Paris, Day 3

Paris, France

I woke up around 8:30am (Matthew had woken up earlier and gone downstairs for breakfast – yes, it’s a pattern!), then walked a few blocks to Laduree for a pain au pistache (pistachio croissant) and coffee. It was a rainy day in Paris, but that didn’t stop us from heading out on foot to explore this beautiful city! We found our way to the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) to watch the Longines Future Tennis Aces event (see https://parentingaces.com/getting-to-kno w-longines-future-tennis-ace-adam-neff- of-bradenton-fla/ for more info), but it was raining pretty hard, so the event was moved indoors to a facility about an hour away. After taking a few pictures, we walked toward Le Marais and ate lunch at Falafel As which I had been reading about on TripAdvisor since planning our last trip to Paris. It was very good though difficult to eat standing up! While we were eating, Matthew was approached by a religious Jewish man who tried to get him to wrap tefilin – it was a bit strange and uncomfortable, but Matthew handled himself perfectly! We tried to go to the Picasso museum, but it was closed for remodeling. Since the rain was continuing to come down, we decided to duck into a cafe for a cup of coffee. We then took the Metro to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur. We walked up a gazillion steps to the base of the basilica and breathed in incredible views of the entire city. We found a little park at the bottom of Sacre Coeur, so we sat on a bench while Matthew had a conference call with his office and a client back home. After the call, we decided to take the funicular back down, then we walked into a few shops and bought a few gifts – I finally had my first macaron of the trip! We took the Metro back to our hotel to meet up with everyone for dinner at a French-Italian restaurant called RINO. They offered 2 different prix fixe menus – one petit and one grand. I started with squid agnolotti then had turbot, beef, and dessert (the best part!). We took the Metro back to our hotel, arriving some time close to midnight.