Off to Grand Paris

After a rest day that consisted of sitting, reading and doing washing we were all set to hit Paris today. After going via the train station in Fontainebleau, we decided that we were best to drive in. Dad found a great park right in the centre of the city, 10 minutes walk from the Notre Dame. We walked there, took photos of the outside and then bought some lunch to sit and eat in the gardens behind the Notre Dame (where a group of nuns were also doing the same). The decision as to whether to go in or not was decided by the large queues that were snaking around the building. As was becoming custom for us, we then got on a hop on, hop off bus to see the sites. Paris is a beautiful city, all the buildings being similar architecture and height. There are few highrise buildings and they are all clumped together away from the centre of the city.

The tour took us past all the major sites within the centre, the Louvre, Champs Elyse, Arc de Triumph, The last stop for us was the Eifel Tower and we here we hopped off to have a look around and climb the tower. The queues were horrendous and it was lucky that I had already decided that I wanted to take the stairs (all 670 of them) as most people took the lift so our route was considerably quicker and much better for us. Mum and Dad stayed down the bottom in the park with the girls while Glen and I went up. Once we got to the second floor we had to buy another ticket in order to go all the way to the top which had to be done in a lift. The view from the top is spectacular and we managed to find all the places we had been past on the bus. We treated our selves to an ice cream and water before making the journey back down again. On the second floor we looked out over the park trying to see M, D, T & S and I thought I may have seen them but it wasn?t until we were down on the first floor that I was sure it was them so took a photo.

The last leg of the tour was rather slow due to the riduculous Paris peak hour traffic which seemed to have no real structure in parts.

While we had been gone, Dad had been reading his guide book for France and picked out a spot for dinner that was a block from the car. Le Boulanger was basically an old butchers and I stared blankly at the menu until the waiter eventually said that they had menus in English if we would like them. I was quite disgusted to realise what the guys next to us were eating. It was raw mince with fries. The chips I can cope with, raw mince, I can not!!! I had a fillet of beef which was lovely and Glen had half a duckling which I think had been fed a few steroids going by its size. Seren was unfortunately ill while we were in the restaurant so we dressed her in her jumper with Tieve?s on her bottom half and then changed both the girls into their pjs when we got back to the car. When we were dressing her she was pretty warm and after taking her temperature back at the campsite to find she was 39OC gave her some panadol before putting her to bed.