Excitement was running high when we stepped off of the train at Paris-Bersy station under grey skies. Ezra has been “waiting for this my whole life!” Haven’t we all? We rode ten kilometers through the streets of Paris our first day: to find our hotel and then across town to find the office of a friend who’s graciously offered to keep our bikes and a few bags while we enjoy the last five weeks of our trip on foot instead of wheels. This city is, surprisingly, wonderful for cycling. There are bike lanes everywhere, the drivers are considerate, and there are city-bike rentals on almost every corner, which means there are lots of other cyclists pedaling around monument traffic circles and beside enormous palaces dotting the city like so many wedding cakes.

Our hotel is a dive. We expected that. We are here for the price, not for the star rating. It’s PARIS… we aren’t going to be hanging out at the hotel! My parents stayed here a couple of years ago and recommended it to us… it’s definitely got “local charm.” Cloth covered walls (“How do they clean those Mom? With a vacuum?” “I hope so.”) Rooms the size of walk in closets (If you lay sideways across the bed you can touch both walls.) Paper thin walls (I’m quite sure there was a herd of elephants moving their “trunks” up and down the tiny spiral staircase this morning.) The faint smell of cigarette smoke left from a hundred years of inhabitance by starving artists and angst filled poets trying to make their mark on the City of Lights. Did I mention that the doors don’t always lock? Well, they lock, technically… but once closed and locked the door to the children’s room can be pushed open by a six year old. It’s the Hotel Baudelaire-Bastille and if you come to Paris, you should stay here… for the story, if nothing else. The upside is that there is excellent Chinese take out across the street and they’re open late… we made a run last night after the kids were in bed.

Cycling across Paris was surreal. I spent thirteen years in Canadian schools learning French and at least one practice conversation per week was related to Paris, living here, studying here, getting around here… you name it. I felt like I was cycling through the pages of a childhood’s worth of French texts with the ghosts of my old professors hanging over my head: Mr. Overvelde… my first french teacher… the one who hopped from foot to foot and instructed in a sing-songy voice… the one who began every sentence with “Maintenant….” I was in fourth grade before I realized that meant “now” and not “Class!” Mr. Vachon (who we called Mr. Vache… Mr. Cow… a play on words based on his last name) who alternately drilled us on past-perfect tense and let us watch most of the old James Bond movies in French. I hated James Bond as a result of that… it wasn’t until years later when I started watching them in in English that I realized how much had been lost in translation!!

I flipped pages in the textbooks as we cycled by: the Seine, the monument to the Bastille, the LOuvre, the obelisk, the Tuiliers gardens. I was jerked from my french lesson reverie by a wild swaying on the back of my bike and screaming: “LOOK MAMA!!! THERE IT IS!!! THERE…IT…IS!!!!!!” Struggling to keep the bike upright and get that kid to sit still I looked up and saw what had caused him to nearly fall off of his bike with joy: The Eiffel Tower, in all it’s glory, smiling down at him from above the skyline. Ezra has been enamored with the Eiffel Tower for some time now. I’m not sure when it started, but for at least nine months he’s been asking IF we’re going to see it and WHEN we’re going to see it and, “Can we see it NOW?” He wants to climb it and toss a paper airplane from the top. He does NOT want to take the elevators, even though he knows it will take an hour to climb all of the steps. It is the ONE thing he has shown personal interest in ahead of time on this whole trip. I guess that kind of excitement and adoration justifies nearly killing your mother in Sunday afternoon traffic.

Ez was quite disappointed when we awoke Monday morning to rain. We are not climbing the Eiffel Tower in the rain to look out and see nothing but mist. It was with a heavy sigh that he turned his feet toward the LOuvre instead. It seems cliche to begin our trip to Paris with the LOuvre, and maybe it is, but we were eager to see it, nonetheless. We paid the obligatory homage to the lady of the castle: Mme. Mona Lisa, La Jocande, as she is called in French. The children were equally intrigued by the Venus de Milo and by far MORE intrigued by the Egyptian collections, the rooms and rooms full of sculptures and the impressive glass pyramids that we ate lunch beneath in the central entrance hall of the LOuvre. I think my favorite piece of art in the whole museum is the enormous painting by David of the coronation of Napoleon the first. It was the second largest painting in the world at the time of it’s creation: right behind the Wedding Feast of Canaan, which faces the Mona Lisa. It was interesting to me to stand before the idealized historical record of the first emperor of France, following the revolution and reflect that propaganda has always existed… and some of it has become priceless.

We walked the three kilometers back to the hotel, stopping for dinner along the way. Watching skaters on an ice rink next to the carousel on Rue St. Antoine. Shopping for embroidered patches for the kids’ jacket collections… and maybe a beret. Tony thinks Hannah and I need berets from Paris. Ez spent the walk flipping through his new book about the Eiffel Tower. We found one, in English, at the museum store as a consolation prize for not getting to go to the Eiffel Tower first. Now he’ll be better prepared when we do finally make it to the tower… tomorrow perhaps.

There was one other event which occurred quietly while we walked the halls of the LOuvre and which we celebrated loudly on the streets of Paris later on. The children acquired a new friend: Jennifer Robyn Wood was born to one of our favorite families in New Hampshire yesterday. She is the seventh in a series of J-named kids and the third girl. We took pictures of mothers and children in the artwork in honor of Jenny and Lois and we’ll never forget how we spent her very happy birthday.