Still Finding Our Way

The name of this blog – Try, Fail, Grow, Repeat – is feeling particularly appropriate today.  We’ve been on the road for almost a week and we’re still in heavy experimenting/learning mode.

How much sightseeing can we do before Braeden turns into a pumpkin?  Is it better to take the bus or Metro?  Is it more economical to buy a 10-ticket pass or a full month pass?  Where the hell was that boulangerie again?  How many days in a row of jaunting about town can we take before we’re all exhausted?  And finally, how much wine can we drink after the boy goes to bed without feeling like we’ve completely regressed to our twenties?

Juliann’s latest experiment is with the Moka Pot, which she’s never tried before but at which she’s becoming quite adept.  She can bang out a cup of coffee in the morning before Braeden has even tucked into his breakfast, so we’re all able to eat together and she gets (from what she tells me) a damned good cup of Joe.

She’s not satisfied with the whole milk we have, though, and is still looking for a substitute for half-and-half, which I’m told doesn’t exist in France.

A Day of Play

Yesterday we decided we’d pushed the sightseeing as many days in a row as we could, so we spent the morning eating a lazy breakfast, then we headed to the playground in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

We had heard it was one of the largest and nicest playgrounds in Paris, and it didn’t disappoint.  There’s an entry fee (~$5.30 US) but it was well worth it to watch the boy gape at all the cool equipment for a moment before tearing off at high speed to climb the closest ladder.

There was a delightfully decrepit-looking carousel right outside the playground, and after the boy had had his fill of slides and ladders and swings, we bought him a ticket.

It was one of those old-fashioned flying carousels on which the kids try to catch rings.  I grew up trying to get the brass ring on the carousel at Watch Hill, and it was interesting to note how different this one was.

Instead of trying to grab the rings from a metal arm with your fingers, this one dispensed rings from a swinging gourd-like container, and rather than use their hands the children were given sticks to catch the rings.

Both rides, in Watch Hill and in the Jardin du Luxembourg, had ring dispensers that were so difficult for kids to pluck rings from that the operators had to practically hand rings to the kids while they flew around on their horses.

The designers of these carousels ~100 years ago probably had a different take on the level of difficulty that was acceptable for a kids’ game:  “If they can’t grab the rings, f**k ’em.  Life is tough.”

After the park we grabbed a quick crepe at Fournil around the corner from our flat, took a nap, and then went out in search of the legendary Berthillion, the best ice cream in Paris.

We walked through a charming neighborhood on Ile St. Louis, quickly found the shop, waited briefly in line, and ordered three cones.  It was B’s first joust with a cone but he quickly learned the tricky art of drip prevention, and we sat down on the side of a bridge to watch a jazz trio perform.

It was very good ice cream, which is high praise from a family who have experienced the excellence of Ferris Acres Creamery in Newtown, CT.  We’ll be going back soon, no doubt.  The boy has already made us promise.

We finished the day by retiring to the Brasserie Les Patios right around the corner from our apartment for a couple of games of Memory, a glass of cold milk for Braeden, and a couple of glasses of tasty rose for Mom and Dad.

There are always musicians at the Place de Sorbonne, and two of our favorites happened to be there:  a couple playing an electric guitar and a violin.  Braeden is always asking about musical instruments when we stop and listen to street musicians, so we had a nice conversation about the violin and how it works, and we compared it to the stand up bass, which we had seen earlier in the day after Berthillion’s.

We also made a mental note:  the boy is interested in music and instruments, so we’re going to need to get something in his hands soon.

We closed out the day by returning to our apartment, having dinner, and crashing out for the night.

Montmartre

Today we got an early start and headed to Montmartre to check out Sacre Coeur, Bateau Lavoir, and Moulin Rouge.

We started at Sacre Coeur because we knew I would spend much of the day carrying Braeden (more on this in a later post) and we wanted to get the stairs out of the way early.

The walk up to Sacre Coeur wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  We quickly found ourselves at the top of the stairs and we hopped in line to enter the basilica.  There was a mass in session, which made for a strange, dissonant scene:  throngs of mostly-silent tourists ranging around the outside of the pews, snapping selfies and ogling the architecture while completely silent churchgoers sat and listened to the mass.

The interior of the basilica was even more beautiful than the outside.  The gold-leaf mosaic above the sacristy (a word I learned from Juliann, who is way more familiar with her parts-of-the-church trivia than I am) is one of the largest of its kind in the world, and was absolutely stunning.

There were also several thousand candles, lit with a prayer by several thousand tourists after giving donations, the proceeds from which probably provide quite a bit of the church’s revenue.  That and the sizable gift shop right next to a row of pews.

Oh, and there were also about a dozen vending machines.  Pop in a couple of Euros, press a button, and you can be the proud owner of a spanking new coin with Jesus’ face on it.  Or the Pope’s.  The old pope, I think, as they may not have updated the vending machines recently.

We stepped out of the church into the bright Paris sunshine and headed back down the steps to a playground below we had noticed earlier.  And another carousel.  Our kid is crazy about carousels, and Paris seems to have one on every block.  I swear the French government must require Starbucks to build a carousel for every shop they open.

After a restful carousel ride we hoofed it over to Bateau Lavoir, a former studio of several cubists, including a 19-year-old Picasso at the start of his Blue Period.

There wasn’t much to see as the studio isn’t open to the public, but there was a very nice placard that went something like this (my French is still a bit rusty, so keep in mind it’s a loose translation):

This is the Bateau Lavoir.  It was built a long time ago.  Some very famous people painted here, but you probably don’t know any of them because you are an uneducated shit.  You are a small, insignificant nobody, so unfortunately you cannot be allowed inside.  Please feel free to go down the block and enjoy some ice cream.

The front window was also decorated with pictures of some famous artists.  It was nice, though, to be in the place where Picasso began his breakthrough into something new and wonderful more than a hundred years earlier.

We then took yet another snack break on a shady park bench, plotted our course, and set out for Juliann’s designated stop of the day:

When the boy heard we were going to a windmill later on in the day he was thrilled.  He had read about it on a card from our “50 Walks in Paris With Kids” deck given to us by one of Juliann’s former colleagues, and he was excited to see the big red windmill.

[Thank you for the deck, by the way.  We look through it every day and already have a list of places to visit.]

It was big.  And red.  And a touch more, I don’t know, modern, than I expected.

I haven’t been a fan of Baz Luhrmann since I watched his excruciatingly drawn out and, dare I say silly, Romeo and Juliet years ago, so when Moulin Rouge hit the silver screen with an excessively musical “thud” I politely declined.  She loved the movie and was looking forward to seeing the place in person.

[Don’t even get me started on The Great Gatsby.  J tried everything she could think of to get me to see the movie with her but I flatly refused.  I read the book in high school and loved it, but the thought of watching DiCaprio pine over Daisy Buchanan for 2+ hours with Coldplay blaring through every scene…ugh.  No thanks.  I’d rather slam my balls in a car door.  It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t actually Coldplay, it’s enough to know that they were probably Luhrmann’s first choice.  Don’t lie, Baz, you know they were.]

We checked it out, watched some of the show clips on monitors running in the club’s entryway, took a few pictures, thanked our lucky stars there were no questions about why the nice ladies in the videos were dancing with their boobies exposed, and went out in search of lunch.

Earlier in the week The Great Navigator (yours truly) took us on a rather extended tour of Paris in search of a good restaurant for lunch.  It turned out to be a really extended tour and a near-mutiny resulted.  This time The Great Navigator prepared a list of places from Yelp before we even left the apartment.

See?  We’re learning here.

The first place on our list, Le Progres, turned out to be close by so we checked it out.

Food J likes?  Check.

Food we can give Braeden?  Check.

Food?  Because Dad will eat just about any goddamned thing after a few hours of being hungry?  Check.

We sat, we ate, we rested.  The boy was tired, as he should have been after being carried around for the whole morning like some sort of devilishly adorable version of the “Master” half of Master Blaster.  He got a bit grouchy at the end of the meal, but we finished up and made it home with only 2 sidewalk timeouts.

We returned to the apartment, had a family nap, hit the market for some essentials, had dinner, and put the boy to bed.  Then we curled up on the couch and watched the Eurocup final.  France lost after two overtime periods, and it’s been relatively quiet outside ever since.

If the boy knew anything about soccer he might be excited tomorrow when we tell him that Portugal won.

Instead he’ll just be happy that he gets to wear his jersey again.