Day 7 - Travel to Barcelona

Wednesday, June 25, 2025 

2.3 Miles Walked 

5,789 Steps Walked

Today we travelled to Barcelona! 

Before we leave Paris behind, I want to include a few pictures of our Paris apartment. It was fairly big by Paris standards. The sofas made into beds and there were two bedrooms. 

The apartment was very centrally located and convenient to just about anything you would want to do. 

The kitchen was nice so we didn’t need to eat out for every meal. There was a grocery store down the block. Matt realized on the last day that the grocery store had a basement level that doubled the size of the small store and likely contained the things we couldn’t seem to find on the main floor all week. Duh, I guess. 

Our airport transport picked us up at 9:00am. Caleb was ready with the exact change to pay him. 

Flying over the coast as we landed in Barcelona. Gorgeous!! 


We took another airport transport to the our Barcelona apartment. We were all hungry by this point, so we walked to the restaurant at the end of the block and enjoyed a quick meal. 

Barcelona is the land of tapas (small plate sharing dishes) and pallela. Many of the restaurants have some form of both. This restaurant was no exception, but also had a Korean flare. 


After dinner we chilled in the apartment and a few went to gather some groceries for the next few days. Today is Wednesday, and we leave on Sunday. 

As for the weather, Barcelona is a bit warmer than Paris, with a bit more humidity, but so far there has been a nice breeze that makes it very bearable. Thankfully the dress “code” is a bit more casual in Barcelona. 

Day 6 - Macarons!

Tuesday, June 24, 2005

4.2 Miles Walked

10,124 Steps Walked

Today is our last full day in Paris as we fly to Barcelona tomorrow. Similar to yesterday, we slept late and found a cafe for breakfast/lunch. 

My latte came deconstructed, so my barista, Grace, made it up for me. Seriously, the coffee here is so good. I don’t really drink coffee back home, but here, the taste is incredible and the portions so perfectly small. I wish we could do this in America. 

Caleb ordered off the dessert menu for his breakfast. It was the closest thing to French toast or pancakes he could find. 


Matt ate a bit and walked back to the apartment because he wasn’t feeling well. Long story short, we had been drinking tap water, and Matt’s stomach has always struggled with tap water he’s not used to. So after this point, we only drank bottled water and things have been fine. 


They guys went back to the apartment for a bit and Grace and I went to a macaron baking class we had booked. It was a 2.5 hour technical course that taught the two main methods of making the cookies (French and Italian), as well as how to make 5 different fillings. And we got to take our cookies home! 


If you see how deep the purple is in this picture, but how light it is in the picture above, you can get an idea of how much they lighten once you add all the ingredients. 

Here are all the fillings. We had chocolate ganache (this one is kind of hiding in the picture), caramel, coffee flavored buttercream, white chocolate ganache with pistachio paste, and lemon curd, which was very strong. 

We were in teams of two. Each team chose their own colors. We chose purple and green, but the green was more the color of a hamburger bun on the outside. 


She taught us (or at least tried to teach us) how to make them uniform and neat. Grace was very good at this. 


Our fabulous and oh so helpful instructor Vi. She had ten years experience as a pastry chef and did a great job teaching. 

The other bakers with us was a mom and son. The son was really into cooking and baking so she let him do most of the work. There was a single guy who just wanted to learn more about the culture and how to make certain foods. And finally a mom and her daughters who showed up 15 minutes late and were a little high maintenance. 


They guys spent the afternoon walking to Luxembourg Gardens and watching people play Bocce ball. 

A fountain in the park…

There was also a comic book artist exhibit in the park. 

They met up with us at the cooking school. Grace had asked Vi for some dinner recommendations nearby. She gave us the name of a bullion restaurant that was a 15 minute walk. Anytime you see a bullion in France, it means good, affordable, local food. 

And despite the look on Caleb’s face in this picture, that is exactly what we got. The food was hearty, comforting and simple. We ordered a few different starters and main dishes to try. 


This was a trout fish dish.


Grace ordered the duck. 


Caleb’s fancy cheese macaroni.


A few starters. The Camembert cheese was my favorite! 


Matt ordered chicken and mashed potatoes as his stomach was still recovering. 


After dinner we went back to the apartment, and Grace and Evan struck out on their own. They found drinks and dessert! 






Cheers! 

Day 5 - Paris at Night

Monday, June 23, 2025

7.8 Miles Walked

19,020 Steps Walked

Today is our 24th wedding anniversary. WOW how the time has flown. We don’t have anything specific planned today for our anniversary. We are just looking forward to hanging out with the kids and exploring a bit. 

Originally, this day was reserved for visiting Rennes, France where Cameron has spent the past month. I’m sad it didn’t work out. The train to get to Rennes just kept getting more and more expensive. By the time we had to make a decision, it was double the cost of our flights to Barcelona. 

Today was the day we shifted our thinking a bit. We are finished with big touring days, so we slept in. Sleeping in allows us to be more inline with our timezone back home, and also allows us to stay up later. June 21 was the longest day of the year with the sunrising around 5:45am and setting around 10:00pm. So it is still light outside until 10:30pm or so. Cameron warned us that it is easy to stay up late without realizing it…he wasn’t wrong!

By the time we left the apartment, it was 11:00, so we walked a few minutes to a cafe for breakfast/lunch. 

We then walked to Notre Dame which had just reopened six months ago after a devastating fire in 2019. If you didn’t know there was a fire, you never would have guessed. It is as beautiful as ever. And they didn’t actually finish the assessment and obtain approval and funding to begin the restoration until 2022. 


I haven’t talked much about the weather (very strange for an Iowan). It has been warm (upper 80’s), but we have been fortunate to have comfortable humidity and a nice breeze. 

I mention all of this because we had to wait in line to enter the church. The line was very long, but it moved very fast. Cameron had just been here with Isabelle’s family, so he told us about the long but fast line. We were there during one of their busiest times and the wait was not bad at all. I would not bother with timed tickets. 

The size of this church is awe inspiring. 


The stained glass windows are much more beautiful than these pictures would suggest. 


There are no words to describe these windows. 


All of the painting is new and refreshed after the fire. The fire damage really centered on the wooden parts of the structure and left much of the stone alone. The majority of the work required to reopen was cleaning. The artwork was mostly spared and also required a cleaning to remove layers of soot and ash. 






The back of the church outside was still heavily under construction. 

The black colored spire you see here was completely destroyed in the fire. It was reconstructed back to the original design. 


The famous flying buttresses held up during the fire and are credited with the church surviving. They did need some extra support added after the fire to more fully support the structure during its reconstruction. 


After Notre Dame we took the Metro and walked a bit more to the world largest antique market. Evan, the history buff on our trip, found this market. Originally he and Grace were going to break off and go, but the rest of us didn’t have specific plans, so we all went along. 

I’ll be honest, we figured there would be a cafe nearby for Matt and me…and there was! A beer for Matt and cafe latte for me please! The others wandered around the market. It is only open Sat-Mon, and Monday clearly wasn’t their busiest day. A few of the shops don’t open on Monday, but on the bright side, there were less crowds to fight. 



Evan was in his element. 


After the market, we went back to the apartment for a bit of a rest, because tonight we had plans to see the Eiffel Tower at night when the lights sparkle. It only sparkles every hour after dark until 1:00am, and since it doesn’t get dark until after 10:00pm, we planned to watch it at 11:00pm. 

Instead of going out tonight, we ordered from a place down the street and went to pick it up. We all agreed it was mediocre at best. We’ve had such good luck so far, I guess it was time for a loss. 

Cameron said the best view of the city was from on top of the Arc de Triomph. He recommended going at sunset, so we purchased 9:30pm tickets.

He wasn’t wrong about the view.


The sun set right over this downtown area. Paris has a few clusters of tall buildings. 


I have no idea what happened to this selfie, but I took this version of it. 




Let’s talk about how you get to the top and back down. This fun tight spiral staircase on one side gets you up and the other side gets you back down. The staircase was so tight, I actually got pretty dizzy. Matt held my arm when we got to the top because apparently I was walking a bit sideways to one direction despite every attempt to walk in a straight line. :D


It was finally time to walk over to the tower. Cameron had a great plan to walk down to the river walk instead of staying at the street level with the masses of people. It was relatively quiet down there and we felt like we had front row seats. 






In the three prior pictures, it was lit up, but in this one it is sparkling. You can kind of tell because it is a bit brighter. 


All day I had made comments about how great the guys all looked today, so finally at the very end of the day, we snapped a picture of all four. 


I have not mentioned yet that David Beckham was here to greet us every day. Giant David is plastered to the side of the Opera while the building is under construction. Similar to the Louis Vuitton building with an extravagant temporary facade, the structure that appears to surround him is also a facade with a picture of the actual building printed on it. 


We arrived back at the apartment close to midnight. As luck would have it, the crepe place 20 feet from our doorway is open until 1:00am.