Scott and Tiffany in Oregon

Monet Museum and the Jardin d'Acclimation

We have had several requests for more pictures of Caleb. This is a picture of Caleb at 6 weeks old. He is propped up in the corner of our apartment couch and is laughing.

Caleb laughing

He is a really good baby. He falls asleep almost as soon as Scott puts him in the baby carrier. Scott is the one who usually takes the pictures, so that is why there are very few pictures of Caleb. He usually sleeps through all of our sightseeing and just wakes up when he is hungry. He doesn't do as well at night, probably because he sleeps all day. He still gets up about 3 times during the night, so we often compensate by sleeping in. After all, we are on vacation.

On Wednesday we went to a large store called Carrefour. It is like a Wal-Mart or Super Target. It has food, books, music and things for the home. It is the same type of store we shopped at when we lived in Rennes, France. We had fun buying some of our favorite treats.

The nearest Carrefour is on the outskirts of the city, near Roland Garros, where the French Open is held. After shopping, we ate lunch at the park on top of the store. Our lunch included some of the wonderful things we bought at the store, such as a baguette, cheese, sausage and mini ice cream cones.

Later, we went to Les Halles, an area in Paris that has been a shopping district for over a thousand years. It now has a huge underground mall. For dinner the kids had McDonald's and we had sushi. This church is next to the park where we ate our dinner.

Saint Eustache

On Thursday morning, we went to the Marmottan Monet Museum. Monet's name has recently been added to the name of the museum, which is appropriate since the museum is mainly focused on Monet's works. The kids did surprisingly well at the museum. A couple in the museum saw that the kids were behaving very well and gave Brooke and Tyler one Euro each. Brooke used her Euro to buy an "Impression: Sunrise" multi-color crayon, and Tyler used his to buy an "Impression: Sunrise" bouncy ball.

Marmottan Monet Museum

We rewarded the kids for being so good by letting them play at a nearby playground.

Playground

We ate a small lunch with a large dessert of French pastries at a cafe and then went to the Bois de Boulogne. It is one of two sections that remain of the forest that used to encircle Paris. Inside there is a combination playground/amusement park. We paid extra for our park admission so we could ride the little train into the park.

Amusement park train

The highlight of the Jardin d'Acclimation for Brooke was to swing on the swingset. She loves to swing and is disappointed that while many French parks have play structures, they rarely have swings. The only other swings we have found are old fashioned double swings that you have to pay to use for a set amount of time.

Brooke gets to swing

Tyler loved this sand digger.

Digger

Tiffany was thrilled to have some "barbe à papa" or cotton candy. She thinks that no trip to an amusement park would be complete without it.

Cotton Candy

Posted by sjbowden at August 2, 2007 10:27 PM