Forget Paris- Day 2

As mentioned in our Paris Day One Post, we sort of over-did it with the walking. We walked all over Paris and back again, if you want to see the route you can find it here. You can see there that we walked roughly 15 km!!!
For our second day in Paris, we decided to rest our aching feet on a cruise of the Seine River. It was a much more relaxing way to view some of the city's sites while getting interesting backstories and commentary. The kids were really excited to ride on the boat: We tried and tried with to get a cute smiling shot of them all looking over the side, but this is the best we could do...

If not for the ridiculous wind, it would have been positively perfect. The end of the cruise had us all shivering and trying to keep warm in spite of the chilly breeze...

We did get to see the sites from a new angle. We loved the back of the Notre Dame, which is less familiar, but more dimensional and very beautiful:

I spent most of the time just hanging on to Tori to keep her from going over-board...

We rode under the Romantic Bridge, where apparently you are supposed to kiss and make a wish. And so we did! But we decided not to post the pic. We'll spare you the mush!

Then we saw the narrowest building in all of Paris, which the kids thought was really funny. You can see it here:

More of the Eiffel Tower and more of Daphne's magnificent posing. I guess she thinks she has to be creative since we are like the paparazzi these days!

After the cruise, we needed some lunch. Our kids aren't really fancy French restaurant material, so we opted for a more casual way to sample French food: we headed to the market on Rue Cler. We stopped there for breakfast as well and were so pleased that we went back for lunch! We must give credit where credit is due: the French make good food! We had baguettes, eclairs, quiches, croquettes, merangues, tarts and more and we loved all of it! I loved Rue Cler. It was how I pictured France in my head and I wish we had time to stroll more, musing the street and shops, but alas, Versailles was calling. Here I am with the kiddos!

While we loved all of the bakery items and sweets, we thought we would try the Formagerie, or the Cheese shop. The French are supposed to make fabulous cheese. At the risk of wounding horrendously closed-minded and American, I must say that we did not find any fabulous cheese. On our way to the Formagerie, we walked into the street to head over there and I said, "What is that smell? Is the sewer right here?" After I took a few more steps, we realized that the smell was the Cheese Shop. Matt went in and there were French women in white coats rubbing the cheese with their bare hands, crumbling it and showing people the thick layers of green mold covering some of their more desirable specimens. And, although we really wanted to try all the local cuisine, our poor American noses and stomachs just couldn't take it.

We did love the bakery, however. Here is Tori munching on a baguette:

And Daphne with a cherry tart:

So we left the Formagerie and took our other delicious treasures for a little picnic on the way to see the Versailles Palace. Versailles is about thirty minutes or so outside of Paris. A Funny thing Happened on the Way to Versailles... I did write about it, but I have chosen not to blog about it (for various reasons)... It was kind of scary, very funny and somewhat horrifying. So for those of you die-hards who want to know every detail of the Hunter family (all two of you) , feel free to email me. Otherwise, let us suffice to say that we didn't exactly fall in love with France. Stay tuned for Versallies pics!!