Night Arc

A nasty rainy day on Sunday left us two boys inside and restless, Mama gone for the week. We put our heads together and came up with the idea to go into Paris and climb to the top of the Arc de Triumph. And so after and afternoon nap, off we went. We arrived a little sunset, and so we were blessed with a beautiful night view of the city of lights. I was blessed with a massive calf workout. Once we made it to te top, we watched cars circling below, we saw the Eiffel Tower lit up and sparkling on the hour, and we gathered our bearings on yet another birdseye view of the city (have also seen Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower, top of Morntparnasse, and the steps of Sacre Coeur; Montparnasse is the best, but the Arc de Triumph is right there with it). A beautiful view of a beautiful city.
Sawyer was really great on our way up the tower, riding in my arms and laughing as we passed a group of girls in heels trying to climb it. On the way back down, he got a little restless and wanted to walk it (he's recently learned to jump off of things and thus looooves going down steps). I fought with him most of the way, but once I could see the end of the stairs I let him down and assumed (correctly) that he couldn't walk any slower than the British couple in front of us. As we rounded the corner and finished the final steps, the exit door worker's eyes widened with a look of "did that two-year old really just walk down the 481 steps from the top?" Sawyer held his head high and grinned.

Knowing a 40-minute train ride awaited myself and a restless boy, I came up with a great idea to get a McFlurry from the nearby McDonald's. He and I could share it and thus occupy our time on the ride. My plan backfired. It turned out that Sawyer had no interest in eating the McFlurry. Not even a bit. He did, however, take great delight in attempting to feed me spoonfulls of the M&M laced ice-cream. Uh-huh-huh Daddyo, the tables are turned! And so he proceeded to dip the little plastic spoon into the cup and barely coat it in ice-cream, then hold it up to my mouth and giggle with delight. Even the sourest faces on the train around us couldn't help but laugh at our scene.

So the Champs-Élysées is the major road in front of the Arc de Triumph. It's kind of a big deal. Among other things, it's littered with a bunch of crazy high-priced fancy jewelry stores. Brands like Cartier, Swarovski, and Swatch hawk their wares on the Champs, but seeing a billboard in the metro, I have a new favorite brand:
That's right... Free Willy artistic jewelry and decorative items. Who wouldn't want a house full of Free Willy?
Free Willy!