Afton the French tour guide

Ahhh, Paris in the late spring. So beautiful, so full of life, so... Overcast and rainy?? Yes. :-/ During my last two weeks in France, we seemed to be followed around by Seattle-like weather. However, we did have a couple of strategically-placed sunny days (day-trips to Giverny and the Beaches of Normandy), as well as peaks of sun throughout the rest of the trip. Nevertheless, rain or no rain, the Tyler family bounded out into the midst of the humongous, gorgeous city of Paris!

Now, no one else in my family speaks French. Dad has Spanish down pat, Mom and my sister speak a bit of German, and my brother-in-law's other language is math and science (I sure don't understand it!). During the week when I was traveling with my folks, I suddenly morphed into a tour guide! I had to speak for the group everywhere we went. Ordering pain au chocolat at the bakery, buying tickets for museums and the metro, translating menus at restaurants, checking into hotels, trouble-shooting any issues with trains/hotels/reservations, etc. It was a win-win for everyone. I love speaking French (duh!), and my parents were very excited to finally hear me use the language that I've loved for 10 years in a native context. 

When my sister and brother-in-law arrived, my task was doubled! Now it was five people instead of three. Bring it on! I had so much fun blabbing my way around Paris and having the family be stress-free about communicating and intrigued at the same time. It worked out great for everyone! Here's what we saw during our second week:

Of COURSE we went to the Eiffel Tower (a couple of times, actually). My sis and bro-in-law even got off their leash one even and went on a date there to get crêpes and watch all the lights on the tower sparkle on the hour like they do every evening. Romantic! :)

We walked around Notre Dame (the line was too long to either get in or climb the tower- bummer!):

We wandered through the Jardin de Luxembourg, one of my favorite parks. It was a sunny Sunday morning (hallelujah!), and we stumbled upon children playing with toy boats in the pond. Their parents would rent the boats from this man with a big mobile hut full of wooden boats, and then the kids would put the boats on the water and push them with a long stick and watch them 'sail' across the pond with the wind. It was a cool type of old-school fun, and all the little French kiddos were adorable.

Each boat was decorated like it was from a particular country.
Here's the Canadian boat. 

We were finally able to see the Eglise Saint-Croix in the Latin Quarter, just behind the Pantheon. My mom had told me about it a year or so ago and was hoping to get to see it. I had never seen it either, and it really is a stunning church. The stairs were awesome!

The Louvre! My brother-in-law had never been to Paris, and so had never been to the Louvre, and my sister and I hadn't been in six or seven years, so the three of us made our way through the ticket line (I got in for free with my French visa- I love it!), busted out my iPod, and made a 90-minute bee line through the Louvre, using my Rick Steves walking tour of the museum as a guide to see the highlights. I KNOW it's horrible that we only spent 90 minutes in one of the greatest museums on the planet, but two of the three of us had seen it before, and the third didn't really care for museums all that much anyway. But we saw it! "Winged Victory", "Venus de Milo", "Mona Lisa", some famous paintings I don't know the name of- we saw them all. Whew! I was tired at the end of that little trek.

A panorama of the courtyard, with my sister and bro-in-law.

We went by Napoleon's Tomb and the World War II museum at Les Invalides. I had forgotten just how much of an egomaniac that Napoleon was! Haha. The WWII museum was an excellent prep course for our trip to the D-Day beaches the next day.

I had always wanted to see the old Paris Opera House, so I walked over there by myself one afternoon when we had some downtime. I was hoping to take a tour, but there weren't any tours that afternoon because of a Sunday matinee show. Next time! Another reason to go back. :)

We took the metro to the Champs-Elysées and wandered our way up the road to the Arc de Triomphe. A classic area in Paris!

On Monday morning, the five us woke up early, re-packed all of our things, and headed to the city of Bayeux. Once we found our cheap-o hotel and dropped off all of our stuff, a friendly British man picked us up and we headed out for an afternoon tour of some of the D-Day sights around the area. We first visited Point de Hoc, where a group of Army Rangers landed on D-Day with a mission of destroying a bunch of guns... which weren't actually there. Anyway, it was a beautiful spot right on the cliffs at the edge of the ocean, and you could see some pretty intense remnants of bomb craters, old gun posts, and shrapnel-torn artifacts.

We then went to the American Cemetery. It turns out that the day of our tour was also Memorial Day (in the USA, at least), so all of the headstones were decked out with an American and French flag to commemorate the fallen D-Day soldiers buried in the cemetery. It was quite the stunning visual to have both flags side by side in front of each and every headstone. 

Then, we went to Omaha Beach and our guide walked us out onto the beach and drew us this awesome, super detailed sand drawing of the allied attacks on Omaha Beach on D-Day. It was really incredible to see it all laid out on the ground and have the guide pointing to the actual spots on the hills in front of us where all these things had happened. 

Omaha Beach, as it is today. So calm, SO different than D-Day.

That was my second time to the D-Day beaches, and I think I took more from it this time than I did in 2009. My family very much enjoyed our tour and the day as well, and we were all glad we had decided to make it a priority for our trip. I think it's an absolute must for any American making their way to France. So much history and sacrifice took place there. It's mind boggling, but important, to think about.

We stayed the night in Bayeux and then headed out to return to Nantes the next morning. I always loved coming back from a trip to my cute little attic apartment in town, and it was kind of sad to think that this was the last time I would be going home to that place...

My parents were happy to be back in "my city", and my sister and bro-in-law had a great time exploring it for the first time and finally seeing the places I've been talking about for almost a year!

We visited Les Machines d'Ile and admired the mechanical elephant (one of my very favorite things about Nantes), my family was in awe of the gourmet chocolate/macaroon shops in the Passage Pommeraye, we enjoyed yet another delicious dinner at L'Entrecote, and we had dinner the next night with Anne-Marie and Andre (my 'host parents'), which my family absolutely LOVED! I mean, seriously, you can't get much more awesomely French than those two!

Their apartment is in this beautiful early 19th century building right downtown, it's unbelievably decorated with the most gorgeous and perfectly fitting antique artwork, musical instruments, furniture, and table settings you can imagine, their home cooking is to die for, and they themselves are the most wonderful, genuine, salt-of-the-earth people. They don't, however, speak much English, so I was busy translating between five people all evening and was exhausted by the end of it, but my family had just a lovely time. They all said it was probably their favorite memory from the trip. I miss Anne-Marie and Andre already!

My family also very quickly became quite fond of my favorite little bakery, just around the corner and up the street from my house. One evening, we made dinner at my apartment and enjoyed fresh fish from Talensac market, chèvre cendré (my absolute favorite cheese EVER), and a fresh baguette from "my bakery".

Aside: That bakery seriously makes the best baguettes of all time. I would buy one after work three or four days a week and have eaten a quarter of it by the time I got down the street to my apartment and up the 135 stairs to my place (5 minutes, tops). I would also frequently bring those baguettes to dinner parties with the girls and other assistants and pretty much every one made a comment that they were the best ever. If you're in Nantes and you want to taste this miracle of wheat, the bakery is called Au Croissants d'Or and it's at 14 Rue Franklin downtown. TRY IT. They also have the best croissant au beurre ever. And I mean EVER. All of their desserts are really tasty, too, but my family and I discovered that they make these really yummy little pound cake-type things called a "financier". My dad fell in love with them (funny, because he works in finance! Bahaha).

ANYWAY, bakery ranting aside...

I was half-heartedly working on packing up my French life throughout the week, but on Friday morning, we all met up for coffee/hot chocolate at La Cigale, which is a beautiful turn of the century cafe two minutes from where my apartment was located, and after that we tromped up the stairs to my place and had a packing/cleaning/moving party.

When I came over to Europe, I only had a full 60L backpacking backpack, a full 40L daypack, and a rolled-up 20L small pack to carry all of my stuff over here (you might remember the photo on this post). Between going home at Christmas, buying sh*t tons of clothing in France, and getting packages of stuff from the States, I left France with all three of those backpacks, PLUS two totally stuffed large suitcases that my parents had brought over specifically to help me out. Thanks to Mom and Dad's superior packing skills, we managed to shove everything in there and get it all back to the States (thanks to my sis and bro-in-law for dragging one of the suitcases back so we didn't have to pay baggage fees!). Whew!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, that was that. My time in Europe was suddenly and all too quickly over, we took the TGV to CDG, stayed the night near the airport, and headed back to 'Murica. Wow.

My folks were on one itinerary, my sis and bro-in-law were on another itinerary, and I was flying solo on a third itinerary. I was flying Iceland Air, and since they only have one flight from Reykjavik to Seattle per day, I had a seven hour layover in Iceland with which to contend. Fortunately, I had done my research and had made sure to have my towel and my swimsuit handy in my carry-on backpack. What did I do with these items? I went to the Blue Lagoon!! So freaking awesome!!

I had heard about the place, and as soon as I remembered my epic layover, I knew I had to figure out a way to get there. It turns out, it's really easy. You can take a shuttle bus there from the airport; it drops you off right in the parking lot. Perfect. Since I had my own swimsuit and towel, I got the cheapest, no-frills entrance package, got changed and showered and headed on in. 

The outside temperature was in the upper 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the water temperature was over 100F. There was a bit of a wind blowing, so the steam coming off the water and blowing in the wind looked just awesome. The turquoise-y color of the water, the modern architecture of the building, the heat on your body and the cold on your face, the grey, overcast skies and dark, volcanic landscape; it was all incredible and I couldn't believe I was actually there. I lounged in the lagoon for a while, gave myself a silica mud face mask, swam around a bit, got out, took some photos, and then did it all again. All in all, I was there for about five hours and even treated myself to lunch. It was the most relaxing, dream-like, beautiful layover I think I will ever have. As soon as I got on the flight to Seattle and took my seat, I fell right asleep for several hours. And I seriously hardly ever sleep on planes! That's how relaxed I was.

Iceland Air is kind of a crappy, cheap-o airline, but I would recommend taking it at least once when you head to Europe, and make sure you have a long layover in Reykjavik so you can take advantage of this beautiful place.

In our next episode: I'm back in the States and the summer adventures begin! :)