Paris, France

We left the Riverboat on Friday morning from Amsterdam to board the train for Paris, France which took 2 1/2 hours to get here.  We were amazed at how fast the train went – 300 km/hour.  That was a little too fast for our liking and we were facing the back of the train all the way, in other words riding backwards for that length of time.  I found later in the day that I felt very unsteady and everything seemed to move around me.  I wasn’t sure if that was from being on the riverboat or the movement of the train going so fast or a combination of both.  It took until today for me to lose that feeling.  We arrived in our hotel and that evening we had tickets to go up the Eiffel Tower at 9:30.  We ate at a little café we found on our walk to the Eiffel Tower and then headed over to the Tower for our tour.  It is amazing how busy it was even at that time of night!  Here are a couple of pictures:

The café we ate at with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

Looking up at the Tower with it illuminated…..very pretty at night-time.  We went to the second viewing level; none of us were brave enough to go right to the top. 

A view of the city from the top of the Eiffel Tower at night. 

This is a day-time picture we took while on the Paris City Tour this morning. 

The famous street in Paris with all the high fashioned stores!  Brian wouldn’t let me near them!

 

Brian and Roseleigh patiently waiting for Richard and I as we were taking pictures.  See the Café Fouquet’s behind them.  This is a very famous café where celebrities frequent and also where they meet agents to sign their contracts, etc.  Very very very expensive.  We saw one item on the menu for 890 euro!!!!! Just a coffee costs 7 euro.  Unbelievable how expensive it is to eat out here.

The Opera House

On our city tour, the bus stopped for a “cappuccino break”,  These are our friends, Richard and Roseleigh. The cups had “Richard” on the cup and the saucer; so Roseleigh asked if she could buy one and they told her to just take one!  They were very nice in this place and the Cappuccino was delicious!!

This apparently is “modern art” at one of the old Presidential Palaces we visited.  This was in what would have been a courtyard.

Window display at Louis Vuitton.  Pure Gold…….another incidence of “modern art”

We saw so many places today that I have no idea what this place is but nevertheless, the history of this city was really interesting.  We really enjoyed the city tour today. 

As with our last cruise two years ago; a bunch of people in our group have a terrible cold/flu and we are steering clear of them.  We had brought surgical masks with us just for this reason alone and today we used them on the bus as we don’t want to catch whatever these people have. Most of them don’t care they are sick either and spreading their germs; they merrily get on the bus and cough and hack away barely covering their mouth.  This is one of the things we really dislike about travelling with a big group of people but it can’t be helped I guess.  Hopefully, we steer clear of any germs! 

We are now anxious to leave Paris (2 days has been enough) and I am really looking forward to heading over to London, England and meeting up with family again and also not have to worry about a language barrier!!  We will be very sad to say good-bye to Richard and Roseleigh though as we have had a great time meeting up with them on this trip.  That has been the highlight of the whole trip and we have had a really good time with them and a lot of laughs too!  Tomorrow we go to the Montmartre  which is a bohemian/artistic region of Paris and tomorrow night is a farewell dinner cruise on the Seine River.  Then Monday morning we again board the Eurostar train through the chunnel to London, and I will make sure we are not travelling backwards on this train! 

I have not been able to put a picture video together in the last few days as the internet has been way too slow and times out when I’m trying to upload anything, so I am going to wait until I get home to put one together then.  I may not get a chance to blog again until we are in England.