Jarvis Vacation - Our Sunday in Paris

Our Sunday in Paris

We attended the Merri ward where we met up with our friends Ana Carina and Timothy Fratta.  They were previously members of the Montreal Ward, but moved to Italy about 3 years ago.  Meeting up with them in Paris was a real treat.

Here are the Jarvis-Fratta kids in front of the Stravinky Fountain between Centre Pompidou and the Church of St Merri.  From Wikipedia you can read that this fountain is "ornamented with the16 works of sculpture, moving and spraying water, representing the works of the composer Igorn Stravinksy. It was created in 1983 by sculptors Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle."  The kids are cute too.  They are 7 works of art that move incessantly and spray interesting conversations wherever they go.  They were created at various times and represent the work of Tim and Ana Carina Fratta and Eric and Catherine Jarvis.
 😊

This photo of the kids was taken after our picnic lunch on the steps of St Merri.
 The food has been put away, but you can still see them huddling around a few bags of cookies.

Here are the visitors that arrived just seconds after the children left the steps to watch a flash mob that had formed on the square.  Amazing that the crumbs of our lunch would attrack such a crowd.

The kids watched a dance flash mob that performed for at least 10-15 minutes on the oppoiste site of the Stravinksy Fountain.  At the end of the performance, a red carpet was rolled out and one of the members of the dance crew proposed to his girlfriend.  There was much celebrating with the finale being that the newly engaged couple were thrown into the fountain.

After that we headed for Paris plage and a walk along the Seine.  Here is Timothy trying out one of several exercise bikes that are set up along the Seine.  If you pedal fast enough, you can recharge your cellphone.  

Not to be outdone, Ana Carina gave it a spin too.

Ana Carina was successful at finding 11 beach chairs along the Paris plage.  Count them - 11.  She is a super star when it comes to scouting out opportunities.  We sat under the large beach umbrellas and enjoyed some interesting conversation ranging from artificial intelligence to the kids potential careers--computer programmer, writer, criminal lawyer, etc

A selfie of me!  My kids laugh at all my selfies, but I rarely get in any photos unless I take one of myself.

The kids wanted to check out the Tour de France.  It was the final day of the race with the finale being a few laps around the Champs-Elysées.  This isn't a photo of a French stop-light, despite what you might think.  I was trying to get a photo of the fly-by that happened just as the racers took their first spin around Champs-Elysées, near the Louvre.  Beautiful blue white and red stripes across the sky.

This was my view of the Tour de France.  The police had set up a barricade to prevent people from getting too close to this corner of the Champs-Elysées right where it meets the Louvre.  The kids headed into the crowds along the Seine, but it was no place for Hebe.  She sat on the sidewalk under my feet, playing on the ipad while I snapped this photo of the riders racing by from a bit of a distance.  You can actually see the racers between the police cars if you look really hard.

We came home and ended the night by making up a pot of beef stroganoff. Yum. The delicious meal wasn't the end of the day unfortunately, since we had to do a serious post meal clean-up.

The kids are now on post-gustation clean-up duty since we discovered that the apartment is infested with cockroaches.

That was a unpleasant and disappointing surprise, but what is a trip through Europe for the Jarvis family without a few unexpected surprises. There will be no more leaving food on the counters and the crumbs on the floor will need to be swept up after every meal.

I'm glad we have a three day stopover in Iceland on the way home. I'm hoping that any cockroaches that stow away in our luggage, disembark in Iceland during the stop-over. I'm not planning to go home with uninvited guests.

 😞

C