LAX … a bit stressful but so excited to be on our way!!

Montreal appears to be a beautiful city from the sky! Everyone speaks French here ❤️ Patrick found himself a fancy Canadian neck pillow. I was not present when said neck pillow was purchased by his sister. It was 60 Canadian dollars. 😂 It better put him right to sleep!

Arrived in Paris about 3 hours late! 😬 Hungry, tired and excited … waited in line for a taxi and now we’re headed for our hotel. Patrick is snoring. 😂

Our first French excursion

The sun woke us up at 4 am this morning! Patrick is thoroughly enjoying our room!

We started our day by oversleeping and then sprinting to the History Agency (our tour guide for the “skip the line” Eiffel Tower tower. Our ticket said the tour started at 10:15. Mom called at 9:55 saying the tour was about to leave without us. So we sprinted a mile to the tour agency, arrived at 10:10 (5 minutes before the stated tour time) and then proceeded to wait until 10:45 to leave. Wah wah. Our tour guide was a Spanish woman from Seville, Spain. Very funny and long winded. We enjoyed the tour until we found ourselves at the base of the tower watching all sorts of groups go up while we listened to Beatriz for quite a while. When we finally headed up, she informed us at the second floor that this was where her tour stopped and we were free to head to the top on our own. The line was LONG. I thought our tickets entitled us to skip it…? After waiting half an hour, then being told it would be another 40 minutes, we collectively decided we didn’t need to see the view from the top because the second floor view was gorgeous. Then we had to figure out how to get down! The line for the elevator was LONG. So why not take the stairs we thought? 😂 After the equivalent of 43 floors later, the grownups

We had lunch reservations for a fancy Paris restaurant called Le Louvre Ripaille—walking distance to the Louvre—which was where we planned to spend the afternoon. After the Eiffel Tower we opted to take two separate cabs to lunch since not many cabs could carry five. Grace, our resident French speaker, got Papa and Yaya into their cab and on their way to our restaurant. Then the three of us hopped into a cab.. Our first missed red flag should have been his lack of GPS. Second red flag was when he continued past the Louvre for a significant distance. Third red flag was when we discovered we were 25 minutes PAST our restaurant. Grace began arguing with him in French and got him to turn around. Then spent the rest of our trip directing him street by street on French. I was both proud and relieved. Our lunch of steak, escargot and delicious red wine more than made up for it!

After lunch we headed to the Louvre. As we walked through the tunnel into the courtyard, a man was playing guitar and singing Hallelujah. It was incredibly moving. As was seeing the grandeur of the Louvre courtyard and pyramids. It was stunning. When we got into the museum, we split up because Papa and Yaya gmhad things they wanted to see that were different than our plans. None of us were disappointed by the end of our visit. It was absolutely amazing to see such historical and beautiful pieces of art. ❤️