Blunk Family Euro Trip: Paris, France – Musée de l’Armée, Napoleon’s Tomb & The Tuileries Garden

My Dad was no overly excited about our trip to Europe. He loves where he lives, and although he’s said for years he wants a house in Mexico, when it comes to travel he’s generally satisfied with going to the lake house for a week, especially since he travels constantly for work. So while we rest of us couldn’t wait to try all the food, drink all the wine, and see everything there was to see, his main interest was the architecture. He is also a history buff, so I tried to combine the two with a trip to the Musée d l’Armée and Napoleon’s Tomb. 

I actually visited the museum years ago, but I didn’t remember much. As much as I hate to admit it, I was in high school and historical museums held little interested to me at that point. I also found they had updated quite a bit and added lots of new exhibits.

Before we went in we had to stop for a quick lunch for Aubrey. I plan to do another post on traveling with a baby on an extended trip, but for those wondering I ordered a massive box of squeeze food packets for the trip. They were invaluable in my opinion, although I realized once we were there it was pretty easy to find them in the local grocery stores. But, at least I knew A liked the ones I brought, and I didn’t have to stress about finding food for her.

This photo cracks me up every time I see it. 

Putting the selfie stick to use again. This was our best redo of the Griswald Vacation Photo with the berets. 

After an educational morning, we opted for a more lighthearted afternoon. We had plans for a picnic at the Eiffel Tower later that evening so time was a little tight, but I wanted everyone to see the Tuileries Garden and specifically Monet’s Water Lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie. So we made the trek, only to find out that because it was a Sunday the museum was closed, AND there was a huge street basketball event going on blocking the closest entrance. So we walked quite a ways down the road and found an open entrance to the garden, and promptly found a cafe to grab some lunch.

Aubrey turned into a major bread-head during this trip. Probably bad parenting, but as long as she was snacking on some sort of bread or breadstick she was a happy camper during our meals.

The cafe happened to have a delicious sparkling wine (we were having withdrawals from Prosecco), and we ended up “seizing the carp” (<–know what I mean?), and lunch turned into a very delightful afternoon over delicious food and laughing over our previous vacation mishaps.

Then we finally departed to actually SEE the garden.

Paris is the city of love they say. These lovebirds may have been taken by the spell 🙂

Aunt Hannah on stroller duty. I’ll just say right now, it is pretty darn awesome to have so many people around to help that you hardly ever push your own stroller, hold your own baby, or change a diaper. So seriously awesome! 

Because there are hardly any free bathrooms in Europe, we often took the opportunity to grab a drink and use the facilities when needed. Thus another pit stop below.

And someone was taking an afternoon siesta.

When we realized we had only about an hour and a half before our planned time to be at the Eiffel Tower we had to pick up our pace in order to make it back to the apartment to change clothes (it was pretty chilly in the evenings), buy our picnic supplies, and make it back to the tower in time to catch the full show of the setting sun and eventual twinkling lights. 

So we were off to the metro in a flash! 

To be continued…