Paris Day 2 July 3rd
Trip Start
Jun 24, 2008
1
7
41
Trip End
Aug 28, 2008
Paris,
France
Friday, July 4, 2008
We had a good nights sleep and were looking forward to breakfast. Breakfast was in the cellar of the hotel. Being French, bread, cheese and coffee was great. 3 kinds of cereal, but it was disappointing to find canned fruit, when all the fruit stalls are full of beautiful inviting fruit.
After breakfast we went to the reception to organise a tour and a show. We decided to to a full day tour to Versaille and Giverny, Monets home on Saturday. Also wanted to book a show at Lido for tonight. We decided on Lido as we could get a 50% discount with our Metro pass. It was still 100 euro for the 2 of us.
Once that had been organised we headed for Arc de Triomphe
Trumpet player on the Metro
. Neither of us had ever been inside it or at the top. With our Metro pass we got a discount, 7 euro each instead of 9. Good thing we didn't read the brochure before heading up, it was 234 steps and 50 meters up a narrow spiral staircase. Wasn't too bad, but no good for Peter's knee. It was well worth while, grand views of Paris. We spent quite some time there. Weather is more like spring than summer, lovely and warm when the sun is out, but there is a cooling wind, so we are forever putting an extra layer on and taking it off.
An other wander down Champs Elysees to look for a nice place for lunch. Found a nice place, food prices were O.K. around 17.00 Eu, but their wine was a bit expensive (20.00eu + for 50cl) so we settled for water. The table at the restaurants are tiny, and jammed closer together than seat on a plane. But service is quick, they want to turn those tables over as often as possible. However they don't rush you.
Peter wasn't keen on doing to much walking, so we bought a 2 day ticket for one of the busses that go to all the tourist spots, you can hope on and off as often as you like
Tourist photographing tourist
. We started off sitting on top outside, until it started raining, back up the top once the rain stopped. It was a really interesting tour, and we never got off, will do that today. Got back to the hotel around 5pm, and we were ready for an afternoon nap. I had started to sneeze during lunch, and during the bus trip I could definitely feel I had a cold coming on. Graeme had a bad one when we left Singapore, and Lisa had had one too, but here's didn't last long. Fingers crossed. So I dosed with nurofen cold and flu, large dose of Vitamin C and hoped for the best.
We had a good rest, and I did feel better. We headed back to the centre, found a place for a quick dinner, I had a plate of Parma ham and Melon, we decided to have a glass of wine with our meal, and this time we asked for a carafe of water, otherwise you get expensive bottled water.
The show started at 9.30pm, included at the price was a bottle of Champagne, so we could have done without the wine at dinner. The show was very good, full of life colour and music. The elephant was fake, but the horse and the ice skating was real. There were also a couple of Male acrobats, that did some amazing things with their bodies. The show lasted about 1 ½ hour. We had been told to arrive about 9pm, but was quite a bit later, so we were sitting quite a long way from the stage, but could still see and hear very well. I guess the people who paid for a meal too got the seats up the front. There was an other show starting at 11pm, too late for this old couple.
Took the metro home, all the way to St. George. We have to change at Pigalle, only one stop and not far to walk, but it looks like it could be quite a seedy place at night.
Comments
Kathpeac
Your travels are so interesting
Love reading the reports