower boxes.

I then woke up Todd and informed him I was going to take and nap and he was now in charge.  He took the kids to a park and they had a good time.  I then made dinner, pasta what else? And we decided to walk around.  Venice is a fun city to walk around.  Everything could be a post card, everything.  And it's one of those places that you continually feel lost in but don't care.  There are endless bridges, waterways, boats, and leaning/sinking buildings.  We walked back along the main part of the grand canal and found where all the super wealthy people park their yachts for the night.  We went to St. Marks and took in the beautiful sights there before heading back home to bed.  Everyone is pretty tired.

Happy to be in Venice.