The first days of our adventures went fairly smoothly, besides the hiccup with the car service picking us up late, and when we got to NYC we weren't able to get into the Delta Sky Miles club that Paul had pre-arranged, but the ever determined hubby of mine got it rectified! The club was great, Paul and I were able to sit outside watching planes take off eating and drinking free food and drink. 

The kids found a place indoors to plug into. It certainly made the 4 hour layover a pleasant experience. After very little sleep on the plane to London, we breezed through the new e-gates for immigration. Boy, every airport needs these, especially Costa Rica where over Christmas we waited in line for almost 3 hours. Then we found a very nice Brit who changed our Eurostar tickets for us, enabling us to get to Paris much earlier than planned. We checked into our Airbnb and wandered around, got food, then came back to rest. Our Airbnb is located in the 10th arrondissement which might seem far away from all the sights, but it is not. It is really nice to be in a part of town with local Parisians going about their days instead of hordes of tourists everywhere. We had bars and cafes and a boulangerie at the foot of the stairs. Braydon really enjoyed going down to Mamiche Boulangerie de Quartier each morning, standing in line (because it's very popular) and getting a baguette and croissant and coffee for breakfast. We will forever remember the baguettes at this little boulangerie! Our Airbnb had three bedrooms, two of which were down this really narrow hallway, so the boys had their own space. It was a very lovely place to stay. The below picture is the beautiful staircase in our Airbnb, luckily we are only one floor up! 

Day 3. We split up today. Paul and Kyle went to the Louvre where they fought the crowds to see the famous Mona Lisa and Venus De Milo. Braydon and I went to the Eiffel Tower, where we went with a tour group, which allowed us to skip one very long security line, and then the second very long line, our tour guide waited in line while we were able to sit under the Eiffel Tower drinking tea and coffee. Afterwards we walked up the 705 steps to the first and second floors, with an elevator ride to the summit. Braydon had his first ever crepe and fell in love. Kyle apparently ate a zucchini veggie burger-I'm not exactly sure what that is. For dinner we cooked tacos in and Paul had his first day of work overseas. It's going to take some time to get used to him working the equivalent of second shift, but so far so good. Tomorrow we head out on a bike tour. 

Day 4: Bike tour with Bike About Paris was a really nice laid back tour around Paris. We were able to see the main sights of the city with some history/information at each stop, but nothing overwhelming. One of the stops we were given 15 minutes to go into shops or bakeries to get food or drinks. It was really nice biking through the city on designated bike paths just following our tour guide, or mama duck. I would certainly recommend this to others traveling to Paris with little time to explore this huge city on their own. 

That evening Paul and I decided to go out for a drink since he wasn't working. I really wanted to see the Eiffel Tour lit up at night, so we decided to rent some e-bikes, which are readily available all over the city, and go towards the river Seine to see the tower. We ended up finding the biggest gay party spot in Paris blocking the pathway, which we attempted to walk our bikes through! My bike was accosted by one dancing guy, but everyone was in good spirits and eventually allowed us through. We were rewarded with a twinkling Eiffel Tower! 

Day 5: Today was our Palace of Versailles trip. We decided to get entry tickets to the palace for late afternoon, so we took the train in and then went through a huge food market to grab some picnic items. We went into a side gate and checked out the other buildings on the estate first, such as Grand Trianon, Petite Trianon, and the Queen's Hamlet. My favorite area was the queen's hamlet, it is made up of a bunch of small old little buildings that were adorable, all around a pond and gardens. We made our way through the gardens to the palace. Man, it was a lot of walking. Unfortunately we were all exhausted by the time we got to the palace, then we had to wait in line for 30 minutes. The palace was super crowded, and we shuffled through. I'm not sure any of us were super impressed with it. Except of course the Hall of Mirrors, that was impressive! We were in and out in under an hour. This was probably due to the fact that we were really tired and there were way to many people in there so we just rushed on through. I'd certainly recommend the rest of Versailles though.