The Sun Sets On Paris

With the time to return to the station drawing near, we decided one more stop was in order. We took the rather complicated Metro journey back to Sacre-Coeur and Monmarte, the wedding-cake style church and market that sit atop the highest hill in Paris overlooking the whole city. F'ortunately, their is a finiculair (a carriage that moves up a hillside) so we were able to avoid the 235 steps from the metro stop to the top, which was good given that we have walked Linda so much that her toenails are starting to come loose. Once at the church, we got a look at the inside, were our 5-year-old, Meredith, surprised us with her interest in the architecture. She found the huge mosaic of Christ resurrected and the domed interior quite beautiful. It was, in fact, the postcard she later chose to send home to friends. With twilight falling, we also stopped to stare out over the view of the city lights and monuments. That was of mild interest, but of more interest to the girls was the enormous smog cloud hanging over the city. Having not seen such a thing before, Olivia was offended, and in fact, insisted for a while that it must just be a weather phenomenon. She was soon convinced, however, that is was indeed pollution and being the environmentally righteous 8-year-old she is, we had to hear as we hurried back to the train all about the failings of French society to adequately protect the planet. Perhaps it was all this diatribe that very nearly made us late, though the more likely explanation was the need to fill out seven boarding cards and the life history taken of us at passport control. As it was, we gone on the train, seconds before it pulled out of the station and had to walk through eleven cars to get to our seats. We finally fell into bed exhausted at 11:30 that night. All in all, despite it being a very busy day, the girls did really well, especially considering there were no naps or real rest breaks, and hopefully, we even learned something!