PARIS 5th-12th NOVEMBER - Part 1

Where to begin? Paris is everything we dreamed and more. From our arrival at our hotel to our hotel to our first view of the Eifel Tower we were both hooked on the place and its surrounds.

The view from the hotel was (to my mind at least) typically ‘Parisienne’ and we had what a real estate agent would call “Glimpses of the Eifel Tower”. To be honest we did have to stand on our Juliette Balcony to see the top section of the tower but it did it for me!

It was only a relatively short run to Paris from Brugge so we had plenty of time to explore in the afternoon. Our first trip was a 10 minute walk to the Champs Elysees and our first view of the Arc de Triumph. The Champs was everything I had read about it and more, full of high end shops and stores. Traffic is phenomenal and there are very few road markings; drivers seem to take whatever rout they desire. If you ask me it appears that red lights are optional, not compulsory!!!

On our first full day we took a side trip to Versailles, the former home of Louis XIII and Marie Antoinette the catalyst for the French Revolution. No wonder the peasants revolted! The palace and grounds is massive and pure decadence. It is also an awesome place to visit.

Paris has certainly knocked off a number of my ‘Bucket list’ visits. We visited the Louvre, spending a day there but only seeing a fraction of the art works available for viewing. Such is the popularity of the place that one has to queue in order to join the queue for tickets.

Naturally most of the visitors were heading to the Mona Lisa and it was a dream to actually see it up-close!

Even then I couldn’t get too close to it due to the sheer numbers waiting in line to see her.

Wednesday was a ‘less cultural’ day with us spending most of the day in a massive shopping center, Again, many high end, luxury stores. It was in here where we saw one of the largest Christmas trees I’ve ever seen, smack in the center of the shopping center. Julie had a gorgeous Paris hair-do. We have no idea what it is but the Parisian’s sure do have style.

They even have ‘style’ when it comes to ice-cream, serving the cone as a flower instead of just a ball of ice in a cone!

Next stop was for a walk round the Eifel Tower. The grounds around it are just as fantastic as the tower itself and we spent plenty of time just wandering around. Our son and daughter-in-lae, Shane and Anna are joining us on Friday for the weekend so we tried to book the Eifel Tower restaurant for dinner on Friday night. Ha! What a joke that was. There is no hope of a booking for 3 months! That ruled that out for a plan and its back to plan ‘B’! However, it worked in our favour – we decided to book a restaurant with a view of the tower instead.

I’ll call it quits here, I’ll publish more in a couple of days.