Life: Idiotropic

It doesn't matter how excited we might be, it still takes absolutely FOREVER to get out of the house on a non-school morning with the girls. The goal was to leave around 10. That should have given us ample time. Still, it was a bit after 10:30 and Stella (GPS) estimated a four-hour travel time from our house to the hotel. How I wish that would have been true!

The drive was beautiful, actually. Belgium is hilly and green and since we were going along a route I hadn't been before, so the villages were unique to me and very nice. One village was deep in a valley surrounded by high green hills. One hill, perfectly centered in the back of the valley, jutted out into the middle of the deep and displayed a beautiful old church sitting up high in the middle of the little houses in the village below. It looked like something out of a painting.

We stopped as we neared the border to get gas in the car and stop at a little convenience store to get some car snacks. It had American stuff - little cans of Pringles, sodas, and other junk food. But - it also had fresh baguettes, yummy turnovers and waffles, and good salamis and cheeses.

Traffic slowed as we crossed the border into France through the old pre-EU check-point, but sped up again afterwards as the buildings spanning over the autobahn were dark and abandoned. A very nice sign just inside the border listed the gas stations ahead with prices of the fuel and distances to the stations making planning easy. We hadn't gone far when we came upon a cluster of large buildings. The biggest one of all was Columbia Sportsware with 85 docks! 3M and Royal Canine housed other large buildings there.

The terrain became flat with fields stretching out as far as we could see with villages built in perfect squares set in among the crops. Most of the small villages that we saw were walled with old stone walls and most had square cemeteries walled and un-walled sitting directly outside the town. Rows of perfectly straight trees marked divisions between fields. The tallest deciduous trees stood bare with short ever greens coming up halfway up their trunks.

This is about the time that I heard screaming and crying coming from the backseat. Luci found a ladybug. Normally my kids love ladybugs, but it apparently disturbed them to have it in such close proximity trapped in the car. Tiara eventually took it from her sisters and after a bit of screeching on her part, managed to let it out the window where it probably landed on the windshield behind us.
Arianna -- "Can I put the ladybug in nature?"
Luci -- "The orange one is the boy one."
Luci -- "I'm mad at that ladybug!"
Me -- "Why are you mad at the ladybug?"
Luci -- "Because he's a boy!"

This is where the fields started rolling nice gentle waves as if frozen during an earthquake, cottony vines appeared on all the fences and trees overtaking things like southern kudzu, and signs along the highway denoted wildlife there like ducks, deer, and rabbits.

We were driving through an area that had been decimated during the first world war, but was now lush and beautiful. The only visible sign of it's past was a very small national cemetery along the side of the highway. A swampy area was off to the right filled with trees boasting big balls of mistletoe. I joked that it was the original Bayou. Truly, I could have been in Louisiana the way that short stretch of road looked.

There were no big towns visible from the autobahn until we reached Paris. Then we drove under a series of runway bridges with airplanes landing on top of us. The kids loved that. I understand that they are structurally sound, but it makes me a bit nervous to see an airplane heading straight down to land on a bridge above our heads.

Getting into the city itself was crazy and I was thankful that Kirk was driving. The roads were wide, but once we got off the highway, there were no painted lanes at all, so we were never really sure how many cars were supposed to be there. I guess that was the point. At times traffic would narrow down to one lane to avoid a double parked delivery truck. Other times two or three lanes of traffic would weave in and out of each other along the straight roads. What our GPS called roundabouts didn't look at all familiar to me and they weren't exactly circular either. Some even had traffic lights in them so you'd get into it and then stop partway. It was crazy and scary. I tried to focus on the beautiful buildings along side the road instead of stressing about the traffic. The shops and patisseries looked inviting and all the buildings and churches that we passed looked impressive.

Just after 4 hours of driving we arrived at the Hotel St. Augustine. It was just around the corner from the impressive St. Augustine church and another beautiful historical building that sat along side of it. The road was narrow with no place to park or haul in luggage, so I ran in to ask where to go. It wasn't our hotel. He said that our hotel was directly behind the building to my right, but instead of listening, I looked up another Hotel St. Augustine in the GPS and we went there. On another narrow street, Kirk went in. It wasn't it either, but he got good directions. This time we drove by that beautiful old historical building right next to the church St. Augustine. It was called the Cercle National des Armées and didn't look at all like any hotel I've ever stayed in. We ended up parking in the garage right next to it underground beneath a nice park and playground, then grabbed some luggage and went in. The lobby was large and luxurious with a crystal chandelier as wide as I am tall a huge ballroom with decoratively painted walls - murals with clouds as in an old church. This was it. Our room wasn't huge, but is was comfortable even with three beds and looking out my window I had a lovely view of the Eiffel tower peering from behind a building lit up with "Grand Marnier" on every floor. I sat just on the edge in the window (there was a very wide ledge there, so no fear of falling), and looked up to take a picture. My view was of a statue and you can see the top of the St. Augustine just to the left.

The kids liked to be out of the car and run around the room jumping from bed to bed. Elise came out of the bathroom with her arms soaking wet. "I like the little sink," she said. Oh know. There was a "how do you spell Biday?" in the bathroom. Thankfully it only took a day to train her not to play in it, but that night, at every opportunity she went into the bathroom and came out with wet sleeves.

Once we were settled, we went out. The Metro stop was just two blocks away just past a chocolate shop and a Foir Gras shop. We bought our Paris Visite passes (very recommended) for five days which allowed us to jump on the Metro whenever we wanted without worrying about paying fares each time. It was very convenient. We took the "Mushy Peas line" (coined as such by Kirk who had just been to England a week before) from St. Augustine to Franklin D. Roosevelt. When we came up out of the tunnels at FDR, we were standing right on the Champs-Elysees with a flock of Christmas trees on one side of use lit up for the holidays and the expanse of road lined with high end shops and lit up trees in front of us. The weather was perfect and clear. The Champs had enough people walking along it to feel fun and festive, but it wasn't crowded, so Kirk walked ahead with Luci and Arianna walking freely on either side of him and occasionally racing up ahead until he said stop. I walked behind taking it all in, carrying Elise, and talking to Tiara.

The Champs-Elysees is nice. I'm sure if I had an endless supply of someone else's money to spend that it might be fun to go into the trendy shops with their beautifully decorated windows and come out like Pretty Woman with armloads of bags, but at that moment, with the kids and an end to the money supply, it was just a overly-famed shopping road. So, I can say with a faux French accent that I've walked down the Champs with the little trees all twinkling with lights and peered into the windows of Louis Vuitton and Cartier, truly, it isn't anything special. San Francisco is just as beautiful. Luxembourg City has better shopping. The unique thing here in Paris is the view. It's looking down the Champs in one direction and seeing the Arc de Triomphe, looking down the other direction and seeing the gigantic Ferris wheel at the Concorde, then looking off to the right to see the Eiffel Tower sticking up over the buildings. That was amazing. (What's not unique is that, yes, here on the Champs, you can also treat yourself to a not-so-tasty Big Mac with fries - blech! And, if you would like to be taken in by the wandering vendors selling tacky plastic Eiffel Tower key chains, you can own one for only 3Euros each!)

The Arc de Triomphe is beautiful. It is smaller than I thought and really is dwarfed by the city around it, but the structure itself is stunning with the roses carved in its arched ceiling and names of towns written on the walls. The flame to the unknown burned in the center of it's entrance with flowers along side it.

We got tickets and though we wanted to walk up the stairs to the top, the man at the counter in French didn't give us the option. He saw the kids, he knew how many stairs there were to climb, and he pointed to the elevator. Irritated at first, I am thankful now. The climb would have been a lot for the little ones.

The elevator stopped shy of the top at a nice open area with the best gift shop I ended up seeing in Paris - next time I'll get souvenirs there. We took the stairs from there to the top where is was very cold, but we had a fantastic view of the city, the tower, and the Ferris wheel. We could even see the Sacre Coure sitting on the hill to the North of us.

Absolutely amazing. It's all beautiful. The tower is stunning and, at the very end of the Champs, you can see in the second photo above, the tiny circle of light that is the Ferris wheel on the Concorde. In person, that Ferris wheel is anything but small.

The stairs down were fun to take. Down is certainly easier than up and looking down into the spiral was cool. The kids got a kick out of hearing voices, but not being able to see anyone ahead or behind in the tight turns of the stairwell.

That was the end of our evening almost. We were cold, tired, and it was late, so we headed back to the hotel. Not knowing exactly what was good or where to go, we stopped at the restaurant right next to our hotel. Tiara got a cheese plate of laughable size - horrible and extremely disappointing given our location. Arianna and Luci split a roasted chicken with french fries that was very good. I ended up eating it also since the waiter brought two of those and not the pasta dish I'd ordered. The food was mediocre, very un-French, and horrifically priced. It is not a place we'll eat again, but it served the purpose. Thankfully, our meals improved greatly by the end of the week.