Day 3 - Paris Walking Tour

Saturday, June 21, 2025 

11 Miles Walked

24,382 Steps Walked

Today we tried something new. We booked a private walking tour of Paris. I figured it would be a good way to learn our way around and help us decide how we want to spend our free days. 

Before we started, we enjoyed a quick breakfast at home thanks to those who braved the grocery yesterday. Matt was excited that his croissant had been stepped in by little gnome feet. :P

Our tour guide, Thomas, met us at our apartment and we started walking toward the metro station. Our first train was pretty packed, so instead of grabbing a handrail, they shoulder supported each other. 

We hopped off the metro and walked right into a market. It smelled of fresh flowers and produce. It was like perfume! 


Thomas had great photography skills, so he took a few pictures of us throughout the tour. This was our first picture in front of the Eiffel Tower. 






We snuck in a selfie, of course. 



We then happened upon a horse show. It was free, so we walked right in and took a seat and watched a few rounds. It was so unexpected and fun. 




The horse show was right next to the Eiffel Tower. 


This cool guy was standing around while we were buying some waters at a Metro station. 


We took the Metro to the Arc de Triomph. 


Our tour guide indicated this was one of the most expensive apartments in Paris. It was right off the Champs Elysees. The roof is made of slate. The red geraniums are a classic flower for Paris flower boxes. 



We walked past the Louis Vuitton store. The facade was under construction. It is standard in Paris for buildings to have a facade that mimics the actual building or something even better. Louis Vuitton chose to wrap their building to look like one of their cases. Grace and I aren’t really into fancy handbags, but we definitely needed a picture with this giant rivet. :)


This was the whole “case”. It was really quite impressive. See the latch at the top?


Next to Louis Vuitton was this bakery, Laduree.  Macarons were their specialty, but they also have a thick hot chocolate. We bought a small cup to try. AMAZING! One sip was enough for me. It was like drinking a wonderful chocolate syrup. 

We then picked out eight macarons to try later (Evan’s treat). They were so beautiful!! 


This box consisted of 200 macarons for 750€. Eek!! 




We stopped off at the Louvre for a quick picture. 


Then to the Library. This place was actually really amazing. Thomas joined us in this us-sie. As a card carrying member of the library, it only seemed right. 




We then walked through a street mall. Very unique and wonderful stores. This store had handmade maps and old maps. 


The mall was open but under cover. The floor was amazing small tile. 


Thomas told us about the cafe chairs. The “real” cafe chairs are real bamboo and wicker. If a cafe had anything less than authentic bamboo and wicker we had to promise not to eat there. Ha!


Every building and street was beautiful as we walked around. “Stereotypical Paris” actually is Paris. 


Walking through this park reminded me of Hyde Park in London. 


The park led us to the senate house. It is called Luxembourg Palace and is located in Luxembourg Gardens. 


Waiting for another Metro train in these rather comfy chairs. 


Caleb took this picture. He loves every dog he sees, so when I ask everyone to text me their pics from the day, I get dog pics from Caleb. 


Thomas took us to an authentic French restaurant away from the touristy spots. We sat on the second level. Grace took this picture of us using these reflective tiles in the ceiling. 


Thomas had us order and share a few different dishes and we shared them. This included a dish of clams, oysters and snails. Everybody tried a little bit of everything. 


There was a little tool that looked like a T-pin. It was used to get the snails out of the tiny shells. Evan mastered the art. 


After lunch we walked to the Church of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont. The staircases were beautiful. 

A wedding was just ending as we arrived so there were rose petals all over the front steps. Our anniversary is in a couple days so Thomas took a couple pictures of us on the front steps. 



Next, Thomas took us to the best baguette and croissant bakeries. Matt bought a couple baguettes. 




Finally, we were off to Montmartre! This was my favorite part of London the past few times I’ve been. 


There was a lady playing music when we came out of the Metro. Today was Fete de la Musique all around Paris. There were bands setting up and concerts planned. Apparently the whole town stays up all night to enjoy music. 


We walked up the back way to the church Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre. Away from the crazy crowds. 

The road overlooked this bocce ball club. 


We rounded the corner and got a great view of the back of the church. 




Thomas taking pictures. 


This is my favorite picture of the day! 


Or maybe this one. <3 


We parted ways with Thomas at the church. We were going to walk into the church to look around, but we saw that no food was allowed and we had a couple things we had picked up along the way. 


At the end of this long day, this guy made us dinner. He even made pasta (not his usual favorite). 


Whew! Everyone agreed this was a fantastic day, with the lunch being one of the highlights. 

Day 1 which blurred into Day 2

Thursday, June 19 & Friday, June 20

11.7 miles walked

26,082 Steps Walked

Our day started when we woke up at 3:00/4:00 am Central Daylight Time in Iowa. Spoiler alert: It will end on Friday, June 20 at 9:00pm Central European Time, which is 2:00pm on Friday in Iowa. I’ll save you the math, that’s almost 36 hours. Yeah…things get a little Alice-in-Wonderland as the exhaustion sets in. Stay tuned. 

Evan’s mom, Megan, picked us up at 5:00am to drive us to the airport. BLESS HER! She was such a good sport. 

As we were walking to our gate, Caleb asked a very honest question: “When will it be tomorrow?” To which I answered like comedian Nate Bargatze when he played George Washington on SNL: “Nobody knows…” 

Our plane from Des Moines to Charlotte took off at 7:00am. It was a decent size plane coming out of Des Moines. I take this flight frequently for work (well the 5:00am version of it), and it is not usually this busy. Summer travel season is underway! 

We sent Cameron the picture above, and he sent us this picture of he and Isabelle. He had been traveling with her family since their classes ended. 


The trip has begun! 


I don’t usually fly right over downtown Des Moines like this, so I took a quick shot. 


Airport tshirts are so accurate.


Airport pizza wasn’t half bad. 


Airport artwork was actually quite exceptional. 




Airplane food was less exceptional. Now we are on the international flight and enjoying dinner. It really wasn’t bad. 


At night, the LED lighting is blue. When they wanted you to wake up, it turned orange like a sunrise and kept getting brighter. 


We made it through customs and were greeted by this guy. It was so good to see him!! And he out did himself with the welcome poster…considering his limited resources. 


We were picked up by a reserved driver at the airport (cheaper than a taxi for six people). The ride into central Paris where our Air BnB is near Opera was stop and go the whole way. It was a lot to stomach, so when we got to about a ten minute walk to our destination we begged the driver to just let us out. He did and we were very relieved to walk to the luggage storage location. 

We reserved a locker to store our luggage for the day because it was only 10:00am at this point and we couldn’t check into our apartment until 4:00pm. We used Bounce. They were easy and great to work with. 

After we dropped off luggage we walked toward the Louvre (close to our apartment) and found a cafe to sit and enjoy a drink and some sandwiches. It was a very hot day over 90 degrees. And the fatigue was really setting in at this point. 

We didn’t take any pictures during this time, but Matt did take a quick selfie as we walked down a side street. 

This next picture is a shopping mall. Very high end. More security employees than sales employees. We couldn’t even enter some stores without a credit/bank account check. Not exactly our kind of place, but the building was amazing. We assumed it was built for some grand purpose and then repurposed as a mall, but it was actually built as a mall. 

 

Some of the stores are above the dome, so you could see the outside of the dome with the stained glass.


If you go all the way to the top, this mall had a rooftop with beautiful views of Paris. 


A picture of our tour guide. Okay, his sister actually snapped this pic just as he was saying something and this is how it turned out. Oops. He was very comfortable in Paris and really led the way today. I was so grateful considering how tired I was. It is a proud and interesting moment as a parent when your child becomes the leader and you become the follower. 


To keep us awake and busy doing something on that first day (ugh), I booked a guided tour through the Louvre. I’m actually glad I did. But things got a bit tough during that tour when some of us started “glitching” due to fatigue. At least three of us almost fell asleep standing up. The Louvre is not air conditioned (hardly anywhere in Paris is), so it got very hot. Every time we stood in one place it was easy to want to close your eyes. 


I’m not sure when this part of the museum opened, but this is an excavation of the original foundation of the palace. No one was more impressed than Evan. 


One of the masterpieces we saw at the Louvre. Venus de Milo. 


Of course the Mona Lisa. The first time I saw this 25 years ago I recall thinking how much smaller it was than I expected. 


This picture cracks me up because Grace was loopy and Evan was completely checked out. We were all SO TIRED! 


FINALLY it was time to check into the apartment. We are on the fourth floor and we had luggage so we decided to take the elevator. This thing was insanely small. Technically rated for four people, but ONLY if you know those four people REALLY well. Even two would be awkward if you didn’t know each other. 

So Cameron and I went up first. As we got on we told the others to push the button to call it back once we got off. We got to the top and it immediately turned around and went back down. The doors opened at the bottom with us still on and everyone was laughing so hard we had tears. They had pushed the button too soon! (This pic does not do the size of this elevator justice.) 

Once we got to the apartment, no one had enough energy to think about food, so sadly, our first meal in Paris was from the restaurant on the first floor of our building: Burger King. At this point we weren’t even pronouncing English words accurately, soooo…feel free to judge us. 

A small group of mighty warriors in our group, led by Cameron who was not struggling with jet lag, walked to a nearby corner grocery store and grabbed a couple things for breakfast the next morning. 

Cameron started some laundry and we called it a night. Whew! What a day…uh, I mean, days. 

European Vacation!

We are traveling and blogging again…Only this time we decided to go international! Turns out there are a few differences between hauling your camper around the States and flying to Europe, so feel free to follow along on our adventure!

Wait, I am refusing to call this an adventure, because someone once told me that an adventure is a poorly planned vacation (and for real…the amount of time spent planning this…OY!). Also, synonyms for adventure include: dangerous undertaking and risky venture, so let’s maybe avoid the sentiment altogether. 

Journey. I’m going to go with journey. It sounds pleasant, peaceful, and eye opening (and like good music. ;) 

Where?

Our trip will include 1) Paris, France 2) Barcelona, Spain and 3) Prague, Czech Republic. 

Why?

We chose to travel to these locations for various reasons. The kids (now mostly young adults) said it was because we ran of states we could easily get the camper to. They are not wrong. 

Paris was chosen because that is where we will meet up with Cameron, who is in France studying artificial intelligence at a university in Rennes. 

After Paris we will go to Barcelona because Cameron and Matt have always wanted to go. Cameron because he speaks nearly fluent Spanish, and Matt because he is fascinated (who isn’t?) by the Basílica de la Sagrada Família. 

Our last destination is Prague. Matt saw a little bit of Prague while on a mission trip to Poland in 2009 and has always wanted to go back. He talked about how amazing the city was and how truly old as it was not damaged during WWII (another interesting story to explore). 

Who? 

We are changing it up a little this time. We invited Grace’s boyfriend, Evan, along for the ride. They have been together for over six years, so he is truly part of the family at this point. Evan graduated last month with a history degree, so he will truly appreciate the history and museums. The remaining cast of characters are the people you know and love: 

Matt/Dad - Not the driver or mechanic for once!!! While taking a break from his camper hauling career, he is not taking a break from providing regular dad humor and fashion. 

Emily/Mom - Playing her usual part as trip organizer/planner/budgeter (is that a word?), Emily is not new to Europe, but it’s been a minute, so she just hopes she translated everything right while planning because some words look very similar and mean very different things. Eek!

Grace - Daughter extraordinaire who will also be a student on this trip as she balances a summer course for her graduate work back home. She only needs to attend a few classes at midnight local time in Europe. Oh boy! 

Cameron - Son who will be coming off a month of courses in Rennes, France, and a week in Paris. So he will play the well travelled and sophisticated European in our group while we all look like the Clampetts fresh off the farm. 

Caleb - Son who brings with him hair that would make any European jealous (okay, it makes me jealous). And a go-with-the-flow and try anything attitude that really makes him a fun travel partner. And it’s his first trip to Europe! 

So off we go on our first international family vacation!