Maxfield Adventures - Living life to the Max: Paris

Church*St. Suplice*Luxembourgh Gardens*Bird Market*Bike Ride*UEFA Fan Zone

5 miles biked*5 miles walked

We had an amazing first day in Paris! We knew our friends the Grahams were in town so we decided to spend the day with them. First, church at the very international Paris ward - about a 10 minute walk from our Apartment. We are staying on the Isle St. Louis (about a 5 minute walk from Notre Dame). Church was 1/2 in English and 1/2 in French, even down to the blessings of the Sacrament. There were about 250 people there split between the chapel and the RS room. Besides our friends we also ran into 2 other families from Salt Lake. We decided to only do sacrament meeting today so that we could attend the end of Mass and an amazing organ recital in Saint Suplice church. The organ could rival that at the Conference Center and the organist was amazing. He played some pieces that made the church rattle and roll.

After donating to the local Boy Scout troop (we bought a homemade cookie) we were off to Luxembourgh Gardens for a Sunday picnic with our friends. We picked up lunch while John Graham picked up pastries. Wow - since John couldn't decide which pastry to buy, he bought about 12 different varieties and we tried to split each one 10 ways. They were amazing - from dark, dense chocolate, to tart lemon, to light vanilla cream, to buttery to fruit. They were also packaged individually in a cute pastry box. It probably took them 30 minutes just to package all the pastries.

After relaxing a bit we walked to the big pond in the middle of the park and rented a toy sail boat for Charlie to sail around the pond. He had a long stick that he could push the sail boat back into the pond when it came close to an edge. He really enjoyed that! After the park we hopped on the city bikes you can pick up all over Paris and road to the bird and flower market near Notre Dame. The blooms on the flowers were as big as cantaloupe and the birds were charming. We even spotted 2 baby kittens and some bunnies. Afterwards we took our bikes and followed the bike path along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. That part was fun - the part that was not fun was maneuvering our bikes along the busy Paris streets to get to the bike path. That part was scary as cars and busses passed us within just a couple of feet. I think we'll stick to walking around the city, or taking the metro.

After our bike ride we happened upon the UEFA fans zone and wandered in to visit the booths set up for each country in the UEFA soccer tournament. Our highlights were walking into the Sweden Ice house, free ice cream from Turkey - and the fun way he juggled the cones in his hands - Charlie and Sydney playing a soccer match with local kids, and the the Belgium virtual bike tour. For dinner we connected back up with the Graham's and had falafel and crepes. It doesn't get dark here until about 10:30 so we are staying out and up later than usual. We concluded our evening by catching up on journal writing and a couple games of cards. It was a perfect introduction to the city of Lights.