Paris 2024- Eiffel Tower

After our day in Versailles, we came back to the hotel because the kids were tired and they also wanted time to play with the fun stuff at the hotel. They had this room full of mats and soft blocks that the kids loved:

They also had a pool table that Zane enjoyed:

Then we had dinner, got some yummy Parisian pastries, and headed over to the Eiffel Tower to get some good pictures:

We got back to the hotel in time to see the Eiffel Tower put on its nightly glittery show. It was so beautiful and cool!

We all then went to bed. Here was our room in Paris- each kid had their own bunk with a little divider they could pull shut. They loved it!

The next morning we had our second breakfast at the hotel restaurant, which was amazing! It was a breakfast buffet with all-you-can-eat fresh croissants, pain de chocolat, crepes and Nutella, as well as regular breakfast foods like eggs and bacon. I'm still dreaming about that amazing breakfast...

Then we tried to get to the Musee d'Orsay, but there were no reservations left, so we ended up just wandering around that part of Paris, crossing the Seine a few times. We got up close with the Louvre:

Saw the outside of the Saint Chapelle (also missed a reservation there):

Since we couldn't get inside any of the other churches, we headed inside Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrios, which was the official chapel for many of the artists whose work is in the Louvre. It is 1,000 years old and where the services are help that used to be help at Notre Dame. It was cool to show the kids an old Catholic chapel, which they've never seen before, and talk about some of the things inside. It was a cool church, and we were some of the few people in there!

Then we walked over to see Notre Dame (which is still under construction since the big fire):

Then we headed back to the Eiffel Tower where we had reservations to go up inside of it! Here we are, looking up at it from the inside on the ground:

The view from the middle:

Me, Hyrum, and Ivy were a bit too scared to go all the way up to the top, so we checked everything out from the middle floor:

The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower from Ryan, Cora, and Zane:

They loved being up there, and I guess being at the top was that much better, because this ended up being Cora and Zane's favorite part of the whole trip!

After the Eiffel Tower we got some more crepes and headed back to the hotel to grab our luggage. We thought we had plenty of time, but when we actually looked at our clock, we realized we were actually really late getting started to get to our train to Amsterdam! So, we grabbed our stuff and started jogging to the nearest Metro. To get to the right train station, we had to take like 2 or 3 connections, and ended up dragging all our luggage up and down stairs and were literally running at each station to get to the next metro train. I am so proud of our kids who were able to keep up while holding a bunch of stuff as we hurried as fast as we could all over Paris to try to get to our train on time. Our last stop we were all running in a long line through a crowded train station, which I felt like was straight out of that scene from Home Alone, as we were dragging luggage and possibly ran into a few people (yikes). Amazingly, they let us onto the train right as the train was blowing its whistle and about to pull away! We were all breathing heavy and sweaty for the next half hour while the train was on its way, and Ryan and I were thanking Heavenly Father and thinking what a miracle it was that we made that train. If we hadn't made it, we would have had to spend another $400+ to get a train the next day plus a hotel night in Paris, plus we would have missed our tickets to Keukenhof that next morning, which was the big reason we even went on the trip!

Anyways, we were all extremely grateful to have made the train, and it has since become the most told story of the trip!