We wanted to take Kaitlyn back to the Eiffel Tower, to see it during the day and go all the way to the top level. She rejected the idea, saying we’d been there the other night. Fine.
At breakfast, I poured over my Paris with Kids book trying to find something I thought would appeal to everyone. I found a wonderful sounding park that’s right by a weekend flea market. So we hopped the metro and went.
When we got off the metro, I wasn’t so sure we’d made the right choice.
First, we had trouble just finding the flea market. Again, Dad gave up and went into a cafe to ask directions. Once that problem was solved, Bill took Kaitlyn to the park while the rest of us poured over the piles of junk trying to find anything worth buying. There were a couple of things that caught my eye, but I didn’t buy anything. Overall, the market was not the charming neighborhood of brocantes that had been imagined.
Bill called me from the park. The lake with sailboats was dry. The carousel wasn’t running. They were trying to find the climbing wall. He sounded, let’s just say, less than happy. Kaitlyn still had a good time. She wore herself out enough that once we got her to lay still, she fell asleep for a much-needed nap.
On the way to dinner, we went to the Arc de Triomphe… since it was only a couple of blocks from the hotel. I’d nearly gone insane finding a hotel near the Arc and the Eiffel Tower so we were going to go there! Kaitlyn asked why we couldn’t take the elevator rather than climb the 284 steps up, but up the steps we went. Kaitlyn liked being able to see some of the things she’d visited, but I think her favorite thing was the gift shop. (the reward for climbing all those steps is the ability to shop) I bought her a coloring book with pictures of monuments in Paris; I hope it will help her remember our trip. Bill bought her a commemorative coin to join her collection from Notre Dame.
Dinner was the complete opposite of the morning: it was everything we’d hoped for. We got to the teppinyaki restaurant the appropriate French 10 minutes late. We had to sit and wait for our teppinyaki table for quite a while, but once we got our drinks, that wasn’t so bad. And after the cook finished our meals (which were fantastic) we got to watch him cook for the people who sat at regular tables in the restaurant. The oddest dish was the grilled fois gras. Bill said that looked like a way he’d eat it. I thought it just looked greasy.
Even with the evening climb up the Arc de Triomphe, Kaitlyn wasn’t quite ready to settle down after dinner. So we stayed up late watching the German version of Dancing with the Stars. It’s becoming a habit… we watched the Dutch version in Amsterdam! Funny, since we didn’t watch it in the U.S.