Day 2 Paris

Today was our second day and we intended to hit the Eiffel Tour first thing before the lines developed and then use the second day of our open air tour bus pass. Problem was that we woke up middle of the night thinking that wouldn't get back to sleep and the next thing we knew, it was almost noon! This jet lag thing is a real bugger. We changed our plans and headed to the famous Luxembourg Gardens to relax and play. Madeline sailed a boat on the man-made lake, played with the Parisian children in the child's playground area, rode a carousel and saw a puppet show (all in French of course, but as we discovered in the morning, much like the Pink Panther, it didn't matter because you could tell what was going on). While we were at the Gardens, it clouded up and began to spit a little rain. People were running for cover and putting up their umbrellas and we were thinking that they were all wimps until the sky opened up on us. It was still warm -so wasn't so bad. We used the second day of our pass and rode the open air bus in the rain to the Madeline Church where we went in and were in awe of the massive structure and beautiful artwork. We stopped for a little espresso across the street to wait out the deluge that had developed and then hopped on the bus to head back to our Parisian home. We grabbed a french pannini and a baguette on the way back to eat with cheese we bought the day before and some wine we bought at the market right next to our apartment. The wine was chosen blindly off the shelf and wasn't very expensive - but it was very very nice! Denise is putting Madeline to sleep now and I'm going to wrap up this message. Tomorrow we will explore Versailles, take a boat tour of the Seine, walk through the Marais district and get some world famous ice cream at Berthillon Glacier. Monday and Tuesday are museum passes to hit the Louvre, de Orsay, Rodin, Arc de Triomphe andNotre Dame. Finally on Wednesday, we'll pack our bags, leave them here and explore the Montmartre and then head to the airport to move on to Italy.