In which we walk in the steps of gladiators

One of the things that we've really struggled with this trip is how to balance activity for Ezio with the fact that he spent a huge chunk of the spring either on crutches or in a wheelchair, and, as a result, is wearing out a lot sooner than he might be otherwise. If we overdo things for him, then the next day becomes one in which he stays in the apartment and off his feet for the most part until the pain level is back down to a zero. Most days we manage to stay within his limits, but his ankles started to flare about five minutes before we left the Cité des Sciences on Sunday, and by the time we got back to the apartment that evening it was clear that Monday was going to have to be a rest day for him. And so it was, and without Ezio the rest of us didn't do anything particularly interesting either.

On Tuesday, we woke up and Ezio said that his ankle pain was essentially gone, and so that morning we ventured to the little playground up the street a couple of blocks with Ezio on crutches, and Sapphire and I walked laps of the square while Cherry and Ezio played on the play equipment. That experiment went fairly well (other than complaints about the babyishness of the playground), and so after lunch we decided to try roaming a bit further from home.

Bus tickets tucked safely into my money belt (in case Ezio ended up being unable to walk home), we headed off for the 10 minute walk to the Arènes de Lutèce. The kids took a very careful 7 second look at the arena, and asked if there was a playground around, so we headed around the outside of the arena to the playground in the park that is alongside the playground. I settled in on a park bench with Sapphire, who is, alas, "Too big to play on the playground equipment," and Cherry and Ezio headed for the fire pole. Thirty seconds later the playground was inundated with a swarm of third graders and Cherry and Ezio retreated to the bench where we were sitting and just watched, complaining that the other kids had taken over the playground. That quickly turned into complaints that the kids weren't leaving to go somewhere else. At one point, they decided to try braving the playground anyway. Cherry was promptly bowled over by an unobservant kid (who was roundly scolded by his teacher), and returned, sobbing, to the bench.

Once she had stopped crying, we decided to go explore the arena, which was, after all, what we had really come to do anyway. And so we walked through the arena, hunting out all of the hidden staircases and back entrances that we could find (and, naturally, going through them), stopping to watch old Frenchmen playing a game of pétanque. (The kids now want to bring a pétanque set home with us. I may wish I had another suitcase.) By the time that we had explored things thoroughly the class had, at long last, left the playground, and so Cherry and Ezio had the run of the playground for awhile before we headed back to the apartment.