It's not realistic to expect a 6 year old to walk 5 hours, jet lag tainting her brain, and the constant sugar ups and downs from all the French bakery items making her moods even more erradict. So it was pretty much a given that Gia would have a tantrum or two. She had two, wait, make that three. Every kid has their own version of a tantrum, hers involves yelling obsenities at the top of her lungs (and by obsenities she says things like "you are the WORST mommy in the world" and "I wish daddy was here instead of you".) Can't remember exactly what sparked today's particular display, but it was loud, obnoxious, very anti-French, and I did the angry hissing between the teeth, rough arm grab, but it was barely veiled (and then it escalated to full blown yelling) and either the French WANTED to call their equivalent of CPS, or they wanted me to spank her hard right there. Not sure which, hard to interpret international signs of disgust sometimes.
Other than that, the day was good. We walked to Notre Dame, but detoured to eat at this over priced crepe place on my map where a pancake with nutella was raised to a high ticket item. We trolled around St. Germaine for a long time, bought locks for the Love Lock bridge and walked the bridge so each of the kids could leave their lock in a special place (one which they are convinced they will be able to find again).
Jardin Tuilleries was next, where the kids played in the little "pay to play" structure area which was pretty cool....then we walked the grounds and decided it was very picnic worthy and we'd be back (when Gia was in a better mood and I wasn't about to get taken to parent jail).
We walked around Notre Dame, but the crowds were ridiculous (the French who live in Paris must abhor the tourists--unless they are directly making money from them). I saw lots of shorts--eewwwww. We then made our way back to our favorite foodie street, where we bought all kinds of yummy food which we couldn't wait to get home to eat.
I promptly poured myself an enormous glass of wine, because within 3 minutes of walking into the apartment, after 5 1/2 straight hours of visual stimulation, yummy eats and treats, and seeing an overflowing handful of very cool Paris spots, the kids brought in our groceries, turned to me and said, "what are we doing tomorrow?" They are insatiable.
I had a Nutella crepe, chocolate croissant, loads of cheese, baguette, cherries, olives and enough salami to cure myself. I wonder how a gluten free person would survive here? It might actually be illegal to be gluten free in France. Right now Romeo is throwing a massive crying jag because the masking VPN on the ipad allowing him to stream Amazon/Netflix isn't working (this is a handy trick if you ever want to use these two things abroad where you normally can't). I'm zen like a cat though, and half way thru my glass of wine....
Signed, ME {lv}
p.s. Did you see how fabulous those royal blue shoes were? I want those.