a warm day in Paris

Me with my new beret on the way to the Eiffel Tower

2/3 of the way up the Eiffel Tower...we chickened out & didn't go to the third level...very windy...and the loads of people on it just didn't feel all that safe...did I mention this native Whitefish mountain girl is a bit afraid of heights!

in Parc Monceau...I told my mom as I was dancing, "I'm glad we're not back in Montana yet...I love Paris!"

crystal staircase along the Champs-Elysees

& we saw more breakdancers below the Eiffel Tower...they are so cool.  & I ate two crepes today, tomorrow I'm going for three.  we walked from the 17th arrondisement to the 8th to the 1st to the 7th & now I'm settling in for some French tele, my stuffed animals, some french bread & chocolat...ah, c'est bon!

Crepes, fondue, ballet, & breakdancing

Breakdancer on the way to the ballet in Paris tonight

My mom and I are in Paris!  We both liked the other places we've been in the last 10 days, but realized today that this is all we really wanted to do.  So it feels good to finally be in this cool, beautiful city.

Tonight we got dressed up and took the metro to the Paris opera house (Palais Garnier) to watch a ballet.  When we came out of the metro right in front of the opera house were these three guys dancing like....well like I've never seen before.  Watch the video from above that my mom took of one of them & I think you'll see what I mean (the video is sideways because my mom doesn't know how to fix that yet).

Then we had a little time before the ballet began, so we went to a cafe nearby that we had gone to two years ago--and I had chocolat fondue with fruits & cakes to dip into it & my mom had a crepe avec sucre (with sugar) and the tiniest coffee I've ever seen it made me laugh.

Here's a picture of us in our seats at the Palais Garnier:

& the view from our seats before the ballet began:

Then we took the metro home & found a crepe stand near our hotel & bought two more crepes for a late night snack....mmmmm!

More soon.  Love, Naya

Spring vacation

I'm officially on vacation with my maman!  She is trying to get me to do 2 hours of homework each day...but that sometimes involves painting on a bridge in Venice.  Here are some of my spring break photos so far.  Today we went to Eurodisney.  It's about 20 miles outside of Paris & when you see a sign for Snow White it will say instead Blanche Neige.   I went on my first upside down rollercoaster today...on accident!  The Paris version of Space Mountain is a bit more extreme than the US version...yikes!  Not going to do that again, ever.

 Now, we're lounging in our hotel watching some tv shows (they are in English, French, and German) &  I hope my mom has the energy to take me to the pool downstairs after she posts these pictures---it has a waterslide where you fly out of a dragon's mouth!  Oh, and everyone speaks French here...so after practicing German and Italian this last week on our travels now we'll be speaking French for about three weeks.  But I do still have a few British quirks according to my maman.

Gondola ride through the canals of Venice

a mask I bought made in Venice--this year we are going to skip our Annual Clue party and go instead for a masquerade ball at Halloween.

Me in a square in Venice while my mom meets with her favorite art history professor from Whitefish...they are talking about art and looking at ceilings in churches and I'm much more interested in the birds that will eat out of my hand...see below.

a sparrow who also likes a pain au chocolat (croissant with chunks of chocolate in it)

me, today, on my first ride, "It's a small world"

Me and Mickey

Below the Sleeping Beauty castle

Running through the maze of Alice's Wonderland