France (December 2017): Paris is well worth a mass

This trip is totally L’s fault.

And here we are! First thing we’ve decided to see.

… and of course he fell asleep. Yes. The very first time he’s ever been in front of the Eiffel Tower he was sleeping.

And she was sleeping too! Jeez guys, there’s no point showing you the world.

So we’ve decided to go explore other parts of Paris first, and go back to the Tower some other time.

We walked around Montmartre. This famous neighborhood, in the 18th arrondissement, is mainly famous for two things. 1. It is amazing 2. During the Belle Époque many notable artists lived, had studios or worked in here, including Modigliani, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Valadon, Mondrian, Picasso, Pissarro, van Gogh and many others.

Yes, the kids slept also throughout the lunch, which was a blessing. We enjoyed some food and some wine in total relax, bought some sandwiches to feed the beasts later on, and restored our energy before heading to the Tower again.

Second attempt!

Here we are! They LOVED it! N could not really speak at that time, but she laughed and clapped her hands. L was really amazed, he didn’t expect something that big, he kept on saying “It’s SO big! Mom look, it’s HUGE!” ❤

How much love is L surrounded by in this pic? I mean, the pink bottle, the Eiffel tower, mommy’s kiss. If this pic doesn’t shout “happiness”, you tell me what it does.

Both the kiddos like books a lot and they have many French children books, I don’t know exactly why, but I noticed we have a lot of ’em. L loves especially Une chanson d’ours by Benjamin Chaud, which tells about Little Bear who runs away from the forest to Paris, followed by his Daddy Bear. At the end of this book there’s the iconic, the majestic, the unmistakable Eiffel Tower.

And for a while, every time he saw the Eiffel Tower, he asked “What is this? Is this a crane?”, the answer being “It’s not a crane, it’s the Eiffel Tower, in Paris, France“. After he learned this notion, he expressed many times the wish to visit France, especially Paris, especially the Eiffel Tower. So we got the idea of giving him a Christmas present that was not a toy, but something better: I want my kids to be curious about the world, and I want them to realize that a present is not necessarily a thing, but also experiences and precious memories. So we decided to give him a week in Paris as a present.

Ok ok, it was also present for us, enough with the hipster explanations. It’s fucking PARIS, who are you to judge me?!

So yeah, for a couple of month he stressed us out with the sentence “In December L, N, Mommy and Daddy are going to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower”, and now it was time to go! It’s fair to say that I was stressing everyone out too with Edith Piaf‘s music, and G was stressing everyone out too with his research on cheese and wine, so you see, everybody had their own way to show their excitement. Except for N who was too busy learning how to walk, a milestone she reached a couple of weeks before leaving.

We walked day and night. It was cold, but we live in Sweden now, cold is our friend.

The Panthéon is a building in the Latin Quarter. It was originally built as a church but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens. It is an early example of neo-classicism, with a façade modelled on the Pantheon in Rome.

This is me proudly holding my crêpe. Can I be just a little nationalistic in here? The most famous French crêpes are filled with Nutella. Nutella is actually Italian. You won’t find a typical Italian food in Italy which is filled with French stuff. I’m just saying 😉

I was only joking regarding that delicious crêpe (which lasted more or less two nanoseconds, btw). I enjoyed it very much watching this thing: The Arc de Triomphe is one of the most famous monuments in Paris, standing at the western end of the Champs-Élysées at the center of Place Charles de Gaulle. We didn’t go to the top, but sat on a bench, looked at it for one hour and smiled, with our faces covered with Nutella.

After that we took a long walk along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, which is 1.9 kilometres long and 70 metres wide, and it runs between the Arc de Triomphe and the Place de la Concorde. It is known for its theatres, cafés, luxury shops, and as the finish of the Tour de France cycle race. The kiddos loved all the lights and the Christmas trees.

♫ Aux Champs-Elysées, aux Champs-Elysées. Au soleil, sous la pluie, à midi ou à minuit, Il y a tout ce que vous voulez aux Champs-Elysées ♫

We became obsessed with the Tower too, and photographed it in any possible way.

A satisfied N after a long day of adventure…

… which ended with an escargot dinner. I find these animals pretty disgusting, but I was in Paris, and there is no local food that I wouldn’t dare to taste.

We left on a December evening, L had the Santa Lucia ‘concert‘ in the morning at the daycare. I went to see the performance (which consisted of a bunch of kids screaming, pooping and running around), then we got home, finished to pack our stuff, and went to the airport.

The AirBnb host told us 12 hours before leaving that we had to rush, ’cause a friend of her was waiting for us at the apartment, and she didn’t want to stay there after midnight… You know, that amount of stress that you really don’t want to have as soon as you arrive in the second largest city in Europe.

So we rushed to the métro and… dan dan dan daaaaan! The stroller doesn’t fit through the subway turnstiles. No elevator. Kids sleeping. Impatient French girl waiting for us and threatening to leave before we get our keys…
We brutally wake the kids up, fold the stroller, throw it to the other side of the turnstile, pass all together with one ticket (because hey Paris subway: FUCK YOU!), unfold the stroller, place the kids on it, kids fall asleep again. Hello from the other side.
Luckily we’ve had the great idea of bringing only one stroller with us, let N sit in the normal place and L sit in the place where normally a kid puts their feet.

And ok, first quest completed. Now find the place and free the damn girl.

Finding the apartment was not hard at all. For on the seventh day God created free roaming. ‘Cause you know, European Union started right from the beginning to make regulations about where to dry ham, how bowed bananas need to be, and so on – but only in June 2017 roaming charges for temporary roaming within EEA have been abolished. So Google Maps lighted our path, and before midnight we were there.

Ooooh the Musée d’Orsay ❤ This is just the perfect museum. I've been here hundred times, and every time is a whole new experience. It is one of the largest museums in Europe, housed in a former railway station, and it holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1914 (the coolest period, in my opinion) including paintings, sculptures, furniture, and photography. It houses the largest collection of impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces in the world, by painters including Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Sisley, Gauguin, and Van Gogh.

Not only the art is to be seen, but also the people admiring it. You can only see but astonishment in every face you look at.

We discovered a huge passion for statues in L. Who knows, he might become an architect in the future. This sculpture is called “La Danse”, made in 1868 by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.

And this is also one of L’s greatest passions: clocks. N doesn’t give a damn about clock or watches, but L can admire one for hours.

G mesmerized by Courbet’s “The Painter’s Studio”. Courbet was indeed an awesome guy, not only an awesome artist. He was an active socialist, active in the political developments of France. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune, and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death. He said this in a letter: “I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom […]; when I am dead let this be said of me: ‘He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty”.

“The Mediterranean”, also called “Thought”, made by Aristide Maillol between 1923 and 1927. Kids loved this sculpture.

After hours spent in this huge museum, one might get tired.

L was tired too.

The apartment was tiny but perfect, we had a majestic view on the Eiffel Tower itself, and on Paris rooftops (I know it’s a cliché, but they’re beautiful and if you were obsessed by the Aristocats as I was when I was a child, you’d understand). The holiday was tiring but splendid. Since we could not access the subway without a weight training workout, we found a silver lining and walked 10 km per day. You normally don’t see Paris like that, ’cause the subway brings you everywhere in a bunch of seconds, and it was cool to experience the city surface too for once.

This was the view from on of the two balconies we had.

And this was the view from one balcony on the other balcony.

N in this tiny apartment felt more comfortable, probably she felt herself bigger. She had already learned to walk home, but here she felt much more sure and walked more and better.

L before dinner was allowed to watch a movie, and during this holiday he was obsessed by “Porco Rosso”, by Hayao Miyazaki. He taught me a lot about Miyazaki’s movies. N doesn’t care much about movies actually, she is more into books and music.

G ❤

View at evening.

This is me having wine, cheese and quiche. I was in France, I had to eat the right stuff.

And this is the Tower by night. L got mad at it when it stopped to twinkle and laughed when it started to twinkle again. Every single night. Kids are so cute in their stupidity.

The first two mornings N was disoriented, didn’t want to sleep with her brother in the living room and wanted to stay with us a lot. Me and G reflected much together about the fact that first kids‘ fits of anger are lived by parents with curiosity, maybe concern, sometimes fun. Those of the second kids are often lived with intolerance, instead, or at least this has been the case for us.

There is such a difference between having one kid and having two of ’em. One is no prepared at all. So in the very beginning we just applied to N the same patterns we used with L.

This was not fair at all.

We talked and talked about this and we decided to force ourself to find again the naivety of not knowing stuff, le cœur ouvert à l’inconnu, to stay on Paris topic.
In my humble opinion, you don’t need experience with kids, or at least, you don’t need much of it. Different kids are different persons, not mechanical systems. It’s right to preserve that Socratic “I know that I know nothing” thing with them, and accord your parental style to their different personalities.

Ready to go to the Musée de l’Homme! Thumbs in our mouths aaaaand let’s go!

This was the first time I took a bus in Paris. It’s such a different way to experience the city.

We’ve been very lucky with the weather. It was December and it rained only one day. The kids were dressed properly, we were soaking wet, but didn’t care anything.

The Musée de l’Homme is an anthropology museum and a research center under the authority of various ministries, and it groups several entities from the CNRS. The aim of this place is to gather in one site everything which defines the human being: man in his evolution (prehistory), man in his unity and diversity (anthropology), man in his cultural and social expression (ethnology). Mainly Human is defined through its adaptation to its environment, through the elaboration of a culture (by the vector of the communication among others). One of the main topics is also the conscience of human pressure on its environment as to face the consequences of the evolutions, in the present, for the future. It is also very child friendly, don’t miss this place if you have kids!

N had plenty of space to train bipedalism.

L liked an interactive panel where you could literally walk (or in his case run) through the history of life on planet Earth.

And of course he loved the view from the window.

There were two temporary exhibitions when we went. One which was UNESCO-backed, exploring the psychology behind racism and aiming to shed light on why racist acts in France are on the rise, and to educate people against prejudice. Another was about categories contructions, overlapping identities and nature VS nurture: it explored social, culture, gender identities, and so on. The gender construction section was brilliant, with explained basically all the things we strongly believe in and define us as feminists…

… but then… This was the toilet. A whole exhibition talking about gender construction and equality, and then this. G was going with N to change her, and a guy stopped him and asked ME to do that, ’cause only women were allowed to use the changing table. I said to the guy it was nonsense, that it was not fair, but he couldn’t speak English. So I wrote a letter to the museum, saying that the toilets were contradictory with the whole purpose of the exhibition and the Museum itself. They actually answered me, they apologized told me I was totally right, and told me they would have totally fix the issue. Please, if you go there, let me know if they did it!

Paris has been the place of many parenting consideration also regarding our other kiddo. You know, our son have a serious addiction to his pink bottle (aka the “boccia“). When we’re home he’s only allowed to have it when he goes to sleep, but for a while we had three major exceptions: car, plane and holidays.

After our trip to Paris we only kept car and plane as exceptions, and took the holidays out. I mean, seriously, can you see here one picture where L hasn’t his precious pink bottle in his hands?! He is completely out of control when he’s got that thing with him: he doesn’t talk, he doesn’t play, he doesn’t care about anything at all. He’s totally calm, true, but he loses completely his personality.
It’s like enjoying some wine in moderation on normal occasions but getting shit-faced on holiday.
Every. Single. Day.

So we decided that this was the last unlimited-boccia holiday. Me and G talked and talked about this during this trip, and eventually decided that we would let him enjoy Paris for good with his pink dope.

But this has been the last time that he had that damn thing for so long. From when we were back from Paris, he never had it anymore except for bed, car and plane.

The Seine. Yep, the water doesn’t look that clean. It is not indeed, untreated sewage is periodically discharged into the river, and there is an oxygen deficit principally caused by allochthonous bacteria. Moreover, heavy metal concentrations in the Seine are relatively high and the pH level of the Seine at Pont Neuf has been measured to be 8.46. Despite this, though, the water quality has improved significantly and in 2009 it was announced that Atlantic salmon had returned to the Seine.

Walking walking walking!

We’ve reached the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution. Well, this was cool! You discover so many new things when you visit cities you already know after you got kids. And this is definitely one of the most child friendly attractions in Paris. Under the subdued light of an enormous glass roof, you can enjoy a spectacular procession of life-like taxidermy animals, which look almost as if they are moving, while thousands of other specimens fill the four floors of the natural history museum. Moreover, carefully sequenced lights change throughout the day to imitate a stormy sky, bright savannah sun, or the twilight of the day. It is amazing how an old-fashion Natural History Museum can be mixed with modern care. This permanent exhibition educates visitors about the diversity of the living world, the evolution of different organisms and man’s impact on the environment.

The ground floor belongs to Marine animals: you are greeted by two marine mammal skeletons – the gigantic southern right whale and the blue whale. Further along, Wheke the giant squid waves his tentacles. All around you weave shoals of tuna and mackerel. Here you enter the world of silence, and you can see how life flourishes in the darkness of the abyss, how coral reefs are formed and how shoreline species live with the ebb and flow of the tides and the phases of the light. Here G lets L explore the mouth of a shark.

Birds and monkeys are frozen in movement and a giraffe peers over the railing of one of the upper levels. Biodiversity is the central focus of the museum, the congregation of animals marching in static unison suggesting an emotional unity throughout the species. The elephant heads the caravan of animals from the African savanna. Large mammals and their predators follow closely. Buffalos, bubals, gnus, giraffes and zebras, hyenas, wild dogs and cheetahs. After the savanna, it’s off to South America. The tall metal sculpture reproduces the layers of the rainforest and at the bottom are the tapir, anteater, armadillo, anaconda and jaguar, and higher up are the sloths, the blue macaw and the Margay cat. We see then the Saharan animals (dromedary, gazelle and Fennec fox) and the Arctic and the Antarctic ones (polar bear, emperor penguin and Greenland seal).

On the upper balconies, you can find out more about species diversity by the explanations on the history of living organisms and the journey of the naturalists who deciphered it. Here it’s all about anatomy, fossils and molecules and you get to know Lamarck, Darwin and Mendel and discover the key concepts for understanding life – the theory of evolution, genetic laws, family ties and the classification of species. Spaces are huge, the kids were amazed by this place, and we too.

Sections with fossils and little animals were like scientific playgrounds for the kids, they had a blast, and we spent there hours.

N especially discovered turtles, which is a love that is still pretty intense.

The Pantheon again, we passed in front of it a thousand times. Every time it was more beautiful than ever.

Of course we visited the Tower, several times, we went to the Musée d’Orsay, Notre-Dame, the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution, Montmartre, the Musée de l’Homme, the Cité des enfants and the Centre Pompidou.

In each and any of these places we were welcomed by the sweet submachine guns of the French army’s forces. This was truly disgusting. I understand France has terrorism issues nowadays, but it doesn’t seem like hiring late-teens to point heavy weapons at eye height on civilians is helping a lot with terrorism. Maybe trying to avoid dropping bombs in Syria, for instance, would help more, but this is just my opinion.

Now that I see the pictures of every part of the city we have walked through, I am glad the stroller couldn’t fit the subway…

… just admiring the narrow streets, smelling this buttery smells, meet the eyes of so many people.

Notre-Dame de Paris. This amazing cathedral is widely considered to be one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture. It was begun in 1160 and largely completed by 1260. I remember the second or third time I visited Paris I was with my parents, and my mum and I were lucky enough to got stucked in the cathedral as a (apparently) very important holy mass started. It was not a thing for tourists, only for the faithful, so we pretended to be Catholic and sang the mass in fake French (singing stuff like Ribery-camembert-baguette-Charles-De-Gaulle). Inside we were too amazed by the power of the experience, but when we got out we laughed hysterically for hours.

We did also a super French thing such as buying photographic prints along the Seine

Since I have kids I kind of starting to feel again the atmosphere of Christmas, and Paris on Christmas holiday really is magical

We even found a Christmas market near Notre-Dame where we bought some mulled wine and met an overexcited (possibly drunk) Santa who gave tons of chocolate to the kiddos. They of course loved this strange character.

Then we went to the Pompidou Centre, designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, along with Gianfranco Franchini. It houses a vast public library; the Musée National d’Art Moderne (the largest museum for modern art in Europe); and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. Along with the Musée d’Orsay, it is my favourite place in Paris, one of the most beautiful museums I’ve ever visited.

They also have activities for all ages (from 2 and up), such as the “Galerie des enfants” (Kids Gallery), which awesome and fun exhibitions to raise awareness of art and contemporary creation. Here the kids can explore modern art and contemporary creation through playing around with them. Both the kids had a ball in this place.

The whole design of this place is also unique. It was designed in the ’70ies and it was the first time in France that international architects were allowed to participate. The first reactions was a bit confused by all this “future” all at once, all those colors and tubes and shapes. All of the functional structural elements of the building were colour-coded: green pipes are plumbing, blue ducts are for climate control, electrical wires are encased in yellow, and circulation elements and devices for safety (fire extinguishers, etc.) are red. But a couple of decades after everyone noticed the immense architectural value that this project had. The New York Times noted that the design of the Centre “turned the architecture world upside down”; The Pritzker jury said the Pompidou “revolutionised museums, transforming what had once been elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, woven into the heart of the city”, everyone fell in love with it. And in my personal opinion, it is impossible not to fall in love with it.

Anyway, we even managed to have a day in Versailles. And I have several considerations about Versailles too.

First: public museums in France cost a lot. London for example, which is far from being both cheap and poor in amazing pearls (also thanks to the period when England ruled 99,99% of the globe) shows for free to tourists from all over the world: the British Museum, the National History Museum, the National Gallery, the Science Museum, the Tate Modern, the Design Museum, etc. But ok, you know you’re gonna see awesome stuff, especially in Versailles, so you just pay. And I was more than happy to pay for it!
The fact is that if you buy the ticket with a kid in a stroller, you presume that they will tell you if you cannot have the stroller with you, don’t you?

No.

We payed more than 40€ just to discover that we had to carry the kids, ’cause they have no elevators, no museum-strollers, no freight elevators for people with disabilities, and they don’t allow metal framed baby carriers either. I do understand that not every place on Earth is stroller-friendly, especially the residence of the Kings of France up to the Revolution. I’m not stupid, I get it. My question is: why don’t you tell this to a person with a stroller in her hands BEFORE she gives you her money? And this is not a rhetorical question. This is the actual question I asked after I went back for some explanations.

The woman I talked to before had finished to work, and there was this other woman at the desk. I asked to her. She could not speak English properly, and didn’t understand well what I was saying (great career you have chosen, btw), but she clearly replied: “You bought the ticket from another person, so you could lie to me. Moreover, 40€ are not big money, are they? Only a bum would bicker for such a small amount”.

Oh yes. She answered that. This would have been inappropriate even if the ticket had costed 1€.

The Palace of Versailles was the principal royal residence of France from 1682 until the French Revolution in 1789, when a crowd of several thousand men and women, protesting the high price and scarcity of bread, took a lot of weapons, marched and besieged the Palace, forcing the King, Royal family and the members of the National Assembly to return with them to Paris the following day. You sure remember how it ended with ’em. ZAC!

Here is the bottle addicted admiring the Palace

This is the Hall of Mirrors, the central gallery of the Palace. Within the hall the Treaty of Versailles signed by the victorious powers of World War I in 1919. The principal feature of this hall is the seventeen mirror-clad arches that reflect the seventeen arcaded windows that overlook the gardens. Each arch contains twenty-one mirrors with a total complement of 357 used in the decoration of the galerie des glaces. It is of course beautiful, but too crowded to actually allow people to enjoy its magnificence.

The kids loved the mirror thing, though.

Here we are going to see the Grand Trianon, but we stopped a bit at “the water”, to let L have a contemplation moment

I really loved how big this place was. It’s crowded but you don’t have the feeling it is, and you can just walk a lot around this splendor.

The Grand Trianon is a château situated in the northwestern part of the Domain of Versailles. It was built at the request of Louis XIV as a retreat for himself and his maîtresse en titre of the time, the Marquise de Montespan, and as a place where he and invited guests could take light meals away from the strict étiquette of the Court.

The Grand Trianon is set within its own park, which includes the Petit Trianon (the much smaller château built between 1762 and 1768 during the reign of Louis XV).

How tough you guys look

This episode triggered a whole thinking in me, about experiential tourism. I’ve heard about this concept a while ago. Essentially it is a form of tourism in which people focus on experiencing a place by connecting to its history, people and culture, not just admiring places, but blending into the destination. I truly understood what that meant in Versailles.

I’m sure people elaborated theories much more interesting and articulate than mine, but anyway, mine goes like this.
There are three variables in tourist experience:
A. the place
B. the visitor
C. the relationship that connects A to B.
And there is always a triangulation between the variables, that makes your whole tourist experience worthy.

In Versailles we had point A that was awesome. I’m not contesting the uniqueness of Versailles. It was Louis XIV’s palace: if he liked it, of course it’s beautiful.

Point B was also in excellent shape: we were super happy, super eager to go, kids were thrilled, little hearts were flying around us, etc.

Point C (i.e. how our amazing mood was interacting with that amazing place) was a pile of steaming shit, though.

Tourism is a hard job, it’s not enough to have beautiful stuff to show, you have to create a communication around them. Same goes for Italy. Countries that are full of marvelous attractions are often kind of spoiled by them, while other places build museums out of ridiculous stuff, but you actually enjoy them better.

Louis XIV, aka the Sun King. He was the one who compelled many members of the nobility to inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles, trying to eliminate the remnant of feudalism persisting in parts of France. In this way he succeded in pacifying the aristocracy. He was one of the most powerful French monarchs and consolidated a system of absolute monarchical rule in France that endured until the French Revolution.

Me and N and a bunch of other tourists.

Yeah well, it’s beautiful, isn’t it?

The Gardens of Versailles cover some 800 hectares of land and are one of the most visited public sites in France, receiving more than six million visitors a year. What I think it’s particularly cool is that the fountains, located throughout the garden, still use much of the same network of hydraulics as was used during the Ancien Régime.

Ceiling number I

G and L who put his precious bottle on the floor just to pose (very brave of him)

Ceiling number II

Ceiling plus chandelier

We went home pretty late, after spending there the whole day

Really, I don’t want this post to have the tone of an angry old lady complaining about everything.
I honestly had a great time, the kids had loads of fun, L was almost crying when he first saw the Tower, and we discovered the Musée de l’Homme almost by chance, and it is a really cool museum, go there if you have time!

Regarding Versailles, really, I forgot about the bad experience already in the evening, when we bought cheap and good wine in a supermarket (something impossible in Sweden) and ate billions of different cheeses on a warm baguette looking at the twinkly Eiffel Tower from our window.

So yeah, first world problems, I guess.

What I wanted to say is basically that Paris is awesome, but smiles are even better (and they’re free)!

And most important: weapons suck.

A quick lunch consisting of a croque monsieur each and ready to go.

We promised the kiddos a day in the Cité des Enfants, located inside the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, the biggest science museum in Europe. The permanent exhibition (designed for children ages 2 to 7), is a special place for adults too. It was pretty far from where we lived so we had to take a bus.

Kids love the bus, especially N.

The Cité des Enfants, is a permanent exhibition designed for children ages 2 to 7, but it’s a special place for adults too. This huge space made for actively experimenting and exploring has dozens of fun and educational activities divided into five thematic areas….

The three major themes focus on the development of the child and their physical, cognitive and spatial skills. Kids can test their flexibility and their senses, watch themselves in the mirrors, listen to their emotions, play with balance, sounds and letters, and explore pathways and mazes, setting their body in motion.

The mirror part was especially cool.

The following two themes provide an opening to the world and to others. Your child watches, plays and experiments with physical phenomena: water, air and light. They work with other children to build a house or participate in a collective performance of a circus act.

N and L cooperating.

It was a special day for all the four of us.

[Header pic: Entrance at Pasteur subway station, 15th arrondissement, Paris ©Gianluca La Bruna]