Paris Fun!

We decided to take a weekend in Paris on our way back to the USA.  If you recall our first trip to Paris in 2013 with the kids, you'll remember that Caedmon ended up in a French hospital for 2 days having surgery on his toe for a staph infection from a bite from Zambia...so yeah, not the greatest experience!  When looking at flights, we gave the kids the option of where to layover in Europe, and they wanted to try Paris again!  So here we are.  :)

We didn't want to cram a ton of things into our weekend that is sandwiched between two VERY long days of travel, so we kept it simple.  On Saturday, we took a 3.5 hour road trip to see the Beaches of Normandy, and on Sunday we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower!  It was a great weekend full of memory making!

We stayed in a little 2 bedroom/1 bathroom cottage with 3 stories in it!  It was fun!  We LOVED our windows!

I LOVE this furniture piece - it's actually a fireplace!

Lots of stairs to climb!

We are actually staying a little outside of Paris in Bussy-Saint-Georges, France.  Here are some views from our 2nd floor bedroom window!

Saturday morning sunrise!  (at 8:30am!)

We quickly found out what a "boulangerie" is - a bakery!  How are the French not huge??  All they eat is bread!!

Not that we complained when Blu and Caedmon brought home breakfast...

The boys on Omaha Beach in Normandy. Powerful.

Some silliness too...

Our family on Omaha Beach

Walking through the American Cemetery 

Saying they've touched the English Channel!

Seine River as we drove to Normandy.  Due to the strikes all over Paris, most of the subway lines are down, so we rented a car for this trip.  After driving in Panama, we're not scared of anything!

Random buildings!

The Eiffel Tower from a distance!

Every town has a different sign introducing it - so fun!

And some random sculptures too!

We found the ruins of Chateau de Robert Diable - who's that?  We never figured it out, because the signs were all in French, but there was a cartoon about some bad guys giving a dog a bone to distract him and then storming the castle...

Baguettes for lunch!

Another random building!

We had GORGEOUS weather for January in Paris for our trip to Normandy!

Our first stop (by total accident - oops!) was Juno Beach.  This was the beach the Canadian soldiers stormed.  This tank was found 27 years underwater after the invasion. 

SO beautiful!

This was part of the artificial harbor the soldiers had to build to get all of the equipment and soldiers up onto the beach!

A very recent 75th anniversary memorial

Gold Beach

These were the narrow, very curvy French roads we drove on all day!

This place was absolutely incredible.

Memorial on Omaha Beach

This was the bunker that 31 Germans were holed up in on D-Day on Omaha Beach.  The other beaches were taken fairly easily, but the air strikes conducted beforehand didn't hit this bunker, so they didn't know it was there.  The 31 soldiers had machine guns, etc, and were able to kill thousands.  It was so surreal to walk down into that bunker.

I was so afraid our kids wouldn't grasp the full effect of all of this, but thanks to some amazing videos and their love for history, they really seemed to understand and were as in awe as we were.

It's hard to even describe how massive the cemetery was.

Talk about being proud to be an American!

You can't get onto the grass unless you are searching for a family member, so this was the closest cross I could get to.  Thank you, PFC Jodice.

I really can't overstate how amazing this part of our trip was.  The visitors' center at the American Cemetery was incredible.  Our kids read pretty much every little thing.  We learned SO much about D-Day and World War II soldiers in general.  They had to kick us out when it closed at 5pm!

Long drive back to our house - stop for pizza first!  The owner was SO excited we were from Texas!  He said, "Oh, Dallas?!  I have been to see the Cowboys!!  It was tremendous!!"  He also said how tremendous the American Cemetery was and that he cries anytime he goes.  He said, "To think...those men came here for our freedom, that's it."  It was powerful.

Pizza and chocolate tarts!

A glimpse of the Eiffel Tower lit up at night in the distance on our drive home!  Funny story - we don't have internet on our phones unless we have wifi, so the only map we had was following the blue dot on my phone on my airplane tracking app!  It is about a second or two behind, so it made for some missed exits, turns, etc.  But we didn't kill each other!

We passed this building every day - the Arabic on the sides was crazy! Wonder what it said?!

First glimpse of the Eiffel Tower today!

Ready to get closer! 

In 2013 they rode the carousel, so I made them do it again!

Oh ya know, just hanging out on the banks of the Seine! 

This time, we decided to get tickets to the top!!  We climbed up 700 steps to the second floor, then took an elevator to the top!

Cool views!

Blu was terrified!  He stepped out to the side for a picture and then said, "Ok, we're done!  Let's go!"

The most expensive lunch ever!  When the waiter found out we were from Texas, he started yelling, "John Wayne!" and making shooting motions with his hand!

French Onion Soup and Tomato/Mozzarella!

Souvenirs!

Unfortunately, the Catacombs closed early and we didn't get to the line in time.  So we headed back to our house and got packed for the trip home, and then drove to the closest bakery to pick up some supper!  

It has been an amazing 23 days, but we are SO READY to be home!  Crazy to think my next blog will be back to basketball games, unit set deliveries, church activities, etc!  Back to real life for us!