On our last day in Paris we checked out of our hotel, the Hotel Saint-Germain. We walked to the Museum of Natural History and ate one last breakfast at a boulangerie with some outdoor seating en route.
We arrived at the Jardin des Plants, one of the strong settings in one of my favorite novels, All the Light We Cannot See. This was a trip loosely based around the book because in St. Malo we were constantly talking about that novel too. But it was so fun to walk through the Jardin des Plants and arrive at the hall of mineralogy! That is a major part of the novel, and Mary said it was her favorite place of the entire trip.
Then we toured the onsite enormous greenhouse:
Afterward we walked to the Seine, stopped at a playground, and then bought gifts for friends at the bookseller stalls along the river.
We were decision-fatigued from all of the restaurant choices and made a bad choice for lunch. But it was nice to get out of the heat, and the kids tried their first escargot. Mary refused.
After we got one last ice cream.
Then we caught a taxi to the airport. In the car, people did created dances inspired by different (often every-day) activities:
When we arrived we realized we had left the laptop bag at the hotel! Luckily we were early enough that Abe had time to go back, grab the bag, and come back in time to get the flight. Some angel attendant helped me get everyone and everything else checked in the meantime.
The kids were exhausted when we landed in New York. The whole airtrain-to-shuttle-to-hotel route was way too much to ask on top of their initial level of fatigue, but they made it through (with Ammon and Clarissa sobbing almost the whole time).
They slept through the entire night and so did almost all of the rest of us. That was amazing because it was our first night back in the States!