A trip to Paris

Last week, we went on a 4 day holiday to Paris. There were many firsts for Aditi in this trip- her first trip abroad, her first journey on an airplane, her first visa and immigration stamp, her first actual holiday...For a baby, she did adapt pretty well to the new surrounding and enjoyed the sight seeing bits.
Now for a peep into the past, I had been dreaming of visiting Paris since 2003 and for some reason or the other, it never materialized until November 2007. The decision this time was made in an instant and things fell in place very soon. We packed our bags and retired early the previous night as we were on an early morning flight. Aditi slept during the flight though there were 3 other babies giving enough trouble to their parents that morning. We had booked a self- catering apartment as opposed to the traditional Bread & Breakfast, so it would give us some additional space and Aditi enjoyed crawling all over the apartment - being extremely active during her meal times.
Day 1 - We took the Open Top Bus Tour and went on a sight seeing spree from atop the bus. Alighted at the Eiffel Tower and spent the rest of the evening there going up to the top of the tower and enjoying the classic views over the city. The tower is especially beautiful in the night with the golden and silver lights twinkling up to the top. I had prepared some quick meal for lunch and our tummies were growling by then. We trusted the Lonely Planet guide to take us to an Indian restaurant near the apartment we were renting. Unfortunately, there stood a Brazilian restaurant in its place, but we found another restaurant nearby, which was packed and hence we settled for a takeaway. Aditi's meals were served on time wherever we were, so she slept as usual.
Day 2 - After a much needed rest, we visited the Notre Dame, the Louvre museum and Monalisa, Champs-Elysses and a few other monuments. We were directed to the 'Eastham' of Paris bya friendly gentleman and were happy to taste South Indian food near Gare-du-Nord station.
Day 3 - We were advised against visiting Disney Land on a weekend, but could fit in at no other time and left early only to be disappointed by the endless queues. However we did manage some rides and watched the Diney Bus Parade and 'Once upon a Time' Dreams parade. DisneyLand was very very crowded and Aditi grew grumpy by the end of the day. The endless waiting in the queues made her restless and we decided to head home early. After a quick bite at another Indian restaurant follwed by shopping we headed home.
Day 4 - It was Sunday ad we lazed around althoug the original plan was to visit an icerink nearby. We packed our bags and checked twice before we left the apartment. We were happy to be back home and get back into our own beds. On the whole, the trip was enjoyable.
However, there were a few incidents that I record here so we might learn from them in the future.
Eiffel Tower is full of people trying to sell you goods at more than double the price and you can bag a bargain especially if it is evening/closing time.
Prashanth who is usually very careful about everything kept the mobile phone in his bag. I usually keep Aditis water flask with me, but had asked him to pour water into her bottle that evening. The cap had not been fully locked and the flask was in his bag. The phone got soaked in the water and has become unuseable. It has now been sent for repair, but will take a good 4 weeks to get back.
At the museum, he left the Debit card on the Chip and Pin device after paying for the tickets and realized that the card was not in his purse at the restaurant 6 hours later . Thankfully the musuem was open until 10 that night and we found it there to our relief.
At DisneyLand, he accidentally spilt coffee on the camera !
And to top it all, this is my favorite, as I played my part too. We stayed on the top floor and the owner had kindly given us the store room keys on the ground floor to leave Aditi's pushchair there. When we were to vacate the apartment, we checked many times that we had packed all our stuff, except that we forgot about the pushchair. The door was a self locking one and the owner had asked us to leave the keys inside when we vacated the premises. As I shut the door, we remembered that we had not taken the pushchair and the keys were already locked inside.
I should say that the French are extremely friendly and helpful. We knocked many doors in the complex, but none of them had the keys. One young gentleman suggested that we ask the bakery next door and agreed to come down and explain to them in French about our position. When we were turned down by them, we rang our owner who agreed to get there in an hour's time. In a despearate attempt,we decided to knock on more doors and luckily one of them did have the keys to the store room. We finally got the pram out. But the pram was not to be with us that night. Air France had forgotten to load it in our flight. We waited until all baggage arrived and yet there was no sight of the pushchair. Reluctantly we filled in the 'Lost Baggage' form and it was delivered to us the next evening.
Aditi enjoyed most part of the visit and my 4-year long dream was finally fulfilled.
(Please note that I have been unable to load pictures from the camera into this laptop as our new laptop broke down recently and the old one has a broken battery.We cant use the power adaptor and the memory card reader in the old one at the same time.Will load some pictures later when we've downloaded some)