Musée d'Orsay

Saturday, February 15th, continued: after we exited Notre Dame, we walked a few blocks over to the Latin Quarter for lunch. Jeff chose a restaurant that serves raclette, and he and Jay feasted on toasted cheese and potatoes. Rose and I got the 3 part menu du jour: Rose tried escargot (and loved it), boeuf bourguignon, and chocolate mousse. I had French onion soup, salmon and noodles, and tarte aux pommes. Amber took a break from local cuisine and ordered the kids meal: steak hache (a hamburger patty) with fries and a scoop of chocolate ice cream. I love French onion soup so much! They serve it with crusty slices of Emmentel cheese toasted baguette on top, and it warms every corner of both my heart and soul.

Notre Dame 2.0

The first thing I always want to do in Paris is go to Notre Dame Cathedral. So that's what I did! On our first morning in Paris on Saturday, February 15th, I waited till it was almost dawn (jet lag woke me up at 4:20am) and went on a sunrise run along the river Seine past Notre Dame. I love that building so much! I stayed kind of close and ran around the two little islands in the Seine (Notre Dame is on the bigger of the two islands) in hopes of hearing the bells of Notre Dame ring at 8am. For some reason, the bells did not ring that morning, so I swallowed my disappointment, admired the view one more time, and ran the one mile from Notre Dame back to our Airbnb. 

Notre Dame at sunrise during my run.

Valentine's Day: from Marseille to Paris

On Friday, February 14th, we took the train from Marseille to Paris. 

We checked out off our Airbnb at 10:04am (putting the keys back in the lock box attached to a bike rack around the corner) and rode the metro to the Marseille St. Charles Gare (train station). On my way through the barrier to get out of the metro station, the two barrier doors suddenly slid shut, giving me the truly French experience of being guillotined--it was a horizontal guillotine, but it was still totally a guillotine. Those doors slammed hard, one into each of my shoulders, and I had to really muscle my way out of them. It was made more difficult because I had my backpack on, so once I wriggled my shoulders out, my backpack got caught in the cross-chop. I even had a valid metro ticket and everything! Ridiculous! Hilarious! A sagittal guillotine chop in the metro. Hah!

Lettres Marseille

Always willing to sacrifice sleep for a good sunrise, I got up early in Marseille on Friday, February 14th, for a solo farewell to this quirky coastal city. It was an urban adventure-run up to the Hollywood-style les Lettres Marseille. The night before, I made a careful plan and broke down the segments of my adventure to get as accurate of a time estimate as possible. We had to check out of our Airbnb by 10am that morning, so I needed to be back from my run in time to shower, eat, and pack. I triple checked all of my travel segments until I was confident I would make it back in time. I offered to take any willing family members with me, but they all declined. Well, Jay and Rose said they would come if they were already awake when it was time to leave. Basically, they declined, haha. It was fine! I love a good solo run adventure!

Calanque Hike

Le Parque National des Calanques was just as stunning as I remembered it from when Jeff and I visited 6 years ago. We chose the day with the best weather forecast and hiked just over 5 miles round trip. This hike was the number one reason we chose Marseille as our second destination for this trip. The mild Mediterranean coast is my absolute favorite place to go during February, even though I've only been there at this time of year three times in my life. It's a gorgeous antidote to winter gloom back home.

Dans une calanque avec ma famille.

Marseille day 1: a run and two walks

Journal entry from Wednesday, February 12th:

Today was our first official full day in France! It's crazy how much time is lost when you travel from west to east. We traveled 9 hours into the future, so even though we left our house at 4am on Monday, we didn't arrive at our Airbnb in Marseille until nearly 6pm on Tuesday night.

We took it exceptionally easy this morning and let the kids sleep in till 11am local time. That's 2am our time, though, so it was still hard to wake Amber up even though she slept for 14 hours straight! Jay and Rose got up before 11am, but Rose went back to bed and slept till I woke her and Amber up at 11. I slept fitfully, but better than expected, so that was nice. I was still wide awake by 6:30am, though, so I ate breakfast and said goodnight to Jeff, who was going back to bed at 7:30am since he had been awake for 3 hours. I attempted to go back to sleep, but after that failed, I went on a run. First I ran to Vieux Port (old port), and then ran along the Mediterranean coast for a while before turning into the maze of narrow streets and navigating my way up to Basilique de Notre Dame de la Garde, the basilica perched atop the highest hill in town. It was quite the climb, but the view was beautiful! When I arrived back at the Airbnb, Jeff went on his run. Then we all embarked on our first adventure of the day: lunch.

A 28 hour journey

It's 5:45am and I have been awake for almost 3 hours! Time to harness that jet lag for good with a post! During our family trip to France, I did my best to write good journal entries because I wanted to remember our travels and also because I knew it would come in handy for blogging purposes. I copied and pasted my journal entries for our journey to France here, but then proofread them and tweaked them a little here and there so they made more sense. 

February Family France Trip!

 Ever since we took our kids to France 6 years ago in the summer of 2019, we have planned to do another family trip to France. Calendars, finances, and plans aligned this year for a family France trip in February! Jeff had plenty of personal leave days saved up, and the kids all had good enough grades to miss 8 days of school. Two days after high school boys' swim season ended, the five of us flew to Paris for 10 days of pastries, history, art, views, trains, secondhand smoke, and walking. It was a whirlwind, and it will take far more than a single blog post to document satisfactorily. For now, I'll post some highlight pictures and the breakdown of what we did:

District Swim Meet

On Saturday, February 8th, Rose, Amber, and I drove to Moses Lake, WA to watch the district high school boys' swim meet. Jay competed in 2 relay finals (the 200 medley relay and the 400 freestyle relay), 1 individual final (100 backstroke), and one consolation race (500 freestyle), finishing off his sophomore swim season with a flare. He was one of only two boys on his team who qualified for an individual final at the district meet. Both of the relay teams Jay swam on got school records, and he shaved a few more tenths of a second off of his 100 backstroke PR. Jay won the consolation heat of the 500 yard freestyle with a 7 second PR of 6:20, after a goggle malfunction at the beginning! Jay works so hard and it was so fun to watch his consistent effort pay off.

Happy Birthday Rose!

Happy birthday to our Rose! She turned 14 on Friday, February 7th. The big 1-4! Fourteen is basically the beginning of the end of a teenager's time at home! Waahhh! It seems like everything goes full steam ahead once they hit 14. Rose will start high school later this year. She will get her driver's permit in one year. Etc. etc. etc. the ball keeps rolling faster and faster after that. 

Birthday celebrations started off with a slice of "birthday preview" cheesecake the night before Rose's birthday. Jeff and Jay were at a swim meet, so it was just us girls at home. We had leftovers for dinner and then Rose had a piece of her Costco cheesecake for dessert. Since Jeff (and Jay) didn't get home from the swim meet till 11pm that night, I wrapped Rose's birthday gifts all alone and placed them with the birthday banner by the fireplace. I placed each individual item in its own gift bag to expand the special birthday present vibe as much as possible.

Ice skating with Amber

On the way home from school on Thursday  afternoon (February 6th), Amber asked her daily question: "is the canal frozen enough to go ice skating?" For the first time in 2 weeks, the answer was yes! The weather had been windy and cold all day long, so the canal was frozen solid. I was feeling cold and tired just driving in that weather. To me, cold plus wind equals hide and hibernate. I can do either cold OR wind, but when they combine it is painful. Amber asked Rose if she would go ice skating with her, but Rose said no (ice skating is not Rose's favorite thing). 

"I really want to go ice skating, but I don't want to go by myself," Amber lamented. As my motherly heart softened to the plea of my youngest child, my immediate future started looking frosty. Steeling myself, I volunteered as tribute and went ice skating with Amber. 

Canal skating & coach conference

My top three highlights from the week are: 

1. I went ice skating on the canal twice! 
2. I reached an ambitious personal goal by playing the piano for a cumulative 30 hours in the month of January.
3. Jeff and I went to the Nike Track and Field Coaching Conference in Portland on Friday and Saturday.