Weekend in Paris!

Another week...and guests arrive!

First,this is a picture for Great-grandma Otto! Here's the nuke that made it across the pond to represent the heartland! 

When Will is older we know that he too will learn to sing "Beautiful Nebraska" by heart!  We can't wait to come home and introduce him to everyone!

Also this week Will was able to meet Grandma and Grandpa Neumann!

We spent a few days in Koln and then we were off to Paris for a few days! It was beautiful, but warm city. Temperatures were in the upper 80s and low 90s while were there and boy did we walk!  Will was a trooper and did an great job on the 4 hour train rides.  We've mastered trains and automobiles now we have to try planes.

Oh the Sites of Paris...

When we arrived at the Paris Nord train station we realized we forgot our friend TomTom.  So we relied on good old fashion maps to find our hotel.  It worked and looking back it wasn't that far and pretty easy to find from the train station.  We arrived in Paris on Wednesday evening and walked around to the Sein River. It was around 31 degrees Celsius and I was thankful we stayed in an air conditioned Holiday Inn.

We spent Thursday and Friday seeing sites around the city and taking a a Big Bus Tour.  This hop on-hop off bus allowed us to see how big Paris really is and get a feel for what we could see and do in our time there.

 On Thursday we visited the Eiffel Tower and Will had his picture sketched by a college student from Poland.  We also spent a lot of time on the bus learning about the city and walking around the park outside the Louvre.  The history is amazing and there are a lot of coffee shops and stores.  We must go back! 

On Friday we spent most of the morning at Notre Dame (you can see my artistic photo) and took advantage of the headsets to learn about the church. It was so beautiful (but smaller than Koln's Dom).  Will was very good and quiet the entire time in Notre Dame!  We were lucky because people were being "hushed" and you didn't see many strollers or prams.  :)  He was so good, I bought him a small rosary from Notre Dame and we lit a candle as well.  

Helpful Travel Hint:  If you travel to Paris...take a baby!

I've heard from several people that the French aren't the most pleasant.  Well...my experience was very different.  There were many kind bus drivers, a friendly man in the park who stopped me to tell me about his 3 grandchildren, and when you go to the Louvre (which is bigger than I ever imagined) if you have a baby they let you get as close as you can get to the Mona Lisa! That's right, when we walked into the room with the famous painting you see all these people behind a guard rail about 20 feet ahead of the painting taking pictures. A guard signaled for me to come to him and I pushed the pram over and Chad (who was trying to keep Will happy) followed.

The guard asked if we were there to see the Mona Lisa, and I was thinking...of course it's the only thing in this room.  He then let us go in front of the crowd by the closes rail to view the painting.  You can see just how close in the picture. It was a bit weird because we were in the way of about 70 other people trying to take pictures. :)  We felt pretty special!

We had a wonderful time in Paris and will have to go back and spend more time seeing all that it has to offer!  Will also did a great job and continues to be quite the worldly traveler!