In Paris with Nana

Paris (week 16)

Sacré-Cœur

After a day of rest and packing, we all made our way to Paris for Nana's trip to the Big City (the one in France, not Caledonia).  We caught the TGV at Aix station, then used the Metro to get into the city from the Terminal 2-TGV station in CDG airport.  We are staying a stone's throw away from the Saint-Maur station in the mostly residential onzième arrondissement.  The closest big landmarks are the Bastille square (you probably know that the Bastille itself no longer exists) and the Père Lachaise (the latter is actually in the 20^e).  We used airbnb to find our apartment in Paris - Craig finds it easier to use than vrbo (a.k.a. homeaway) because the airbnb site facilitates payment (i.e. you can use a credit card). 

UPDATE: we will no longer use airbnb.  Since they have instituted "online and offline personal verification" requirements, they require extremely invasive personal identification requirements, such as scanning government ID and then correlating it with a Facebook page.... and even if you accept that (which we held our noses and tried), the verification fails.  Apparently 7 years of Facebook activity is "not sufficient" for their purposes.  Oh, you could also use gmail if you're willing to let them have access to all your Googledrive files and address books.

The first day of site-seeing took us up to Sacré-Cœur.  As you can see in the picture, the hillside was hopping with tourists, it being a weekend and during the local school break.  That made the tour through the cathedral itself a conveyor-belt affair, without much time to reflect on each chapel or statue.  The kids prefer it that way, I suppose, since they are growing tired of seeing cathedrals that all look the same to them.  It started to thin out when it started to rain....

that's the Louvre in behind

In the afternoon we made our way down to the Seine.  We wandered the grounds around the Louvre (without going in as it was close to closing time) and along a few of the bridges, before boarding the Seine boat cruise (we went with the Vedettes tour since it was at an easily-found location (at the Pont Neuf bridge right at the tip of the Île de la Cité) and they had flexible ticketing.  It was dark by 7 pm when the boat left, so we got to see the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, etc. lit up.