I booked a behind the scenes bakery tour for our family so we could learn how to make baguettes!
Our tour started out with breakfast! We each got to pick a pastry and drink. We had some fresh squeezed orange juice that was amazing to go with our yummy treats.
The pastries looked really beautiful and everything tasted delicious.
We headed downstairs to watch the pastry bakers at work. People who want to become bakers become an apprentice at age 14 and study for 5 years. Wow. There were lots of refrigerators full of dough and pastries that were being prepared for the day. One of the bakers prepared some croissant dough for us to practice rolling croissants. To be an acceptable croissant it has to have four or five rolls. The kids thought this was pretty fun, but Marion was super disappointed she had to leave her unbaked croissant instead of taking it with her. Croissants take three hours to rise so there wasn’t time to bake them for us to take home.
Next we went upstairs to where the baguettes are made. All baguettes must be a certain weight and cut a certain way or they can’t be called baguettes. They also have a fixed price since the French Revolution. All baguettes must be sold for between 80 cents and 1 Euro. We saw the proofing machines, the HUGE mixer that was mixing 400 baguettes worth of dough. There are machines for everything. Mixing, proofing, cutting the dough, rolling the dough. Everything. It was really cool to watch, but makes it less impressive that the bakery churns out a thousand baguettes a day when you realize how streamlined the process is with lots of machines. I am not saying it is a bad thing; just that I didn’t really gain any insight into how to make great baguettes at home. Baker Cedric showed all of us how to roll baguettes by hand and let us all try it. Then we got to slice the dough before it headed into the oven. It was amazing how much flour is everywhere in the bakery. Cedric was covered head to toe with a fine dusting of flour and I read that there is actually something called Baker’s Asthma from the lung irritation that comes from breathing in flour every day. I believe it!
While waiting for the baguettes to bake, we took a short walking tour around the area. We passed a playground and all the kids ran to play. There was one other family in our tour with a little girl Elora’s age and they were so excited to play. I walked back to the bakery to pick up our baguettes – all 18 of them for two families. The kids loved all running around with their own baguettes and playing in the rain. Elora’s new friend is from New Zealand, so we exchanged addresses and now have a new pen pal. To sum up the tour, I am not sure it was worth the money simply because it was quite expensive and we really didn’t learn any “baking secrets or tricks” which was why I booked the tour. But the kids had a great time making their own bread and it was interesting to look around the bakery. It was kid friendly and we definitely got a lot of food as part of the package. I wish there were a few more details on what makes the breads and pastries turn out the way they do instead of just seeing machines do the work and saying, “Wow, that looks cool.” The tour guide was not actually a baker, just someone who arranges the tour, so she was not really knowledgeable about the actual baking processes.The best part was the kids making a new friend, eating, and a week later the kids telling me how fun it was to tour a bakery.
After saying goodbye to our new friends and eating at least 7 baguettes, we headed over to the Musée de l’Orangerie to see Monet’s Water Lilies. I have always wanted to see them and I was not disappointed. They limit the number of people in the museum, so there is a little bit of a wait. It was not too bad though, and it is nice to walk around a museum that is not packed with people. There were times where there were crowds standing in front of the paintings, but there are large benches to sit on and if you wait patiently there are times where only a few people are in the room. The kids got out their notebooks and drew pictures and we were able to enjoy the paintings for about a half hour. For us, that is pretty amazing.
James made a great picture titled, “Monet’s Water Lilies with a Shark” featuring a frog hiding under a lily pad. After we got up to go, we found another room with three more huge water lily paintings! I liked the second room even better. The rest of the museum is quite small, but still has quite a nice collection that I really enjoyed. Elora and James both really liked this sailboat painting. This was my favorite museum I have visited in Paris even though it was small – it was easy to see everything with kids in tow, the kids actually really liked most of the art so they would sit and look at it for awhile, and I thought the Monet exhibit was really wonderful.
After the museum we decided to stop by a few last touristy type places. First we went to look for the plaque that is in the spot where Marie Antoinette was killed. Our Notre Dame tour guide had mentioned it and the kids wanted to see it because they are super interested in Marie Antoinette, who is from Vienna and shares a birthday with Marion.
We took Elora to the Place du Tertre where all the painters set up to sell their paintings. Elora said she would like to set up shop there. It was a good day for it because it was a bit dreary outside so it wasn’t very crowded. The kids were a little disappointed that we didn’t buy any paintings. They each had a favorite they wanted us to get! I guess they will just have to paint their own masterpieces!
We walked past the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur and then James was begging to go to a playground. Luckily I remembered from my last trip to Paris that there was a little playground at the bottom of the stairs! We headed there for the kids to play for a bit. Marion found a fountain that she was really excited about. Then we headed back into the touristy shops for a little more souvenir shopping and another playground. Poor James was exhausted and fell asleep in my arms. While sleeping at the playground, a butterfly landed on him. The butterfly must have sensed how sweet he is!
For our last dinner in Paris, we found a little French cafe just around the corner from our apartment. Chris really wanted me to try a dish called Cassoulet – which is a stew of sorts with beans, sausage, and duck. It was really good. Elora got the same, Oliver tried duck which he loved, and the little ones had some pasta. It was a really nice meal and we got there right when the restaurant opened, so it was pretty empty. This is always a plus when dining with four children.
After dinner we took the kids to the top of the Montparnasse Tower so we could see the sparkling lights of the Eiffel Tower from above. It was a late night, but a beautiful sight and a fun last evening in Paris. One more day to sight see and then we are on our way home!
