The Final Day

Yes, it's true.  We have finally made it to the final day of our trip.  Can you believe it?

Because Sam really only had this one full day in Paris, we decided to do the open top bus tour thing again in an attempt to see as much as possible.  In Paris, there are 4 loops on the bus tour.  We started with the main loop that shows many of the most popular touristy sights.  Of course, we had already seen many of these sights already, but it was still a blast.

Bus tour

Opera 

Bus tour

Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel

Louvre

You can see where people have attached locks to the bridge.  You are supposed to add the lock and throw the key in the river, often to commemorate love or a special occassion. 

Tour St Jacques

Fabulous view

Notre Dame 

We got a kick out of this.  In front of the Hotel De Ville, they had this place set up with a bunch of huge pillow and a really big TV screen so people could watch the Olympics.

 This is the first time we got right up by the Arc de Triomphe.

Dome Church

 After stopping for some lunch, we hopped back on the bus tour for the Montmartre loop.

pretty church

Moulin Rouge

 While on this loop, things really started to go downhill.  The baby started getting pretty upset, and after a while, seemed pretty inconsolable.  We tried and tried to calm her down to no avail.  We even tried going to the underneath part of the bus.  No luck.  Since we weren't getting anything out of the tour anyway, and we were probably bothering everyone else on the bus, we decided to get off.  Sam and the parents got off too and we parted ways.  Zack and I headed back to the hotel to see if we could get the baby to relax, and the rest of them headed off for more sightseeing.
The baby was pretty difficult for the rest of the day, and we were unable to do any more sightseeing.  It was a little disappointing, but not so bad considering that we had already seen most of what we really wanted to see in Paris.  Plus, this was the only day in the entire trip that she really prevented us from doing what we wanted to do... pretty amazing for a 2-and-a-half week long trip.  So we spent the rest of the day holed up in the hotel room.  We did venture out for a bit while the baby snoozed in the car seat, and we picked up souvenirs for ourselves and some of our peeps.  We grabbed some Chinese take out and ate it in the hotel room for dinner.  Hee hee.  Not exactly how I imagined my anniversary in Paris, but I can't complain.
We had early flights the next day, so we headed to the airport very, very early in the morning.  We had arranged for a shuttle to the airport, but apparently they expected there to be 1 fewer of us than there was.  The driver tried to insist that I hold the baby on the drive instead of having her in her car seat so that there would be room for the other people scheduled to be picked up.  I wasn't okay with that.  Thankfully, the adults in our group squished into the back seat all together so that baby could have a seatbelt.
We went home in reverse of the way we came.  Charles de Gaulle to Iceland to JFK to Penn Station to Philly.  Baby was awesome again.  The worst part of the way home was when we were at Penn Station.  We had already be traveling for hours at that point.  The station was so crowded.  We did not have a ton of time between our arrival at the station and the departure of our train.  We were starving.  Z went and grabbed us some food real fast, then we went hunting for a red cap who would assist us down to the train platform.  We tried to get some help for quite a while, and no one would.  Finally, we had no time left, so we just headed to the escalator.  Of course, the lady working there gave us a huge spit about taking our stroller on the escalator, even without the baby in it, and tried to insist that we get red cap assistance.  We explained that we had been trying for quite a while with no success and we were going to miss our train.  She finally let us through, but it was so hard with all our luggage, the stroller, carrying the baby, and our food.  Just when we were really wondering if we were really going to make it, a kind man offered to help us with our luggage, and we made it onto the train.  After all that, baby was pretty upset, and cried for a while on the train.  It wasn't to crowded and the other passengers were so kind and understanding.  After maybe 20 or 30 minutes, she fell asleep, and all was well.  That was really the only time she cried for anything more than a second or two the entire way there or back.  Pretty crazy what a good baby we have.

Funny words in Iceland

If anyone made it all the way through our France trip with me, I thank you.  I really wanted to get the whole thing recorded, for my own sake, and for Clara's also.  It was an amazing experience... probably once in a lifetime for people like us.