Here come the grandparents!

We drove to the airport on the coldest and rainiest day we'd seen all month.  And while we got stuck in traffic on the way, pick-up at Terminal 1 is quick and easy.  Driving from the airport to our first home in Paris the grandparents' first views look like any other city, but that gradually changes.  We open presents from friends, and our hearts are so filled with love and gratefulness.  I dash through the neighborhood looking for a store still open to buy a late lunch.  I also need to buy some bread for the Lord's Supper for the church service, but almost every store is closed on Sunday afternoons, and I wonder briefly if using a croissant would be acceptable.  

Before we celebrated the most French-ified Lord's Supper ever, I remember a store open near EIC Ternes.  We gather after the service to talk and share and then got our travelers home to sleep.  Monday is a rest and recovery day, but Tuesday we take them for a walk around Paris, starting with Place de la Concorde, former home of the guillotine.  I am always in awe at Napoleon's decision to bring back that obelisk from Egypt.

We walk through Jardin des Tuileries, and the October sunshine is so glorious!

We buy lunch from a stand and meet a friend to eat beneath the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel.  Never in the place you want them, K.J. walks a long way to find someone selling 1 euro bottles of water.  It feels wrong to pay three.

We don't want to use all of our energy walking through The Louvre, so we just say hello from the outside.  The architecture is looking especially lovely on this autumn day.

No trip to Paris is complete without strolling by the River Seine.  It gives you that quintessential Paris feeling, and you never know what you'll see.

We pass a climbing wall with the cushy playground material below it.  It's pretty challenging when you're wearing a backpack, which is the only reason I pass it by, of course. Of course.

We also pass by a couple of swings.  It seems a very idyllic thing to do, swinging under a yellow tree beside the River Seine.  Our hearts are always so full and grateful when our families join us in our adopted towns, and we slow down to enjoy and take it all in.

And then we walk by Notre Dame, who I am delighted to find has readied herself for fall with a scarecrow!  I wasn't expecting that.

We duck into Shakespeare & Co. where Ella finds the second-hand Tolkien she's been searching for, and then we head for our Paris home and our favorite hostesses, Maria and Lixie.

 

Maria gathers cutlery and dishes when she travels and uses them to make an ordinary Tuesday extraordinarily special.

"Give thanks in everything,

for this is God's will for you

in Christ Jesus."

- 1 Thessalonians 5:18 -