Yes, we have arrived! Yay!
Our flight was at 7:10am so we roused the kids at the ridiculous time of 3:45 and popped them right in the car. The wonderful thing was, once awake, everyone was SO happy!
Since we did not buy Max a ticket our biggest prayer request before the trip, aside from safety, was that we would be able to get a seat for him. Our first flight from Seattle to New York appeared online to be quite full so we were doubtful, but when we got to the airport we found out there were actually 20 open seats so he did get one!
And even better, they gave him and I the whole row on the other aisle across from Scott and the girls, so we actually had 3 seats for the two of us! It was Max's his very first flight and he did wonderful. He slept for an hour or so just after we took off, then played and ate happily. Eventually he got a little bored of that and we played Pass the Baby across the aisle, but all in all he was a pleasure to fly with!
Then came our flight from New York to Paris. I wish I could give you a glowing review of that one too, but in truth is was 7.5 very, very long hours...for everyone. Max started out great again, falling asleep even before we took off and sleeping for an hour or 90 minutes. Then he woke up, realized he was indeed in another plane, and proceeded to spend the next 6+ hours letting everyone know how annoyed he was by that. He was pretty much the nightmare kid you imagine being trapped with on your redeye flight over the Atlantic. 'Cause yep, our flight arrived in Paris at 7:00am with a bunch of tired folks on it. Max screamed, he cried, he fussed, he threw his monkey on the floor about 85,000 times and though he was completely exhausted, more tired than we have even seen him, he would NOT go to sleep. Until the last 50 minutes of the flight of course, when he finally conked out so hard that we were actually able to wheel him in his carseat/stroller attachment (Gogo Kidz Travelmate, I highly recommend it - and thanks again Dad, you can see years later we're still using it!) down the aisle of the airplane and into the Paris airport. Sigh.
Once in the airport we happily found that all our checked bags had made it and our shuttle arrived to pick us up at just the right time. Whew! After a long drive into Paris in rush hour traffic we finally arrived at our rented apartment!
By this time it was nearly 10am. We hauled all of our luggage to the our 6th floor apartment (more on the interesting elevator later), set up Max's bed and laid the kids down for a nap. A quick trip to the store for Jenn to get us something to fill hungry tummies with when they awoke and then the adults crashed out, too. We slept until nearly 4:00, then roused the kids, who looked like this then headed out. It wasn't an easy task, but we wanted them to actually sleep tonight!
Before we had left home we asked the girls what they wanted to do on
their first day in Paris and they said "go to the Eiffel Tower and eat a
crepe!!!" So off to the Eiffel Tower we went!
The tower was quite busy and by the time we waited in line for tickets, waited in line for the elevator to the bottom viewing level, looked around there, then waited in line for the top level it was actually getting pretty dark!
The fantastic thing is that they not only light up the Eiffel Tower at night, but they have these sparkly lights all over it so it twinkles too for a few minutes every so often. We got to see that both when we were in it and from the ground. The kids all loved it!
What, you may ask, was our first real meal in the Amazing Food Capitol of the World? Takeout pizza, from the restaurant next door to our apartment. Oh well, it was fast and easy and we didn't have to corral the exhausted, jet-lagged kids in a restaurant to make it happen. Tomorrow is another day and I'm sure there will be better food to be had!
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