The World Seen By Sam: May 2015

May 30, 2015 (Paris/Roland Garros French Open)

We woke up in time to catch the tennis match between Djokovic and Kirkkisam at Roland Garros French Open. It was awesome to see a Grand Slam tennis event especially while watching Djokovic. Djokovic’s match was Kirkkisam a nineteen year old Australian! The nineteen year old kept up well considering he was playing against the best tennis player in the world. After all of the sets Djokovic came out on top. In between the matches we ate lunch and walked around Roland Garros.

Back in the tennis arena we watched a South African and a French person play. It was way more packed since a Frenchman was playing, even more packed then while Djokovic was playing. I was rooting on the South African to win while most of the other spectators where chanting the french players name. Dad and I only watched part of it, and we later found out that they played for four, or five sets. While Mom and our friends were watching tennis Dad and I met up with his friends, Joe, and Katie. We talked with them for a little while, eating a crepe and talking some of the time about me and mom's trip. Once we departed from talking with them we rented electric scooters and scooted around town.

The day before I saw two guys on these electric scooters and I thought it would be loads of fun. And it was! Dad and I scooted all of the way to our hotel and back. During our scoot sesh, we rode on some cobble stone which was extremely bumpy and we also rode down by the water like we did the day before. It was also extremely fun to ride scooters around the huge round about by the Louvre with a big Egyptian obelisk in the middle. On the back we rode across a bumpy bridge that was famous for the locks attached to the railing wall. On that ride we could scoot through traffic and jump off the curbs. It was exiting and loads of fun.

Shortly after the e-scooter ride Dad and I ate dinner before the violin concert we were attending. The violin concert didn't just sound amazing but the building was beautiful too! It was in Sainte Chappell's chapel with stain glass and great autistics. Mom and two of our friends didn't make it in time so they waited outside and ate some dinner.

When we returned to the hotel we spent our last night with Dad before he has to leave for a month. We tried finishing the Book of Mormon before Dad left but the last 6 chapters were too long.

May 29, 2015 (Paris, France)

We had a pretty late start to the day. We got breakfast at the hotel then walked over to the Louvre. My favorite part of the Louvre's architecture is it's awesome glass pyramid in the front of it. They had very famous art and sculptures there. Two of which were the Mona Lisa, and the Venus de Milo. One thing that Mom thought that made Venus de Milo so famous was that it was unique in how she was just standing there, not leaning on a tree and with no props. The Mona Lisa was definitely the most popular. I was able to get a pretty nice photo of the Mona Lisa considering the crowds, thanks to the security taking it for me. We were also able to look at some more of Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings. My favorite piece was Venus de Milo because of its simplicity and the way it looks.

Next we took a cyclo over to the Notre Dame Cathedral where we ate lunch and had a delicious crepe. Outside the cathedral was a big line leading into what looked like a haunted castle with gargoyles on the outside. Inside the gothic cathedral was a large corridor called the nave, which was especially tall and long. The roof was beautiful and the stained glass was pretty too with the cathedrals big rose windows.

We walked across the river to a pet store. On the way we stopped by a couple others and looked and played with cute kittens. At another store there were birds too! Unfortunately I didn't get to pet or handle any of them but they were still cool to look at! We walked a pretty short way to the bike rentals. We biked to the Eiffel Tower. On the way there we biked by the water and played a game that was a mix of tennis and tether ball, it was really fun. The Eiffel Tower was really cool. In the middle of it was a giant tennis ball hanging from it with Roland Garros on it. They also had a place where you could serve a tennis ball and a speedometer picked up the speed of your serve. My fastest speed was 114 kph.

Riding back to the hotel we rode through Concord Square which has oblique that was given from Egypt. Once at the hotel we got dressed up for our dinner with Mom's friend, Andrew and his family. We talked during dinner and I met their two sons Ethan (age 10), and Drew (Age 14). After our dinner together we bought some dessert along the street and walked into and by a cathedral where there was a musician playing on the stairs and a great view of the city at night. Finished with visiting with our friends we took Uber back to the hotel after a pretty busy day.

May 28, 2015 (Loire Valley/Paris, France)

Woken up in the Chateau du Colliers, we quickly ate breakfast then went for a bike ride along the water and to the Chateau de Chamboard. On our ride I was practicing my wheelies, skids, and stoppie’s. Dad and I biked around the whole chateau including the small lake. Once dad and I biked around the Chateau we all ate lunch at a restaurant rear by. After we had eaten we biked back to the our Chateau (hotel). There we returned our bikes and started driving towards Versailles. When we arrived there were lots of people! This Palace was at least two times as large as the Chateau de Chamboard! Versailles was also where the treaty of WWI was.

My favorite place in the Versailles palace was the hall of mirrors where they signed the treaty. Finally once we reached the bike rental, that was about a mile walk, we took three cruzer bikes out and biked by the big Versailles water way and around the grounds. Before riding by the water way we walked through Marie Antoinette’s remake countryside farm so she could show her kids what the country life was like and so Marie could pretend to be a milkmaid. Once we left Marie Antoinette's village we biked around the water way which was bigger than the one Dad and I had done earlier that day. After skidding and playing around on our bikes we returned them and had to walk a mile back to our car.

We ate some dinner in Versailles then drove a little ways to Paris. We stayed at the hotel for the rest of the night watching Marie Antoinette after our Versailles experience, and Mom and I worked on our blogs.