Day 30: Hello Paris! Versailles, Notre Dame and the Louvre (June 13):

    Well, today, we woke up preparing for the big day ahead of us! It is going to be a huge day!
It is rainy and cold this morning - it has been unseasonable cold here -they say it is more like their winters. So, instead of Paris, we decide to head to Versailles first, so we can be inside. We arrive and the lines aren't long at all! It is the biggest palace in all of Europe! It was blocked off by a big gold gate! Dallin cleans out the first African vendor he sees of all of his Eiffel towers.  

We went through security and got a voice tour recording thing. There were a bunch of rooms like the king's bed and queen's room, room of mirrors.

The kids loved pushing the buttons on the audio guide and listening to it.

Benson gets us a tasty gyros, a hamburger sandwich and fries.  

Later after that, we drove to look at the Eiffel tower.

   First, we drive around the Arc de Triumph round about with 12 streets converging to it, creating a 9 lane round about. Benson handles it smoothly.

  Then to the Eiffel tower! We walk up to it, and the kids are so excited! Every time I looked up at the tower, my body lights up inside! There were crowds of people! I had to look straight up to see it! it was huge! Brownish-grey color! It was amazing! We are waiting until night to go up it.

 We walked around it for awhile and then went to the metro -subway and rode to see the Notre Dame!

   There, we meet the pigeon lady, with rice in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and surrounded by pigeons. She wears a grey hat and black jacket polka dotted with pigeon poop. She runs over to Dallin and dumps rice in his hands. A pigeon sits on his hand to eat the rice. Ashy gets rice on her hat and the pigeons become hats to Talie, Peyton, Kennedi and I after she sprinkles rice on our heads - which we continue to comb out later tonight in our hotel. We kept walking and looked at the Damme. It was so cool and so big! We are going in it tomorrow!

One of the cutest sights in Paris.

 Within the next 30 minutes, it was pouring rain! We were soaked! We got tickets to go in the famous art museum the Louvre! We saw statues, art, naked people and the Mona Lisa one really wasn't that great! Small, dark and ugly! Just saying.

The kids kept entertained imitating statues.

There were a ton of stairs, and hardly an elevator

The Mona Lisa

Venus de Milo

Outside the entrance of the Louvre, now that it's not raining.

 After the Louvre, we went to get our car and food. I t was a BIG day and a late night! We get home and crash around 1:30am.