WTF – What? No water?!! Here we were welcoming our good friends the Geens family, and there was a plumber in our kitchen smashing at a massive pipe for the afternoon and our water was cut off for the weekend. WTF! Not only that, the problem wasn’t even in our apartment, it was in the one under us, but they had to access the leak from our kitchen. It smelled terrible because of the old pipes and the wall being opened up and the work was SO loud when they needed to sleep!! We were so sorry about the timing. I was home at lunch (it was a Friday) to welcome them and to give the plumber my two cents in French about the work being done! I asked them to be quick about it and get it finished because I had company needing to sleep. Unfortunately it still took them 2 more hours of banging and cutting through a very large pipe. Following that we had no ‘kitchen water’ for the weekend.

A great reason to go eat at our favourite Italian restaurant in the next village though!!

On the Saturday, we went to the market (clementines, avocado and cheeses!!).  Kerri Lou and I scootered there, then handed the scooters to the boys to come home on. It was down hill all the way for them, so they got the easy ‘share’!

Then all of us (minus Greg who was working) went in on the metro to Trocadero to see the Eiffel Tower up close. It was a fun experience because we met a ‘salesperson’ from Senegal, Africa trying to sell us trinkets, and when he found out we were from Canada, he was very gracious because he explained that Canada helped his village in Senegal.  So he set the kids up for photos and took pics of them. Then he serenaded Carter because he thought it was Carter’s birthday (when Kerri Lou told him it was Carter’s ‘first day‘ here).  After he gave the kids Eiffel tower momentos.

 

 

After the Eiffel tower, we walked to the Champs Elysees, towards the Concord. Around the George V metro stop, the boys left us girls to go to the PSG game and then Bri, Kerri Lou and I went for a quaint, traditional French lunch at a cafe near the Louvre.  Greg was trying to meet up with the boys to go to the game because he had been working, and somehow they found each other as planned at the top of the metro by the stadium. Luckily they were all able to sit together at the game (originally their seats weren’t together). Then we met up with the boys again after the game, at the Louvre, which is so majestic at night!

The Geens were wise to take advantage of being in Europe to go see something else during the week; they went to Barcelona for 3 nights. The weather was better than Paris and it sounded like an amazing get-a-way with lots to see and do! I don’t have photos of Barcelona, but looking back at our photos – you would think there were no adults around the whole week; it’s all about the kids! They had fun reuniting and didn’t even notice when the adults were around anyway. It was so easy and fun to host the Geens and to tour with them in Paris. We can’t thank them enough for coming to visit because it was a highlight in our year as well! It’s too bad that our work (and coaching, M.U.N and plumbing problems got in the way of us having EVEN MORE fun together!).

As the phrase goes:  Welcome To France!

…à bientôt Geens family!