Little Corner of Ania

Ps. The giveaway below is still open – just see last post.

Spent last week in Paris – this time with the kids & hubby. Wonderful city, wonderful vacation, wonderful week – but now I’m pretty exhausted & need a vacation from the vacation.

For this trip I just brought the iPhone (and hipstamatic) and the X100 along.

If you’re travelling without kids, I’d suggest using the rental bikes. There’s bike/parking stations pretty much everywhere in the city, rental’s dirt cheap and you get to see a whole lot more of the city without getting sore feet too fast. Oh, and it’s fun to boot. I’d also recommend following someone with a directional clue if you do so (I don’t, so I’m glad I had someone to follow last year).

As we had the kids with us, we pretty much just used the metro all the time. This one got pretty good at reading the metro-maps and kept reporting on how many more stations that remained. We purchased a 5-day Paris Visite ticket for everybody.

One of the nicest aspects with booking an apartmenthotel is that you have the possibility of buying your own breakfast. Loved that there’s bakeries, butcheries, small restaurants and grocerystores like, everywhere in the city.

When travelling with kids, small games etc for the restaurants is a must! Thanks Banglamarie for this lifesaving trick. (Although – when you purchase new games – make sure the games actually contains *everything* needed – mine missed a special dice – and I heard from others that it’s not uncommon missing parts with this particular game (BOO, Egmont!)

Visiting the Eiffel Tower was a must. It was a big hit with the kids. Ps. Take the stairs. Only like 680 steps or something like that.

This was the view of the queue for the lifts from the 1st floor. It’s not the whole queue..and it was like, at least 4 if not 5x larger than the queue for the stairs, which took us 20 min top before entering the tower.

And naturally. When travelling with kids, the playgrounds are a sure winner. At least with kids like ours. Let’em run & spend some energy while you rest your feet. (This one was right outside Louvre, in the park behind it. Or in front. Whatever. There’s a nice one in the Jardin du Luxembourg one aswell)

Be sure to pay the 6 million Parisians a visit aswell – in the Catacombs of Paris. And yes, Amalie thought it was just dandy. After like 5minutes of holding her hands in front of the eyes she grew tired of it and thought all the skulls wasn’t that bad after all – and purchased a skull eraser afterwards which she played a lot with during the vacation.

Meet up with friends who’s in the same city as you (and try to get their kids to adopt yours) *wave Eli*

Pompidou is so well worth the visit. Well, without the kids. Sure, they did find a number of the installations interesting, but 70 percent of the time was spent trying to keep an eye on them and reassuring them we’d leave soon. Ps. Right now they have an exhibition of Edvard Munch (the Norwegian painter). Haven’t been to the Munch gallery since I was a kid, so it was pretty pleasant seeing the paintings and works and reading all the information about him at this exhibition. Plus, I love the timber-paintings of his (great trick of the eye).

Walk along the Seine and see Photoquai. We decided to reach Louvre from the Eiffel Tower on feet, and just found this. Fascinating exhibition, although again, the kids made it a bit difficult to give the exhibition the full attention I would have liked to give it. Sniff. After 20 minutes their patience ran thin, so we hurried along the way…

..and found these wooden installations & playthings. Stayed for another 30 minutes so that the balance was restored (happy kids = happy parents).

For Versailles we had learned the trick on how to make the youngest stay happy & patient. Just give her the camera & the responsibility of snapping photos. Sure, you get a lot (and I mean a LOT) of blurry and funny composed photos, but hey, that’s the price you pay for a pretty much undisturbed tour…

Don’t forget the happiest place on Earth…tip: Book your trip to this place on a weekday if you can. BIG  BIG difference between the queues at Friday and Saturday. Don’t dare imagine how it is in the summer…

Fun fact: Even the hotel we lived at smelled of candy and bubblegum (ok, only at the reception area, but still). True story. You could smell it once you got outta the bus. Must be fun to work there (or maybe not :p). Oh, not to forget the happyhappy Disneyish backgroundmusic in the breakfast-room. All.The.Time. Again. Must be fun to work there.

Got the coolest sweaters.

Saw all the princesses.

And had dinner at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show (NB: sound on the site..hate that). Expensive, so-so food but had an entertainment show which the kids loved and will remember for a very long, long time. Probably. Hopefully. They better :p

Right. I’d recommend checking out Spotted by Locals, Paris, before you go. Ofcourse I didn’t, but managed to check out this restaurant the last day in the city (was like 10 min away by feet from our hotel) and wish I had read the guide more thorough before going.