Had it all

So we´re home from Paris.

Sunburned, tired, with aching feet, very educated, and broke, because Paris is quite expensive.
But worth it´s money.
We stayed in a little hotel on Montmatre, right behind the Sacre Coer:

Paris is a total overkill of things to look at, things to talk about, places one just isn´t allowed to miss, things one just has to do, and it´s even harder to discribe, since I talked French all weekend long, and now it feels like all the English words and sentences have fallen out of my brain, so my grammar and spelling today is even worse than it usually is.
It alway works that way. When it comes to languages, I´m very one-tracked. More than one makes my head spin. Like a carouselle:

I love this picture:

Isn´t this gorgeous? Paris made our heads spin, too.
The Louvre alone is huge enough to entertain a family for, let´s say, half a year? And it naturally has to leave everybody with a feeling of frustration when, after four hours, you have to go, knowing you´ve seen only a fraction.

I remember when I first went there, at the age of 16, I thought the building alone was about the size of the village I grew up in. And it sure doesn´t fit on a photo.

There is all this tourist stuff that is obligatory, that is the reason I went there in the first place, because it´s these things I wanted to show to my girls. You can´t go to Paris without sitting at the Seine...

and looking at the boats...

and having french breakfast...

and feeling blown away by the way the statues in the Tuilleries are just there, casually, as if they weren´t telling stories of centuries.

These are all things you have to do.
And then there are the things you also sort of have to do, because after all, you´re in another country, and this implies a chance of embracing another culture.
I always love to read what´s scribbled on the walls. I liked this one:

 

La Révolution! Ah, oui!

I wish I had had more time to chat about tattoes with the hotel clerk. My girls would have loved to talk a little longer with the little bilingual girl named Lilly, who they met on the playground:

I wish there had been more room to talk about architecture with the friendly old man who guided us when we got lost, and took the time to show us the place de la constitution.
Or talk to those men:

At least I took the courage to step to them to ask them what this was about: The revolution? Sports?
It was a footballmatch Algerique-Maroque, and the guys were actually pretty friendly.

By the way, we had awesome Libanese food on Friday. And spices are so cheap in France! And I bought black lace, in a cute little fabric store, for a lot more than I wanted to spend.
We found a store that sold interesting things, I still can´t excactly tackle what the idea behind it was, it had educational toys, handmade soap, craft utensils, and massage oils, and good books, and tea, and camping accesoires. Maybe it was just a store especially designed for us.

And there are stores for everybody in Paris. I mean, literally, you can buy all psycho stuff your heart desires:

Do you see this? I mean, really? Is your jaw on the keyboard, now?

So...

....all this is Paris.
And now I´m home with the feeling that we had it all... and had only a fraction. I´ve got millions of pictures, and none of them satisfies me, because none of them captures what I want to express. Every minute we spent in a queue, or waiting on a boat or the metro, every minute we spent searching for something now feels like a minute waisted.And at the same time, I wish we had spend more time with just letting our feet dangle.

My music for today is Brahms:

Eva is practising this piece on her violin at the moment, and I´m trying to give my best to play along on the piano. Which is super hard, for both of us. We practiced before leaving for Paris, so this song was stuck in our heads all three days, and we hummed it while walking through the scenes you see on the pics above. Which seemed like a perfect match to us.
Oh, and I have one pic, I couldn´t fit in above, but I just didn´t want to leave out of this post: