Bonjour Paris!

Greetings from Paris! To get here, we left England on a ferry from Dover to Calais, and drove for 3 hours into Paris. We managed to arrive in rush hour, and it was pretty crazy driving the roads. Sort of an "every man for themself" feel to driving. If there wasn't room for a turn or a merge, you just do it anyway and expect the others to make room. At least this seems to be what the Parisians do. We hit road construction and missed our parking garage time by 15 minutes, so then I had to drive around and around for over an hour before I found a spot on the streets. That wasn't much fun, particularly when I'd hit one of the huge, lane-less roundabouts. Thank goodness I knew about "priorite a droit" (yield to the right), where cars entering a roundabout have the right of way as drivers in the roundabout have to screech to a stop for the cars on their right.

Anyways, we had a great 5 days and nights in Paris, and enjoyed 4 of them with the Watsons. Here are some photos of our first 2 days. This is our French son Isaiah; he is very cute in his beret, but doesn't look very happy. (Kinda like many of the French people we saw...)

We spent our first full day at Disneyland Paris. We've never been to the "real" Disneyland, so the kids were very excited. It was alot of fun - great rides, lots to do and see, and this is the only park in the world where Mickey says "Bonjour!"

One of the parades down the street with the classic characters.

The family in front of Sleeping Beauty's castle.

This was Isaiah's favourite ride. You can tell that he's a Star Wars fan, as he was almost ready to burst with excitement.

Sophie loved the gentler carousel - that is until she rode the Big Thunder mountain roller coaster.

The view by the Treasure Island area.

First day was great, but it was on our second day that we started to visit some of the more famous Paris sights. We enjoyed visiting the beautiful Arc de Triomphe, getting one of our few

photos with the whole family together!

I enjoyed watching the traffic on the famous roundabout encircling the Arc. Here one crazy Frenchman actually got out of his car to "talk" to another driver. I couldn't help but to also admire the bravery of the cyclist riding through.

That evening we visited the amazing Eiffel Tower. It was cool seeing both of these huge, world famous structures on the same day.

This is our new Texan friend. He is the one with the beard behind Audine and Kim.

Emma and Breanna on the Eiffel Tower (while it was still day) in their matching hoodies. Beautiful girls!

By the time we finally made it to the top, it was getting dark outside. Sophie seemed to be having a blast, but Rachel just looked cold.

We saw lots of people kissing on the top of the Eiffel Tower. Sophie thought this looked like a fun idea, but Isaiah WASN'T impressed.

Well, that was day one and two in Paris. Tomorrow I'll post the next couple of days. Au revoir!

Jimy MacJohnson