Paris, the final day
It was pretty fantastic and I highly recommend it to anyone in Paris with kids. There are small desks with drawers containing hoofprints of the animals, little binocular viewers of movies of the animals, and of course a drawer with poo from the animal -- nice.
In one room the guard (nicest guards ever by the way) asked me if it was ok to activate something, because it sometimes scared kids. Zoe said yes, and soon one of the wild boar's heads mounted on the wall was muttering and roaring -- it's tusked jaws opening and closing with the noise. -- Chuck-E-Cheese's long lost boar brother I guess.
Next, we walked to the Luxembourg gardens by way of a really nice jam/confiture store called La Chambre aux Confitures (I bought some fig jam and Zoe bought a sparkly spoon) and then past the comically thronged Notre Dame. Micah showed me how the city bike share system works there -- very slick. I totally would be using those all of the time if I lived in Paris.
Zoe was again running out of steam by this point, but we refueled with glaces and then Zoe did some swinging, followed by merry-go-rounding. They have the charming "extra" of giving the kids little lances with which to try to grab little metal rings. I had read about it in Paris to the Moon, but never seen it, as it is not available in the Provinces. Zoe got the hang of it pretty fast, and I found myself cheering for her when she grabbed one, and averting my eyes sadly when she missed.
Then it was back to the apartment for a quick meal and then off to the train station where we finally met up with Glen for about ten minutes before we jumped onto the train. Soon enough we were in Lyon, where I thought there was a problem with the train because it started moving at a snail's pace. I later found out that the tracks cannot accommodate high speed travel, so it takes a friggin hour to get to Grenoble from LYS. When we finally arrived, I was amazed to see that there were no taxis in the taxi stand. If one actually wanted to work, I would think that a clever driver might look up the schedule of arriving trains, and time his or her arrival at the taxi stand accordingly. No such luck though -- there were at least twenty of us waiting, and no taxis. They slowly trickled in, during which time I was furiously trying to download the Uber app, only to find out that it is not yet in Grenoble. Now I see why everyone loves Uber and other services like it! Our turn eventually came, and the driver tried to get off an exit to early, but I managed to catch that little trick. We stumbled into the door a few minutes later, quickly got ready for bed and passed out. It was a wonderful trip, and so generous of Micah, Ali and Zeke to welcome us.
