40 = Party Time!

I had a party last night. A big party. A fan-tabulous party. A party that meant I stood in my 'killer bitch heeled boots' for over six hours and didn't get home until 2:30am. A party that showed I have both wonderfully talented and just plain all-around wonderful friends. A party that I will never forget.

Damn, I should turn forty more often.

France - Part Two - Paris (the girls)

At the end of our stay in France, the boys had taken off for a weekend in Normandy doing all sorts of WWII stuff (for the following blog post), and we girls spent the day riding the rails back home. Gosh darn it, that meant we had to spend the day in Paris! In total, we counted up that we took seven 'trains' (including trips on the Metro getting around Paris) so Kitty Kat was thrilled with that. And we were total European travellers, each of us with our belongings in a backpack. Love it.

She imagined traveling would be like this....

....but quickly learned it's frequently like this......

...and the best plan of action is to do this.

We started off with a guided tour of the Paris Opera House. Kitty Kat didn't have one of the headsets to hear the guide (and, let's be honest, she wouldn't have cared anyway), so we turned her loose with the camera again. She was happy.  During the tour, we went inside the actual theatre, and were lucky enough to be there while a tech rehearsal was happening. Then, in a rare treat, one of the ballerinas from the Paris Ballet came out and marked through some of her movements. Kitty Kat was pretty happy with that, too. (it just made Mama miss being onstage, but let's not be a downer here)

Kitty Kat had been SUCH a superstar during the two hours at the Opera House (she really was so unbelievably well-behaved) that, even though Grandma's wish for lunch was to sit outside at a cafe and people-watch, we agreed that we would eat at the first place we stumbled upon, even if it was McDonald's (nooooo!!!!!). Guess what the first place we stumbled upon was? A cafe with a table for us outside. Woo hoo! So a girlie lunch at an outdoor table of a Parisian cafe commenced. Happy, happy, happy.  (my happiness may have been helped along by a mojito)

The one place Kitty Kat wanted to go was the Eiffel Tower, and I was hardly going to say no to that request. We didn't go UP the Eiffel Tower, because we didn't have a spare 3-4 hours that we felt like spending waiting in line and making our way up there (no joke, that's what it would have taken), but she got to have her picture taken in front of it. I told her the next time she goes to Paris, she can go up the Eiffel Tower. 'Next weekend?' she asked. Ummmm, maybe the not.

 Last stop was Notre Dame. I was hoping to be able to take her inside, seeing as it's amazing and FREE, but the line was way too long at that time of day. Also, when I asked, she said 'But I don't want to go inside the church. I don't want to see the church. I want to get on our train and go home.' Ha! Fair enough, I couldn't blame her. But our train back to Amsterdam wasn't for another hour and a half, and we had to do SOMETHING to kill time. Lucky for her, I dragged her to the front gates to let her take pictures of the carvings in the archways.

 A very nice stranger volunteered to take our picture. He noticed how much fun she was having taking pictures.....

 ....and volunteered to let her take some pictures with his. So sweet! We got to chatting about Paris and traveling, and then he took my email address and sent me the pictures that Kitty Kat took once he got back home to Dubai.

I LOVE traveling! And I love that she got to have a true backpacker experience as well. Striking up conversations with random people, sharing thoughts and tips, exchanging contact info, and then most likely never speaking to them again. Haha!


Finally, it was time to make our way to one of the larger international stations to catch our 'big train' back to Amsterdam. Kitty Kat took control of navigating. (Actually, I loved this about traveling with her, too. Each time we had to take public transport, I would tell her which color/letter/number we needed to look for on the signs, and then had her figure out how to follow them and get us where we needed to go. She took to it like the proverbial duck to water.)

After a full day of angelic behavior during traveling, she'd earned some iPad time.

So FINALLY we get back home. The grown ups had woken at 6:00, Kitty Kat at 7:00, on the train to Paris by 9:30, hit the streets in the City of Love from 11:00-5:00, international train 5:30-8:30, then another train from Amsterdam home. It was 9:30 when we walked in the house. Exhausted, right? Only enough energy just to collapse into bed, right?

Nope. Not this little minx. It was time to put on fleecey ClogLand pajamas and play Twister. ?!?!?!