Paris Le Premier!

 

Paris Part I

My son Milo is bougie.  Like seriously.  His favorite food is gyoza.  He likes sparkling lemonade.  And he loves croissants.  Like loves loves.  Cookies are fine.  Brownies are dandy.  But croissants are where it is at.  So when we were planning this trip, we asked if there were any other places that he wanted to travel too.  And he naturally said that he wanted to eat a croissant in front of the Eiffel tower.  Naturally.  As any seven year old would.  Definitely easy.  And totally affordable.

We flew Air France out of Helsinki.  We first had Burger King in the terminal, which sounds absurd.  But like everything here the food was better quality at significantly lower price -- and you can even have a beer with it too.  


It feels nice to be able to feed my family without worrying if I’ll be able to survive till my next paycheck.  The mayonnaise on my chicken sandwich was delicious and tasted strongly of celery seed.  It was delicious.  So delicious in fact that an unnamed fellow adult traveler ate more of it than I did.  And the airport is gorgeous.  

I think it’s my favorite airport to fly through – and is consistently ranked the best in Europe.  Like many European airports it also has a robust kids play area, which is awesome.


The flight was pleasant, and beautiful.  


You get free wine (if you want it) and a ham and butter sandwich.  Which sounds like a disgusting combination but is actually delicious.  Somehow the roll it came on was the best part.  


Charles du Gaulle airport felt a bit dated and somewhat confusing to navigate.  But we did it.  We had a driver pick us up at the airport, and he was holding a sign with Amy’s name on it.  Which made us all feel like celebrities.  We passed the 40 or so minutes to our hotel mostly in silence – both from travel fatigue and awed by the bucolic French countryside.

We stayed at the Hotel Grand Magic, and we all give it our highest recommendation.  Very kid friendly. Free continental breakfast buffet with an absurdly giant tub of Nutella that surprisingly ran out.  

Our room had bunk beds for the kids.  There were touches of whimsy all over the hotel – a large illuminated moon by the kids bed for example.  


Our favorite were the pillars in the bar area which were all covered by screens that had animated views of a fantastical landscape that changed throughout the day to match the time and weather.  


Dedicated travel blogger that I am I took a video


And it had a very nice, infinity like swimming pool that was heated almost as warmly as a hot tub.  We came in at night, and the only off-putting thing about the experience was that they played carnival music and bathed the hotel in an eerie red light that reminded those of us old enough to remember of a certain Jack Nicholson movie. 


Other than that – and perhaps the distant car ride to get there – it was a perfect place for us to stay.  We settled in and got excited for two action packed days.

Bonsoir!  Au revoir!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to Hei Hei Where's the Munkki!

Image
 Welcome to Hei Hei Where's the Munkki! Welcome to the Claridge family travel blog, detailing our adventures in Finland from August to October of 2024.  I have organized the posts below in chronological order of their original publication:  The oldest posts are at the top and newest at the bottom.  So if you start at the top and work your way down you'll be reading them in their intended order. All views and opinions expressed herein are my own and do not reflect the views and opinions of my employer, friends or family.  If you notice a typo, broken link, or image that isn't working, please message me.  More importantly, if you feel that I have made an error or misrepresented your country, city, or cultural experience, also feel free to message me and I'll do my best to rectify the error.  Most importantly, if you want to message me with nice to things about the blog, that's also great! Suomi Flight Part I Flight Part II Facts About Finland! Helsinki !...
Read more

Suomi

Image
  We are spending eight weeks in Finland (known to the Finnish as Suomi).   That is almost as absurd to type as it was for us to conceptualize.   Some of you already knew we are going, and some of you are learning it now.   It’s been thirteen years since we documented our journey though Italy in another award winning, multi platinum blog , and we figured it would be fun to do it again.   I hope we have a greater commitment to brevity, some more perspective and wisdom, higher resolution cameras, and most of all cute kiddos this time around. Why Finland?   The reasons are manifold.  Amy (that’s Dr. Amy Claridge to you) worked incredibly hard over the past several years applying for and winning a constellation of grants, sabbatical release, and professional connections to support her ongoing research into social supports for women and families in the transition to parenthood and its intersection with maternal mental health.  Finland is known for d...
Read more

Groceries!

Image
Grocery Stores The grocery store has become a big part of our daily life.  Because – you know – we eat food and stuff.  And our kids need a million snacks a day.  In Finland there are really two main competing grocery stores – K Market and S Market .  They are both part of larger umbrella monopolistic corporations.  There are different “tiers” of each – for example there is the regular K-Market, a K-Supermarket, and so on.  Out in the suburbs there is often a giant, Costco-esque K-Citymarket.  S also has their own versions.  There is a K-Market about a five minute walk from us that has most of what we need.  For bigger trips we usually go to the Prisma (which is one of the versions of the S-Markets) in Keskustori.  The markets sell beer but no liquor and only low alcohol wine.  To get something a bit stiffer you need to go to an Alko , and there is one right by the Prisma. Because there are only two real options you don’t have ...
Read more