The kids had a week off of school in October, so we took the opportunity to go to France. We found plane tickets to Paris for our family for about $17 each ($118 total)! We bought those quickly, before we even searched for flights back. We had a hard time finding anything decent for the return, so we ended up looking around for cheaper flights from somewhere else. It was cheaper to fly to Barcelona, Spain and back to Edinburgh than any flights from Paris back to the UK. That worked out for us, but did shorten our time in Paris.
We just barely made our flight there: We left church 5 minutes early so we could make it to the train station for our trip to Edinburgh. Alex dropped us off at the train station in Durham (we changed our clothes in the car on the way), drove our car home, and took a taxi back to the train station. I wasn't sure if he was going to make it, but he did get there 10 minutes early... and then our train was delayed. We waited almost an HOUR for our train. We didn't get to Edinburgh until about 5:10pm. Our flight was at 6:30pm... and we still had a bus ride to the airport, which was a 30 minute ride. Luckily I had paid for and printed out our bus pass beforehand, so we just had to take off running to catch that bus to the airport. We arrived at the airport at 5:48. The gate was supposed to close at 6:00. We already had our boarding passes and no bags to check, so we ran to the security check. The line was LONG... I asked a lady if they could push us through because we had a flight leaving at 6:30. Luckily she pointed to a "family gate" - they let us right through. We tossed everything on the security belt. Savannah and Weston both took off their shoes, which they didn't need to. We didn't stop to put them back on. We grabbed our stuff and took off running. It seemed like our gate was the furthest one away... When we were almost to our gate, we realized that we had left the food bag and Savannah's bear-bear at security. The kids and I kept running, hoping to get to the gate before it closed. Alex took off running back to get the other things. We got to the gate right at 6:00 and luckily there was a long line that wasn't moving. Whew! Alex made it back, despite having to wait for 8 bags ahead of him to be manually checked before he could go with the bag we left. I'm glad I swapped out my church clothes for pants and running shoes - we did a lot of running that evening. (The health app on my phone said I went 1.7 miles.)
It was a stressful day, but I consider it a tender mercy that we were able to get from the bus and through security to our gate in 12 minutes, with 5 kids and our stuff in tow! We did make it on our flight and got in to Paris on Sunday evening.
On Monday morning, we were still worn out, so we didn't head out very early. We planned on seeing some sights in the morning and meeting friends for lunch. We just made it out in time for lunch. We really enjoyed spending time with our friends, who were from our hometown, but currently living in Paris for a few years. It was good to see them. We met them at Notre Dame and toured inside. Then we went out for lunch and gelato.
After we parted with our friends, we went to see the Eiffel Tower. It rained on us most of the afternoon, but it was fun to see the iconic Eiffel Tower. We walked underneath it, but decided not to wait in line to go up the Eiffel Tower. We wandered around a bit, but didn't have much time to see anything else. By the time we saw the Eiffel Tower, it was time for dinner. We did have a pool back at our hotel - swimming was actually one of the kids' favorite things of the trip. They were tired of walking around and riding the metro.
The next morning, Alex and I went to the Paris France Temple (the kids hung out at the hotel). It took a while to get there and back from our hotel, and 2 hours at the temple. So that took a good portion of our day.
Alex wasn't feeling very well by the time we got back from the temple, so we opted not to go explore other sights in Paris. I wasn't too keen on wandering around Paris by myself with the kids (or even without the kids). Instead, we took the kids to a nearby park and let them play (while Alex rested in the car). That was probably more fun for them than walking around museums anyway. The park we went to had some pretty cool things - one of them was a really long slide, as shown in the first picture below.
I need another trip to Paris because we just barely scratched the surface on places to see... did I also mention that it's hard to travel with kids? It takes a long time to get anywhere.
The next day we drove to Le Mont Saint Michel. I'm really glad we made the drive there, because we loved the castle and its setting. It's a castle right out of a fairytale. This one actually was the inspiration for the castle in Disney's Tangled movie.
The next morning on our way back to Paris, we wanted to see Etretat, on the northern coast of France. We were so disappointed when we got there and it was all foggy. We stayed for a while, hoping it would wear off, but it didn't. We didn't have all day to wait, since we had to be back in Paris for our flight to Barcelona (although if we had known our flight was going to be delayed, we could have stayed a little longer...)
This is a picture of what Etretat is supposed to look like - it's gorgeous:
Back in Paris, we arrived with plenty of time before our flight (not wanting the stress that we had with the previous flight). We had 2.5 hours to wait, and then our flight got delayed 3 hours due to technical issues. Blah. Lots of waiting time... we finally got to Barcelona.
We only had one day in Barcelona, so we made the most of it. The first place we visited was Castell de Montjuic, an old military fortress. (We had a little bit of a hike up a hill to get there, as we decided not to take the gondola when we could.)
We also visited La Sagrada Familia - really pretty inside!
We got ice cream and played at a park in the afternoon near La Sagrada Familia. Weston liked chasing the pigeons. We wandered around the city a bit. By the time we ate dinner, we saw a lot of people walking around with flags draped over them. Turns out we were there the day that Catalonia declared independence from Spain.
At night, we made our way over to the Magic Fountain of Montjuic to listen to music along with the changing colors of the fountain. We all really loved the fountain - it was mesmerizing!
"Pole dancing" on the Metro, on the way back to our Airbnb...
On Saturday, we had a 7:40am flight from Barcelona to Edinburgh, Scotland. We were all pretty tired from the late night before, but we managed to spend the day wandering around Edinburgh.
We went to the Edinburgh Castle. The kids liked all the cannons and the sword demonstration.
It was actually a really chilly day, so we mostly wanted to get inside somewhere and sit down. We wandered around the Royal Mile, but it was a great day to sit down in a restaurant. We ate hamburgers at Five Guys and dessert at Frankie & Benny's.
We took a train back to Edinburgh, but wished we hadn't waited until the evening to do so. Apparently there was a rugby or soccer game that had just finished, and our train had a lot of drunks on it. They were really obnoxious - singing, cussing, and just being loud. I felt bad for the lady who was trying to get her 4 month old to sleep. At least we didn't have to keep our kids quiet!
