When we were in Paris two years ago, I saw lots of kids on the downtown streets on scooters. I thought that might be fun for the boys and that they might last longer on walks if they had them so, we brought our scooters! (and Americanized it – by bringing helmets too).
Our journey today was to find a Target-ish kind of store – to find a bigger selection of groceries, some laundry soap and the like, a soccer ball, and some toys. I thought I would have to go out to the suburbs to find one, but saw online that there was one of these stores in the city, a few miles from the apartment.
We got started at 2PM just an hour or so after we woke up - after 16 glorious hours of much needed sleep!
It had been sunny when we left on our adventure, but about half-way to the store, the rain started pouring down HARD. We just happened to be passing a store that I had seen on a blog before I came.
It was a bit of a fancy place, but I knew they were used to kids in the restaurant. I was a bit surprised to find only posh couples there, and it was quite understandable. The water glasses were wine glasses. This entertained the boys to no end, pouring their bottled water by themselves.
From what Owen could translate, we thought we ordered edamame, a small pizza and a salad. We got a salad made from white radish and some cabbage or other vegetable that had been soaked in an orange zest balsamic (I think). It was unique, but good. The pizza was a small brioche cooked with small whole mushrooms and tomatoes and then topped with arugula, salt and pepper, oil, and some kind of soft cheese. (super-yum!) We had a bit of a moment when a tomato I speared spewed it’s juice across the table and all up the length of my arm. Jack and I quickly wiped it up and giggled for hours. (Owen was busy being an adventurious eater.) The edamame was indeed edamame, which was luck for Jack, as he was not such an adventurous eater... PS the waitress commented on how well Owen spoke, and Jack was super proud of himself for asking where the bathroom was(in French), and then being able to follow the directions there by himself.
Back to the scooters - 
The trek t the store was fairly long, but the boys were completely entertained with the scooters. They were intrigued by the different textures in the roads and sidewalks and by the fact that they could easily figure out if we were going “uphill” or “downhill” (which is really hard to tell if you are just walking.) They experimented with how much of a drop off the sidewalk they could go up and down and not get the scooters stuck while crossing the street.
The store ended up just being a bigger grocery store, so we couldn’t get toys or a ball. (though laundry soap made me very happy!!) The boys were able to “push through” their disappointment of no ball - with the purchase of a chocolate croissant…
We brought our groceries home, then headed back out for a toy store to find soccer balls. While the store was mostly for younger kids – we were able to find some little balls and we headed back through Luxembourg Gardens to try them out.
We discovered a little bee-keeping area in the Garden that I will have to read about – just thought it was fun and took photos for the Cantralls! 
The balls were a hit, and are going to be a good thing for us to bring to the park. The park is about a 1/2 mile away from our house, and at least that wide. It will be a good exercise to walk here often and then kick the ball around. The boys thought it was especially funny to each kick their balls to me and see if I could keep up with both of them. I was pretty good, I must say…
Owen even managed to find a friend…
Which bored Jack, so he played in the mud and got filthy…
The dad of the friend that Owen found said that Jack playing in the mud in the rain was a dead give-away that we were from Seattle…
Love those boys!
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