Catching up again. Champs Elysees, New Friends, and General fun stuff

It's been a while since I've updated.  I figured I would update about twice a week, but it seems like I'm getting to where I go 10 days and end up posting several posts at once.  Oh well.  Deal with it. :)

A week and a half ago, we decided to spend the afternoon taking the kids to one of the most famous streets in the world.  The Champs Elysees.  I'm even pronouncing it like an American.  CHamps ee-LIE-sus.  We took the Metro to the bottom of the Champs Elysees and started walking up.  It was pretty busy, since it was a Saturday afternoon.  So many darn tourists...

There were a number of street performers that Nick and I watched as Morgan and Sandy went into a number of shops.  I think Nick wants to learn to pop and lock so that he can do that when he grows up.  Morgan loved the shopping, especially at the Morgan store.  However, most of the shopping was out of our budget.  A Gap sweatshirt was around $75.  It's the Gap, people!

As we got farther up the street, we could see the Arc better.  Morgan took this awesome artsy pic of it as we got closer.

When we got right up to Place Charles-de-Gaulle (the road that circles the Arc), we were looking for the way to get to the Arc.  We knew there was a tunnel to get over, but couldn't see where it was.

So, we're standing at "A" and I see a sign to the right that shows stairs down and it says "Arc du Triomphe".  Hmmm.  Seems easy enough.  We proceed to point B that is a Metro station entrance.  It seemed a little odd, but a number of metro stops are located directly below tourist destinations, and you can enter directly from there.  Easy enough.  So, we proceeded there and followed the signs in the metro to "Arc du Triomphe."  As we started emerging, we saw what I feared the most.  We came up at point A again.  Yes, really.  The first thing Sandy said was, "This is going in the blog, isn't it?"  Of course it is!

The REAL tunnel to the Arc was located about 25 feet in front of us.  In our defense, it wasn't visible due to the crowd standing around watching some street performers.  So we took that and eventually made it to the Arc.  Boy, is it big.  How big?  This is the view looking up from the bottom:

It is enormous, and the details carved into it are phenomenal.

We walked around for a bit.  There is an eternal flame that burns underneath it with a guard.  The guard when we were there was this really cool old guy with tons of metals on his chest.  He loved saluting so people could take his picture.

We decided to wait to go up in the Arc.  It was an absolutely beautiful monument, though.  We look forward to going back.  Here are a few more pics of us that day.

On a separate note, we (mostly Sandy) has been finding other expats with kids in the Paris area.  There's a website she belongs to for Paris expats.  She connected with a woman that has 3 girls, and the oldest is right around Morgan's age.  They live about 15 minutes from us.  She and the kids met them at a local park.  The girls hit it off very well right away.  I think they will enjoy hanging out together.  Also, there was a couple from Scotland that she emailed with that has 2 boys, the oldest of which is Nick's age.  We met their family last Saturday at a different park.  The boys really enjoyed spending time together.  They've been here for about 2 years, so they were eager to share what they've learned and such.  It's great that we're finding kids in the city that our kids can play with and talk to.

We continue to have fun and be our silly American selves.  The French are so serious and straight laced in public.  I think we sometimes cause a scene, like when I decide to mimic the art I find

Or when Sandy finds a piece of string, names it "Alf" and annoys Morgan with it for an entire afternoon:

Or on a Metro ride to church, there's a plastic bag that keeps going front to back on the train. 

(And yes, both of those incidents gave us quite a bit of enjoyment)

And on an unrelated note, this is Nick doing his Popeye impression.

Thankfully, Morgan isn't in public when she decides she's going to bite the heads off chickens.