Jet Lag! (And Notre Dame, too!)

(Tuesday October 20)

Ok, so we went to bed Monday night at close to midnight Paris time and didn't set an alarm.  Oops.  We woke up at noon.  Yes, noon!  Oh well, at least it is an improvement over our last trip in which, you may remember, while the rest of us wanted to sleep Max woke up in the middle of the night wide awake and ready to play for a couple hours before falling back asleep.  Not this time...all 6 of us slept straight through until noon.  Actually, we had to wake the kids up at that point.  After eating a bit of leftover yummyness from the night before we headed out for Notre Dame.

But as soon as we left our apartment we were met with one of Paris' most exciting sights when you're a kid.  In various places around the city you will randomly find little mobile carousels set up.  This is in addition to several large, permanent carousels near tourist attractions.  Of course the kids had to go for a ride!

We waited in the world's longest line in to get into the main floor of Notre Dame, then joined several thousand of our closest friends to exploring the sanctuary, side chapels, sculptures and stained glass.

 We also took the opportunity to light a candle in remembrance of Scott's mom, having done the same for Scott's grandma and my mom on our last trip.

After the main floor we went our to another line to go up into the towers.  Here are our three little peanuts waiting semi-patiently in line, yet again.

The climb up to the top is over 400 steps, but worth every one!  Notre Dame is so centrally located that it has amazing views of Paris from every direction.

 After Notre Dame we did what the kids had been looking forward to all day - hit the little park right in the shadow of the church.  Such an amazing place to sit and watch the kids play!  Turns out we had pretty good timing, as just as we were about to leave it started to rain in earnest!

 By the time we finished at the park it was dinner time, and of course we had only eaten a bit of leftovers after waking at noon and heading out quickly!  Luckily, one of our favorite restaurants is just across the Seine from the church so we hightailed it over there trying to stay dry and ate a wonderful dinner outside under their awning overlooking Ile de la Cite.

 After dinner the rain had stopped so we took some extra time to walk along the Seine and admire the lights of the city.  Ahhhh, Paris!