Day Two

While Gaute and Espen slept, Johan and Anders and I went out in the morning to pick up some breakfast stuff. The apartment we rented was just one block away from the rue Mouffetard, a well-known market street on the Left Bank. Lots of good bakeries and cheese shops and stuff like that. Our first stop was a bakery to pick up a couple of baguettes. Anders and Johan insisted that I take pictures of each of them with the "long breads".






Later, after the sleepy-heads woke up, we walked up to Notre Dame.



After walking around a bit inside, we went out to wait in the long line to climb up into the towers. Luckily, there was free entertainment in a street artist wearing a wig who would go "scaring" people to the great enjoyment of all of us tourists waiting in line. Anders and Johan thought it was fantastic.




It was a long wait and then A LOT of stairs up to the top, but the view from the top of Notre Dame was incredible. Totally worth it!





After Notre Dame, we met up with the group for our biking tour of Paris. Another great choice. They ended up dividing us into two different groups, so our family got a private tour of Paris. Riding bikes, we got to check lots of areas that we would have never seen on a bus. The weather was gorgeous, and it was fun riding around. The tour was 3 1/2 hours long - fine for the older boys, but I think it was a good thing that Gaute and Johan shared a tandem bike. The shot below is of the boys with our American guide, Christian.



Since we had kids with us, our guide took us by a shop which was immortalized in the movie Ratatouille. It was a shop selling rat poison, and they had lots of dead rats hanging in the windows. The kids thought that was pretty cool, especially since they'd seen the cartoon version of it in the movie.