Published September 17th, 2018

After a nice Friday night with Kelly, my Mom and Dad landed in Paris on Saturday, August 11th to start off a new set of adventures! Kelly and I actually had the coming week off – both of our labs were closed that week (partially because of various strikes in the past that put extra days off in law, partially because of the Assumption of Mary, and partially because everyone takes that week off anyway) so we got to spend a lot of time with my parents.

My parents were staying right next to Invalides, so we met them at their hotel when they came in. Invalides has this beautiful golden dome, and so throughout the trip, my parents joked that they couldn’t get lost, because they just had to walk to the golden dome to make they way back to the hotel. After getting them checked in and dropping off their bags in the room, we walked over to the Eiffel Tower – only a 15 minute walk from where they were staying. Next to the Eiffel Tower was a pretty large market selling all sorts of things – Kelly and I actually bought some spices we’d been having a hard time finding in the supermarkets.

We walked up Trocadéro to get a good view of Paris, and them took the Metro over to the Paris Hotel de Ville, where the Gay Games where being held (I had heard about them the week before but had completely forgotten). We then walked over to Notre Dame, and then got some food at one of the restaurants near there. By that time it was already starting to get a little late, so Kelly and I helped my parents get back to their hotel, and we went back to our apartment.

On Sunday we started our day with a visit to L’Orangerie. It’s now a museum, but was previously a greenhouse where orange trees were kept. In fact, it was actually converted into a museum specifically to hold some of Monet’s water lilies. If you’ve never seen one of the water lilies, they are massive paintings, dozens of feet long and a few feet high. You almost can’t take it all in at once. The rooms with the water lilies were built as two ovals next to each other, representing the infinity symbol. Downstairs, they also had a large number of other paintings.

Following with the theme, our next visit was to the Louvre. When Kelly and I first visited the Louvre, we got a guided tour, which was useful – but it’s impossible to see everything in the Louvre in one day. This time we opted not to get the guided tour, and wandered around at our own pace. Again – the Louvre is enormous – each wing is almost a third of a mile long, and each wing has multiple floors of art spanning 6,000 years. We walked for 4 solid hours and still didn’t get to everything – and if you wanted to stop and look at each piece for a one minute, it would take 75 days to see everything (looking for 8 hours per day). 

One part of the Louvre we stumbled on was part the apartments of Napoleon III. One of the rooms had a massive dining table – almost big enough to seat the whole Erickson family!

Our day wasn’t done though – that night, we took a dinner cruise on the Seine river (the river meandering through the center of Paris). It was a really nice time, although it was a little difficult to remember to look outside while also eating and talking. One pretty cool observation – there was a smaller version of the Statue of Liberty that was made and put in Paris, and our boat went right by it so we got some good pictures!

The cruise was great and the food was excellent. When we got back, we still had a little time, so everyone came back to see our apartment and relax for a little bit. After a nice end to the night, my parents made the trip back to their hotel, and we got ready for the next day of adventures!