Back at the end of July, we took our first trip to a strange and wondrous land: France. Specifically, Paris. And I do have to say that Paris is everything they say it is. The food is great. The people are rude. The architecture is gorgeous. The city smells in the summer. It literally hits every stereotype that you might have of Paris.

Unfortunately, with typical Payne Family Luck, we managed to plan our trip for the worst heat wave the continent has ever seen. It was a record 108.5 F (42.5 C) that week. And we had booked an AirBNB without air conditioning (almost no apartments/houses have air conditioning in France or the UK). But, wow, was the view from the apartment amazing.

I’ll admit that the first night and day were nearly the end of our journey. We were all so hot, tired, and cranky by the end of the first 24 hours that we nearly killed each other. We saw the Eiffel Tower, which was beautiful, but even the height didn’t provide much wind or relief from the heat.

Fortunately, late afternoon, we found a public fountain that people were using to cool off and that allowed us cool our tempers as well. And again, you couldn’t beat the view from the fountain.

After cooling off, we decided that, despite the cost, we’d move to a hotel with air conditioning, and after that, things went much better. We couldn’t get two nights in a row at a single hotel, but that ended up ok. The second hotel we stayed in was especially cool, being an inn since the 1400’s.

We ate in great restaurants, took a bus tour of the city, and even found a crepes place that had a cat mascot. There’s a huge amount of photos below to look at. I’ll try to catch up on my blogging this week (but don’t count on it).