In which we see fish

By the time I had cleaned up the paint on Sunday morning it was pretty clear that unless I wanted to spend the whole day undoing disasters, we would have to get out of the house. What to do though? We had toyed with the idea of going to the Parc Floral, but somehow that didn't seem ambitious enough. On the other hand, a Parisien museum by myself seemed a bit too ambitious. Perhaps there was more to the Bois de Vincennes than the Parc Floral?

I perused our Michelin Paris Guide (which I highly recommend if you're going to be visiting Paris) to see what else there might be. I discovered that there is a huge zoo, which is currently in the middle of a five year total reconstruction project, during which time it is closed to the public. I discovered that there is a museum dealing with the history of immigration in France. And I discovered that there is an aquarium, the aquarium de la Porte Dorée, which had been around since 1931. And that, in exchange for forgoing the fancy glitz at Cineaqua, we could go, using the family rate and the fact the Cherry is still free, for the whopping price of 8€. I could pack a lunch, and we could still, if we wished, have a picnic and play at the Parc Floral afterward.

So I packed a lunch and found train and bus tickets (train out to the aquarium, bus home from the Parc Floral) and the kids took care of their shoes and jackets. Then it was off to the RER for the ride to the aquarium.

We arrived and waited in line to buy tckets, and I noticed that the sign claimed that they could ask for identification for anyone attempting to use the discounted rates. Surely they wouldn't though. Fortunately, as I hadn't brought copies of my children's translated birth certificates, they didn't.

The aquarium was definitely old-style. No dolphin shows or massive tanks holding beluga whales here, but lots of tanks of brightly colored tropical fish, most with benches in front of them for the little ones to stand on. We saw an African blowfish with a bad case of buck teeth, and thought that perhaps it should be called a rabbit fish. We saw an entire tankful of "Memos" (pronounced MEE moh) as my kids call them. (Yes, even Sapphire still calls them that). We saw lots of transparent skeleton fish. We saw a tank full of turtles. And we saw crocodiles from the Nile, and alligators from---are you ready?---Mississippi. (Perhaps the Florida Gators need to change their name.)

By that point, we were all pretty tired of the aquarium, so we went outside and found some benches to sit on while we ate lunch, then decided to walk to the Parc Floral, which was, after all, just on the other side of the Bois de Vincennes. This ended up being a clear case of a time when I should have looked at a map with a scale, since I realized when we got home that that walk had, by itself, been almost 2.5 miles. No wonder Cherry was whining by the end!

In any case, we did eventually make it to the playground, where Sapphire and Ezio headed for the monkey bars and Cherry and I found something a bit more appropriate for a preschooler. Eventually all three kids ended up on the bouncy sled in the toddler section of the playground. Once they got bored of that, we headed back to the exit and found the first of the two buses that we needed to get home.