We had a few days between arriving at Natalia's graduation, so we spent some time touring around Fontainebleau and Paris. The train into Paris is pretty short, about 40 minutes. Between the commuter trains and the Paris metro, Thomas was in seventh heaven! Thomas has been excited to see the Eiffel tower for a long time now, and the real thing didn't disappoint! It was raining a little bit our first day in Paris (the 19th), but that didn't deter plenty of folks from coming out to see the tower as well! There was a bit of a line up to the elevator to get to the top of the tower, so it was pretty dark by the time we got up. Thomas loved running around, looking at all the city lights, and especially being blown around by the high winds buffeting the tower that night! Martin enjoyed it too, most especially undergoing an emergency diaper change at the top! The next day (the 20th) we started out the day by taking a short walk from the hotel to the Château de Fontainebleau One neat piece on display is a plate painted with Niagara Falls around the 1830's. The Falls look much shorter in the painting than they do now. I wonder if that's what they really looked like back then? The boys weren't very interested in the interior of the Château, but did like running around the grounds! Later that afternoon we boarded the train headed for Paris again. We discovered shortly after the train left the station that we'd left one of our backpacks at the train station. Desperate, we called Natalia, who was still in Fonty, to see if she could get in touch with the station staff to see if they could hold the back for us. Natalia called back to say there was no way to get in touch with the station staff directly, and that we'd have to check lost & found (wherever that was!) the next day. Little did we know... ... Natalia had already found our backpack at the station, and had taken it for some joyriding! We were reunited with our poor backpack at Notre Dame. We finished the evening with a great dinner at Le Relais de l'Entrecôte. The following day we spent relaxing at the Jardin du Luxembourg, followed by a quick visit to the Eiffel Tower in the fog, then finished the evening at a restaurant called L'enfance de Lard in Paris, which in Melissa's opinion was the culinary highlight of the trip! She ordered a delicious steak tartare. Thomas devoured his grandfather's ceviche-style fish appetizer because we told him it was sashimi :) The food here really was delicious! The owners let Thomas grab as many candies as he wanted from their giant candy dish afterwards. I think all French desserts have to be lit on fire at some point.