Amsterdam to Lyon via Paris

Hello Family and Friends,

From Amsterdam to Lyon is a 7+ hour train ride. So naturally we stopped half-way in Paris.

Atlas enjoying the view on our train ride from Amsterdam to Paris.

A little play time and a little snack.

Brett was only planning to stay for one night on Paris, but once I found out that we were going to be back in Paris, I wanted at least two nights. Last time we were in Paris, it really worked its magic on me. This time I figured out why I like Paris, it's the architecture. You can be sitting at a cafe, staring at a building across the street and it is still a good view, because the building is huge, old and full of character. It really is a beautiful city despite its filth. Also you can see the Eiffel Tower from almost anywhere in the city and that is just the coolest thing to me.

Always know when you're in Paris, The Eiffel tower is easy to put in the background of any photo.

Also there are things we didn't get to see on our first trip to Paris such as The Louvre. I told Brett, I could just hang out around outside the Louvre because the grounds are wonderful.

The Louvre!

It's a grand and stunning building located in the middle of a park where people are just hanging out and enjoying the weather.

Of course, you can see The Eiffel Tower from the park around The Louvre.

However, the actually Louvre itself is terrible. I mean yes it has art, but it is somewhere between a little difficult to a frustrating to enjoy. The Louvre was designed as a palace but then was converted to a museum and therefore it's layout is extremely difficult to navigate. We wanted to see three things in three hours. We saw one of those things and spent the rest of the time seeing other things while we were lost.

This sphinx was the only thing on our list that we were able to find in three hours.

Some of the other things were interesting to see, but not what we were looking for.

This is the moat of the old Louvre fortification upon which the current Louvre is built.

A Mummy

I liked this arch, so I took a photo. The Arch is from Italy and located in the Michelangelo gallery.

We even purchased the audio guide so that we would know what we were looking at. The audio guide was terrible. The audio guide doesn't have a map and in order to hear information about an exhibit you have to type in number as the guide has no idea where you are within the museum. The Palace in Amsterdam knew where you were in the palace and had a curated tour that gave you the highlights with the audio guide. The Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam had you scan a QR code in the room and it summarized the key facts of the room. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam had multiple options of highlight tours you could choose from based on your interest, because they know that trying to see everything is overwhelming and impossible. What I'm trying to say is that The Louvre needs to step up its game. Now, that I have visited the Louvre, I completely understand why it is the highlight of so many heist movie. It would be too easy to steal anything from that museum. I of course have no idea what is valuable, but it wouldn't be difficult to steal something small out.

We also took time to visit another site that we missed on our first visit, Sacre-Coeur Basilica.

The Roman Catholic Church is located on the highest natural point in Paris, Montmartre hill.

Another view of the church because it is a stunning building.

The alter inside of the church.

The Archangel Michelangelo slaying a serpent. The serpent signifies evil.

We always enjoy visiting Catholic churches because they have the best architecture. But the highlight of this particular church was climbing the 300 steps to get to the dome and view the city.

The steps were pretty narrow, but they had signs the whole way telling you how many more until you reached the top.

Always looking for the Eiffel tower. This was a view on our way to the top.

One of the views of Paris from the top of the dome.

Another view, because I couldn't pick just one.

After visiting the Basilica we rode our bikes to a park right on the edge of the city.

We passed this structure on the way to the park and later learned that it is the Chateau de Vincennes.

Parc Floral de Paris.

Atlas and I sitting on our respective towers inside of the park.

There was a fabulous playground and we stuck to Atlas favorite: the slide!

A water feature to help cool the kids off.

We did have to cut our park trip short due to some rain, but we had a lot of fun.

We did bring our bikes to Paris and biked all over Paris this trip, but I think we are spoiled after Amsterdam. Even though Paris has an infinitely better bike structure than almost every American city, it was so much worse than Amsterdam. I told Brett that if I lived in Paris I would not bike. It's the intersections that are horrible. The bike lanes just disappear and you have to choose to cross major intersections like a car or a pedestrian. Also a lot of the bike lanes are shared with the bus lane and will randomly move from the right side of the road to the left side of the road depending on the bus route. Also there are just not as many bikers in Paris as in Amsterdam. I mean let's be honest, there will never be another city with as many bikers as Amsterdam. There's a spike in bikers in the evening when people seem to be coming home from work. This gave us the impression that biking is something people do to commute to work but not as a get around town activity. Saw a lot of people using the city bikes and hardly any bikes with kids on them. All in all, I would say we had a very successful trip to Paris as a stopover on our way to Lyon.