Today was a good day.

Any day that you end up eating duck gizzards for dinner is a good day. I think.

Beth played hooky today! Sort of...she didn't have any work to do at work and would have just sat there twiddling thumbs, which admittedly is not an easy task to maintain for 16 hours.

So we started out by having breakfast at our breakfast cafe. It was lovely.

Then we headed to the aquarium. We got off the train, went up the stairs, turned left and BAM! Eiffel Tower surprise! We had no idea it would be there, so it was pretty cool to turn the corner and get visually knocked on our butts.

We headed past the mini-tower vendors down to the aquarium. We were a bit early, so Beth sat near the aquarium to rest her ankle (which is feeling better, not completely, but a lot better), and Ben and I went to get a closer look at the tower. We did. And the junk lining the side of the bridge leading up to it. It was...breathtaking.

Into the aquarium!

It was pretty cool. It's not the Shed, but it's a decent size and boasts the largest tank in France. It was hard to get pictures in there, as it is in all aquariums, because of how dark it was, but I managed to get a couple cool ones.

We started by having to get the poo poo's out of Ben's pants, so we found a bathroom. However. Beth couldn't get the table down, so she had to change him on the floor of the main area. Luckily, we got there at 10am, when it opened, and since most Parisians don't do anything till 12, no one walked by. I eventually did get the table down and we found that we were quite glad we changed him on the floor...it was ten times cleaner.

Ben had a blast! He stared down the crabs and checked out all the starfish. He thought it was pretty cool that the Morey Eels were peeking out of holes in the rock and loved watching the giant sharks swimming by.

Near the end, they have 2 interesting things. The first is a touch tank. In San Diego, you can touch the sting rays and some other fish I believe. Here, you can touch Koy. If you can reach as deep as they swim. Kinda neat. If you've never had a goldfish. And you have monkey arms like me. Ben's arms were too short, so he couldn't touch them. But he had fun putting his arm in the water!

The other cool thing was this really neat computer projection on the floor. It somehow could tell where you were and your movements and if you moved, the simulated fish (which looked very real and 3d) would swim away from you and the water would ripple. But if you stayed still they would swim up to you. And through you. And they left the mouse pointer in the middle of the floor.

Ok, so they have some stuff to work on, but it was pretty sweet! Ben had a great time making waves and chasing the floor fish around.

Then we just sat and watched the sharks for a while.

On the way out and back to the train, the junk vendors were in full swing. It was a crazy display of...junk. I couldn't believe that people actually stopped to peruse it. The picture I have up only shows about a quarter of the vendors in that area.

Then we got back and went to lunch. If you are thinking, hmm I'd love to go to Paris and just go to a ton of restaurants and eat all that good food. Stop that thought, find your nearest French restaurant in America, and eat there. The food itself is ok. If you go to a high end restaurant, it's probably even better. The service is so awful that I almost walked out without paying. Well, no. But I pictured myself doing it, which is one step further than I've ever gone before. Beth and Ben finished their meal and left. 30 min later I got my second course. 30 min later I got my dessert. 45 min later I got my bill. Really wish I could give them some sort of negative tip.

Instead, I left my backpack there. I realized it as I was almost home and walked quickly back. It took me 1o min and I thought it would be gone for sure. Luckily, their clean up is as slow as their service, and my table and the surrounding tables hadn't even been touched as far as clean up goes.

After Ben's nap we got the Fed ex package and the package from Grandmo. Ben loved the stuff from Grandmo and was super excited all afternoon to play with his construction equipment.

When Beth came back with the mail, she surprised me by bringing home dinner that consisted of 4 euro wine (2007), Camembert cheese and a frozen dinner thing that had duck and gizzards. Which we promptly cooked up and mowed down. Mmmm mmm! Ben ate some duck and some Camembert and baguette and some of the potatoes and green beans in there as well, then he had some regular cheese and strawberries.

I've had duck before, but gizzards was new. Tasted fine though, didn't even notice it really. The meal as a whole was seasoned well and quite tasty!

A very good day!