Day 3: Sleeping in, Notre Dame Cathedral, Camping Stoves, the Eiffel Tower and a ride back to camp at 11pm.

Today I woke up from some of the best sleep in recent memory, at 10:30, it was amazing. Some of the others didn’t wake up until 11 and noon. Going to sleep at about midnight or so, I didn’t wake up once, not even for the rainstorm that the others were telling me about. It was a huge blessing that all the kids slept so well through the night.

As I was checking some emails with Hazel while I let the rest of the family sleep in even more, Matt walks up to our table near the reception area and begins to tell me about a bird that keeps dive bombing him. What? He used words like “2 pinches on my back” or “grazed my ear” or my personal favorite, “It was like getting hit in the head with a wet pillow”. As I headed back to camp and ran into Dian, who very nicely furnished the group fresh baguettes! Thanks Dian, anyways, as I saw her again she let me know that she had been attacked by said bird two times. So weird, I’m personally really glad that birds typically don’t attack us humans, I’d hate to live life worried about air assaults!

Dian bought a trailer and had it shipped directly to our campsite, it arrived a couple days before we did. The only problem was that the trailer adapter was a bit too small for her electric bike axles. We stopped by 4 different bike shops and finally found a motorcycle shop that would let me use their drill, score!

We used the day to complete a few errands. We made it to the Decathlon sports store to buy stoves, and some grocery shopping as well. From there we saw the Cathedral of Notre Dame, which maybe took 30 minutes or so to ride to from the Arch de Triumph. Kimball is handling all the riding like a champ, for just turning 8, it’s great he can ride 20 miles in a day and keep a good attitude.

We then went to the Eiffel Tower and decided we’d stay until 10pm so we could see the lights sparkle from 10 to 10:05. Side note, it doesn’t really get dark until 10:30 or so, which is awesome when staying out late. We still rode home in the dark and should have paid better attention to google maps… We chose to go the wrong way on a one way street for about 5 blocks, which isn’t that easy when several of us are towing kid trailers. There are 15 people riding, which makes for quite the caravan. The pace is pretty slow going with all the stops in the city.

We didn’t get to sleep until 2:30am, that’s what happens when you ride in at midnight and then shower the small kids and get all ready for bed, yikes, gotta start getting in earlier.

Tomorrow we’re going to Versailles to see the Gardens and to swing by the Temple. We plan on leaving at 10 so we can still allow people to get over their jet lag.