Day 13 – Thursday, December 31, 2009 – Drive from Geneva to Paris / New Year’s Eve in Paris

We were up relatively early, considering how late we got to bed.  We had breakfast in the hotel and then checked out.  I think we hit the road around 11:00 am.  We drove straight through, the whole way, to Paris.  It was only about a 5-hour drive.  We made it to our hotel before it got dark.  We chilled out in our hotel room for a while and I brought back some pizza’s for dinner.  The kids watched “Tarzan” in Italian.

At around 9:45, we bundled up and walked to the Eiffel Tour for New Years!  The crowd was a little disappointing to us.  I wish we had more energy and more time to plan something special.  But, it was neat to be in Paris for New Year’s and show the kids the Eiffel Tour (we stood right under it).  We sat on the back-side of the tour and watched the lights for a while.  We decided to leave around 10:45 because of the crowd.  I don’t think this is an exaggeration… we estimate that 25% of the crowd was comprised of thieves and/or people who were seriously out for malice; 25% comprised of people who had too much too drink, or were on drugs, and didn’t know what they were doing; 10% comprised of people who appeared to be radical Muslim extremists (walking around in groups, yelling together in Arabic, saying things about Allah…).  The rest of the crowd (and certainly the minority) was comprised of people like us who wanted to see the tower and be part of New Year’s Eve in Paris.  The next day, we started to discover some places that we think would have been better.

Fortunately, our hotel was close by and we returned to our room for a 15-minute break.  Then, just before midnight, we headed outside, across the street from our hotel, where we had a full view of the Eiffel Tower, and we ushered in the New Year there and got to watch the lights on the Tower.  Gabriel really enjoyed it.  Kallie was done… she was done when we were at the tower around 10:30 pm!  We headed inside to finish our cheese, crackers, and sparkling water.  I think we all slept pretty well!