sophie says joyeux noël

I know my last blog post probably left some of you in suspense. A lot changed the day after our accident. The Volvo repair guy fixed up our car well enough so we could drive to Germany the following day. We also rebooked our train tickets to Paris and reconfirmed our rental apartment. Christmas was back on!!

Here are some of the highlights of our trip to the City of Lights with an 11-month-old:

Best Museum Experience: The children's exhibit at the Pompidou Centre. I honestly could have stayed there all afternoon watching Sophie scream with delight as she walked through it holding on to daddy's hands. We realized later that we should have used the video function on the camera to capture it.

Best Way to Get Around the City: The Metro. It was free entertainment for Sophie, who seemed to thoroughly enjoy all the people-watching. She got a bunch of winks back at her, too. I was actually quite proud of her for being so calm in the noisy, chaotic environment of the subway system. It's quite a change from our quiet life in Älmhult.

 
Best Place to Buy Baby Food: La Grande Epicerie de Paris, which is attached to the Bon Marché department store. It was nearly impossible to find the type of organic baby food Sophie eats, until we stumbled upon this place. Also, the French don't seem to feed their babies "gröt" or cereal. Luckily we brought enough with us.

Best Way to Spend the Night: Watching Lewis and Sophie make goofy faces in the mirror of our apartment. It was my favorite moment from the trip. We rented a little studio at the Maison Zen (my second time there), which made staying in Paris and lot easier and more affordable. We ate lunches out and had dinners in.

Best Toy Store: Actually, I was shocked that I did not see very many toys stores in Paris. We ended up splurging on some cute things for Sophie from Habitat. Not Parisian, non. But they really do have great toys. We bought Sophie a few things from Habitat in Lyon before she was born, and now she'll also have this truck (notice the name!!) and an adorable stuffed bunny.

Best Way to Look and Sound Like an Idiot: Speak Swedish. Then Spanish. I studied French for 6 years, but I think more Swedish came out of my mouth during the trip. One time I tried to correct myself, and somehow I blurted something in Spanish. The lady behind the counter at the bakery did not find it amusing. (But I did!)

Best Way to Make Lewis' Heart Stop Momentarily: I bought a cute dress from Comptoir des Cotonniers and showed him the receipt. (Hey, how many chances will I get to go shopping in Paris?!)

I hope you had an equally joyous holiday season!

Boarding the high-speed ICE train in Frankfurt (317 km/h)

Spending Sunday at the Louvre

Stopping at a creperie

Comments

[Vanessa]

I am sooooo glad you guys made it to Paris! I've been checking in to see what happened next! And btw, you NEED to buy an expensive item of clothing while you're in Paris. It's absolutely mandatory.

[erin]

Wow! It looks like that was an awesome trip. I hope we can take our baby on cool trips like this. Sophie is so well behaved -- you guys make it look easy!

[paddy]

Hello there! No, I'm not spam, so bear with me.

I am Paddy, and I am arranging a blog carnival for expatriates. I found your blog in the usual way, by scouring the web and picking out ones I liked the look of.

If you didn't know, a blog carnival is sort of a reader's digest of blog articles on a specific topic. It's just a regular blog article, hosted by different people every time, with links to lots of other articles, and it's a great way to get hits and find out about other blogs and other bloggers.

I am Irish myself and live in Sweden. My blog is here: paddyK.wordpress.com

If you want to have your blog highlighted in the blog carnival (and let's face it, who doesn't like that) then just send me a mail with a little info and a link to a representative blog entry of yours. Have a look at my latest blog entry for an idea of what we are after and the mail address.

Thanks for reading (if you did indeed read this far) and I hope to hear from you.

/ paddy

[Diana Baur]

I just found your sweet blog. Very nice. I had to smile, Älmhult. The word just means one thing to me :) Well, I can only say thank Heavens for them or else I don't know where else I would buy my napkins or candles here in Italy. I am happy you got out a bit during the Dark Time and visited Paris. Your little one is adorable. I will come back and visit to read about your life in Smaland. I do love Sweden and know it is the exact opposite of what I have here. I especially love Skanar (I don't have one of those little o things for Skanar) during midsommar (duh).... Have a lovely January...