Ballin' in Paris

Being Sunday we thought it would be appropriate to take them to a church service here in Paris. Just a short distance from our hotel, we stopped by the Saint Sulpice Cathedral this morning. The service, although in French, was interesting. Being that the kids couldn’t understand more than a few words that were being said (We picked up on the Amens, Hallelujahs, and I think I may have heard a Notre Dame in there too.) they did an excellent job remaining awake and focused. We also got to hear a bit of an organ recital immediately after the service ended. Trying to explain how impressive the music is in the cathedrals is to difficult, it’s something that has to be experienced.

After the service we decided to break away from the itinerary a bit and stop by the Luxembourg Gardens just a couple blocks away from the Cathedral. This is one of the largest, and busiest parks in the Paris area, and on a Sunday it was quite busy. The park has certain areas that are restricted for certain activities, such as specific chess playing areas, areas to run, squash, tennis, basketball, lounging, cafes, and even areas set aside for Ti Chie (Not sure if that’s spelled right, but I’m talking about the martial arts/balancing stuff). While walking to the café for some ice cream we watched a little 3 on 3 basketball being played and Jake, Chip and I jumped in line to play the winners. After watching a couple games our turn was up. Determined to show the French how basketball was meant to be played, we quickly built a strong lead over a quality opponent. Our competition (6’6”, 6’3” and 6’0”) had to resort to calling plays in foreign languages just to keep in the game, but we were just to much for them in the end and pulled out a gutsy victory in overtime. We even had our own cheering section that were yelling Pro-American cheers. (I wish I could tell you that the results of the game were as I stated above, but we did end up losing. They were, however, rather tall, (I hear you making some kind of short jokes about me so stop it) and we did take them to overtime, but it does appear that we will not be receiving any invitations to play on the USA National Team this summer)

After the game we explored the rest of the park, which was very nice, and headed back to the hotel to eat a relaxed lunch. It’s fitting that we had a relaxing day, because this is how the Parisians spend their Sundays. The park was full of people just enjoying the nice weather. After lunch we went for a cruise along the Seine River in the middle of the city. Just before we left for the cruise the clouds rolled in. Our weather over the 4 days here in Paris has been great, for example, today it was sunny and warm as we played in the park and ate lunch, but we were protected from the sun by the clouds as we sat on the top of the tour boat. Absolutely perfect, so keep praying!

We finished the evening by going to get our last crepes and saying goodbye to the Eiffel Tower and Paris. The kids bought so many crepes from one particular shop that the owner of the shop wanted to take group photos with them. It was really neat to see that we have such good kids that have fit in so well here in Paris. We’re checking out at 5:45 tomorrow morning to get to the airport to head out to Munich. It took me a while to find reliable internet here in Paris and I’m kinda dreading trying to find it in Munich and Rome, so if you don’t see any updates for a couple days don’t panic. I’ll update you on all our activities when we get a chance. Au revoir!