Paris

March 3-10, 2023

By Hector Gonzalez

March 27^th, 2023

Just a boy's trip, as it were. Laura had a training during spring break, so I took the boys to Paris. We got a small hotel room near the Gare du Saint-Lazare and explored as much as we could. I brought my camera with me, but never took it out of its bag. Instead I took all my photos on my iPhone, for better or worse. Probably worse; they display here annoyingly (click on the ones that are sideways and distorted if you want to see how they actually look). But so it goes. We had a blast.

Asa ate baguettes everywhere. Otherwise roll over the photos so I can describe what we saw.

This is the inside of a fancy shopping mall. Crazy, right? We didn't buy anything but we did go to the center to take the photo.

See? Just a mall. But why can't they all look like this?

Steak tartare and some kind of ribeye or something. The waiter was worried they couldn't eat it. They could, and they did.

This is the obelisk that is missing from the Temple of Karnak in Egypt. So we've seen them both. Just not together.

A pretty church I looked at while waiting to use the bathroom. Paris has lots of bathrooms. It's awesome really.

We stayed up super late to watch Paris Saint-Germain vs. Nantes. Messi scored in the opening minutes, and Mbappe scored in the final two. It was apparently a historic goal and there was much celebrating. The seats on fire were the Nantes fan, who were kind of delightfully naughty.

On the first Sunday of the month, the Champs-Elysees is car-free. Also, the Paris Saint-Germain store is there. So we went and looked and bought a lot of souvenirs. And saw Thomas Jefferson's old house, or at least where it stood. And we got more baguettes because of course.

The catacombs were fascinating. Millions of bones underneath Montparnasse, and lovingly arranged. Asa took some selfies. Hopefully the dead are charmed by that.

Aboveground, we saw a protest against Iran at the Pantheon, had bubble tea near the Sorbonne, watched a piano recital at a spooky church, and paid our respects to the wounded Notre Dame.

The next day, after a hearty breakfast, we went to the Louvre. There was a strike so we had to wait outside for a while, but it cleared up and we went in to see Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa. And Napoleon's chair. The Mona Lisa was very crowded, but Asa was bold and swam through the group like a little fish, so he got the close up shot.

Next stop was the Eiffel Tower. And let me tell you, it's scary going up. And coming down. But the views are breathtaking.

We walked home and Winston met another Winston. In the morning we went to a too-fancy cafe for breakfast.

And then set off to explore Montmartre. We saw the Moulin Rouge but decided not to go in. Seemed too early for those kinds of shenanigans.

Even though we'd climbed the Eiffel Tower the night before, we were determined to climb to the top of Sacre Couer, too. Luckily, the upstairs was closed so we didn't have to.

We explored the Coulee Vert and the Gare de Lyon.

And ate. Vietnamese in one place, steak in another. Good times.

The next day we passed through the Place du Vendome on our way to the Musee D'Orsay, and in the process interrupted a fashion photo shoot. So if you look in a magazine and see a lady dressed in green in front of this mirrored building, know that we were just off camera. Anyway, at the Musee D'Orsay we saw our old friend Van Gogh and made som new friends, too.

These are some of Asa's pics.

We headed back to the Latin Quarter in the rain to look at comic book stores and take a photo in front of the Sorbonne, and also to drink bubble tea, where I saw this great pair of sticky notes.

Although we explored the city more, our last 'destination' was the Centre Pompidou. Which was a lot of fun even though we were all museum-ed out.

This last one really spoke to Asa. He spent a long time photographing it, and has mentioned it several times since. I can only speculate why, but it does kind of make sense.

Our last meal was at a place whose name I think translates to The Dog That Smokes, and there were indeed paintings of dogs smoking. But the food was excellent, and the wait staff was the most charming that we experienced (not that we ever experienced anything but nice). In the morning we went to the far-less-charming Terminal 1 and flew back to Cairo.