Cooking Class, Eiffel Tower, and the Seine

For our final Paris adventure day, Vivian, of course, had to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, but we wanted to do something else special too, a cooking class.  We found one that was designed for kids.  The description said she would learn how to make a baguette, but she made all different kinds of breads, plus crescent cookies, and pizza!  She had a great time.

They even had an apron and activities for Elena.

Our guiding cook showed Vivian how to knead the dough and then he let her add some extras to her breads and rolls  Jeff got into it too.

Next the dough had to rise.

While it was rising, Vivian worked on rolling little crescents and then "painting" them with egg wash.

Then it all went in to cook, and Vivian moved on to pizza.  First she cut out lots of little circles to make mini pizza bases.  

Then, she got to paint them with tomato sauce and add the toppings.  Jeff likes to help with toppings :-)

Elena was surprisingly good through all of this.  She played with her bowl of flour for almost an hour, and then happily did iPad at the table waiting for everything to be done.  She insisted on helping with clean up though.

The final bread basket was impressive.

And delicious :-)

After feasting on Vivian's creations, we headed back to the apartment.  The plan was for me to stay with Elena and try to get her to take a nap (ha!), while Jeff took Vivian to the Eiffel Tower.  We decided that it wasn't worth the money and hassle to try and haul Elena all the way up, so she and I would just meet them when they were done, and we would all take a cruise down the Seine together.

Getting to the Eiffel Tower was easier said than done, and Jeff and Vivian had to hustle to meet up with their tour (I booked a tour, so that they could skip at least some of the lines).  Eventually though, they made it to the second level,

and finally, they made it all the way to the top.

Back at the bottom, Vivian was quite pleased with herself.

She has been dreaming about going to the top of the Eiffel Tower for five years.  We'll have some cake and sing a song on her actual birthday, but this was her birthday present.

Meanwhile, Elena and I had made the metro trek (and gotten stuck half in and half out of one of the ticket turnstiles (thank you nice Parisians who stopped to help!).  We were waiting for Jeff and Vivian and having fun with selfies.

We met up at the exit.  Vivian said she really needed a snack after all of that excitement.  Her snack choice? Ice cream.

With a snack in her tummy, she was ready for our boat adventure.  We got on one of the boats with an open top deck, so that we could see everything.  We got lots of cool river pictures,

but my favorite pictures were at the beginning of the end of the cruise when we could take pictures with the Eiffel Tower.

After such a full day, we were all completely worn out.  Luckily, there was a nice Italian restaurant between our metro stop and our apartment, so we picked out a table and collapsed.

It turned out to be a great choice.  They brought us huge bowls of delicious pasta, and we recovered a bit from our day.  Elena stayed asleep through the entire transfer between stroller, elevator, and crib.  She was up bright and early the next morning though.

I took advantage of being up early to get some pictures of the market across the street setting up.

We took our time packing up that morning, and eventually made our way over to the Orly airport to pick up our rental car and head south to the Loire Valley.  We had a great time in Paris, but after three intense days of sightseeing, we were ready for a slightly slower pace.