Paris: Boat ride on the Seine

A river boat cruise in Paris is a must.

 

They have a (smaller) replica of the Statue of Liberty on the river:

We also got our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower (there will be more later).

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The OK City

Pardon the interruption to my Paris coverage. I mostly just wanted to document, for my own records, that I traveled to Oklahoma City last week on a work trip, a very busy three days. It was the first time in five years that I'd been out there.

We did have one fun night out on the town, which included dinner at Mickey Mantle's Steakhouse.

Thank you to R, for holding down the fort back home!

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Paris: the rest of the Louvre

Even aside from the Mona Lisa, the Louvre was an exciting visit. I am happy we beat the line... because look at it:

Entering through the glass pyramid:

Our energetic tour guide, Ambrose:

It was nice to have somebody on hand to take photos of us:

This David and Goliath painting was interesting because if you walk around to the other side of it...

...you see the same scene from the opposite angle:

I might not have these details straight, but apparently horses were paraded through this U-shaped ramp (those are not stairs) in this courtyard, and this may have led to the origin of the carousel:

This statue was the inspiration for the Nike swoosh:

Crown jewels:

The Venus de Milo, damaged but beautiful:

Somebody should sculpt these two:

Enjoying the sun (while we had it):

We saw a lot, and that was just the morning's adventure!

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Paris: the Mona Lisa

Yes, it's an entire blog post dedicated to one painting. We'll cover the rest of the Louvre in a future post.

On our first full day in Paris, we woke up at 6:00 AM, which felt like 11:00 PM back home, to get some breakfast and to see the most famous painting in the world.

We hired a tour guide who took a lot of pride in getting his customers to the famously crowded room to see the Mona Lisa before everybody else. We, along with one other guy in our group, were the very first museum visitors to see it! This wide shot is a bit of a flex:

Here's what the rush to get there looked like:

On the left we have Veronica in 2012, at the French festival in Santa Barbara. The photo on the right feels like the fulfillment of a goal in life:

If you want to jump back fourteen and a half years, Veronica was here before she was born, during my and R's babymoon. You can see we didn't beat the rush that time:

Here's another one I like, bringing it back to the modern age:

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Paris: touchdown

This first photo from Paris was taken by R. We left home on Christmas afternoon, traveled all night, and arrived in the historic district known as Le Marias in the late morning. It was our home for a week.

I'll be posting more from the neighborhood and from inside our apartment eventually. At this point I'm still trying to wrap my arms around all of the photos I took. I'm expecting my Paris posts to go on for many weeks!

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Omri on his new bean bag

Now fully expanded...

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Christmas morning 2024

It was a lovely Christmas morning at home.

Omri got a Rubik's cube in his stocking and is well on his way to learning to properly solve it (thanks to a YouTube tutorial)!

 

V with her new weighted stuffed animal:

Checking out the stockings:

Checking out the wool socks:

R opens a few gifts:

Omri gets a new Switch game and V opens the cover for her new, warmer duvet:

Part of Omri's bedroom redesign project: LED light strips:

V got Lana Del Rey's poetry book. Omri "relaxes" on his (still-compressed) bean bag chair (trust me - it got a lot bigger/fluffier when we released it!):

Opening a new Clue game from Uncle Nate.

Omri also got a subscription to The Week Junior, a Swiss Army knife, and toiletry bag for travel.

V is getting into tea with some loose-leaf varieties to try, a proper infuser, and glass mugs:

My gifts below! Thanks to everyone who thought of us!

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