In which we see lights

We have made some effort to take advantage of both the fact that kids have been on break for the last two weeks, and that Paris has some special things going on during the Christmas season. We've been to Christmas markets, gone to see the lights, and various other things.

Last weekend, Blaise made a couple of discoveries about special things that were going on in Paris during the school break. The first was that several of the carousels in Paris are free during the break. Unfortunately, he discovered this Sunday evening, and we'd been to both the Hôtel de Ville (two free carousels) and the Place Madeleine (one free carousel) over the weekend. The second is that during the break, the exhibition hall at the Grand Palais is turned into a giant indoor fairway, complete with a ferris wheel, carousel, thrill rides, junky food stands, games, etc.

Tuesday evening we ate an early dinner, and headed into the city to the Grand Palais. After trying a couple of different entrances (there are a bunch of permanent exhibits in there), we found the entrance to the fair, paid our 19€, and went inside. We started by wandering around to see what was there. Cherry discovered a small toddler area with lots of bikes and cars and other ride on toys. We watched the Salto Mortale flip riders upside down. We looked at the exhibit of antique carousel animals, which included a fish and lots of pigs. And we tried to figure out what ride we should go on, given that we'd promised the kids we would ride something, and that all of the rides were a lot more expensive than we'd been led to believe they would be.

We ended up deciding that the ferris wheel was really the only ride which would be interesting and accessible for all of us, and got in line to buy our tickets. Fifteen minutes later, we were on the ferris wheel, and headed up to the top. I had my arm firmly around Cherry, since I didn't trust her not to stand up at the top of the ride. (Since we were, perhaps, 6 or 7 stories up, that would have been a bit of a problem.) Then, as we were stopped near the top for them to begin to unloading process, Blaise noticed that he could see the lights on the Eiffel Tower out the roof of the building, and that there was a light show going on. Of course he said something, and of course Cherry tried to stand up and turn around so that she could see it as well. I didn't let her.

As we continued to slowly move downwards while waiting our turn to dismount, I reminded Blaise that we had wanted to see the 125 anniversary light show at the Eiffel Tower, and that it was only going to run for 3 more nights. He suggested that we come back the next night for the show, and I pointed out that we were only 2 metro stops from the Eiffel tower, and that there was another show at nine o'clock. So we walked the mile or so along the Seine to the Trocadéro, and waited for the light show to begin. We were disappointed to discover that it was just the flashing lights that are shown hourly all year long, and headed back along the river for the nearest metro stop. After about a block I noticed that people were staring at the tower, and looked back to discover that it was a changing rainbow of colors, which was definitely not standard, so we stopped and watched the show for the remaining 15 minutes before catching the train home.