With our first night of kids in bed before 10pm and with Emerson now measured as too short for the Velib, I agreed with Max last night that whatever time he wakes up, he can wake me and we'll try to get some bikes and go for a Sunday morning ride around the city.
5:30 he woke up and came bounding into our room with no qualms about crushing my Sunday morning sleep :) It took awhile to get going, but we were out the door by 6:30 and off hunting down a station. They seemed to be everywhere and my few clumsy google maps searches weren't helping so we decided to wander until we found one. The first station we turned up to had six bikes, we got Max's out no troubles, but one by one as we tried to rent the next one for me each of the other five turned out to have a problem, broken handlebar, missing pedals, stolen tire tube, busted chain, etc. We ended up going to two more stations before I discovered there was an app that not only led you straight to the nearest one, but also told you how many bikes to expect there - perfect!
By just before 7, Max and I are hammering up an empty Blvd Haussman towards to the Arc de Triumph. We got excited to be here so early we thought we'd give climbing it a go, but it doesn't open until 10am. Not bothered we biked all the way down the Champ-Elysee towards Place de la Concorde, we headed back along the river eventually to the Tower, and all the way along Champ de Mars to the spot in front of the military school where we took our family selfies last time. Back along to Quai d'Orsay and across back to la Concorde it was still quite enough for us to bike around it without any bother. We headed up through Madeline towards St Augustine and we were home. A pretty relaxed 2hr ride, all for 3e, the velib is a pain when you can't track down a bike, but once you have one - awesome!
Back at the hotel Emerson was still asleep when we go home at 9:30, much needed! Max and I headed out for breakfast down the road and waited for the Girls to finish their morning necessities. While we sat at breakfast there was a constant parade of old cars, trucks, bikes etc, all wonderfully restored. In the taxi on the way to the d'Orsay we saw them all again lined up banking la Concorde, some kind of big hot rod expo.
So free Sunday at d'Orsay, we're expecting massive queues. This morning under the tower at 7:30am the queues went from one pilier to the other. At d'Orsay things were much the same, with large snaking queues running all over the concourse. The big difference was that no-one needed a ticket for the museum so the only hold up was the security check, we were though in a half an hour!
Inside Gab talked a lot about the impressionist guys, who they were, the evolution of their techniques. Her favourite is Seurat, but with most of his works on loan at the moment, there weren't many of them to see. We didn't know it at the time but her favourite - A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, is housed in Chicago anyway. Regardless - Emerson fell in love with Degas ballet dancers while Max got intrigued by any statue involving a knight or monster :) For all her blathering on about style, you really could see the progression in a few of them - that self portrait by Van Gogh is somewhat interesting, but if you compare it to his attempt at the same thing just two years before there is a stark difference, the style is functionally the same, but much smaller, less pronounced strokes achieves that painting in dashes style that is a bit easier to my eye than the trippy swirly stuff he did, without the painting just being a test of how well you can combine dashes.
We headed down the block into St Germain for a light lunch and a trip to yet another Macaron store before the kids insisting we go back to and sail some boats in the Luxembourg gardens again, it was a nice afternoon after all. This time Emerson had her own boat, which meant I could actually have a go too since Max refused to share with me yesterday :)
The gardens were a detour we really wanted to go to Le Comptoir for some afternoon hydration before our planned fair ground evening, but for the second time we've visited they were only open for meals :(
We made our way across to the Tuileries where there is big carnival on at the moment, the rides here are like the Easter Show but someone locked up the WH&S guy before he got to tour it. Our first ride was the Sky Chairs which were breathtakingly (not in a good way) high. We stopped in front of this swinging arm thing, with two carriages on either end of an arm span that had to be close to 50, they load up 16 people and fling them around at up to 5.5Gs. They even have clear face covers over each seat so that if you lose your lunch you don't ruin anyone elses day. As I was sitting at the exit point astounded and snapping away, I realised my foot was sliding too easily on the ground beneath me, someone had lost their lunch there recently - yuck!
We went on a Ghost Train whose clever strategy was to lull you into a deep sense of boredom with puerile ghoul paintings on walls etc before at the very last moment in the ride a zombie jumps out and grabs your head - I freaked and hurried out of my carriage to try to capture Gab just after it happened to her :)
Ugly hot dogs and beer - god I miss good beer, then we had a poke around the rest of the Tuileries before heading to the bottom of the shopping strip on Champs-Elysee (Roosevelt I think?) and making our way home. We stopped for one last beer in a little cafe and the rain started to drizzle, nothing too fierce, but just like we had in Zurich I kind of like seeing these places in their dreary weather state, helps me remember their winter persona.
Tomorrow is our last day in Paris and the last day of our trip, over too quickly, but then again it seems like months since we were in Munich.