Paris

We had a nice time in paris and below are one million (well not quite - but you get the idea) photos of the experience, I am hoping to wet you appetite for a trip to Paris because it really is a fabulous city. I wish that we had more time to explore further within and outside of the city, but this was at least a little sample of what is on offer and one day (I keep saying that) we will go to France properly.

It rained on our first day, this was a regular occurance as we had rain on our first day every where and in the case of London, on the last day too.

Clearly we are home now and I have spent some time today loading photos and completing this blog post, so it will be the only one for a day or too. Perhaps tonight I might be able to do the Switzerland post, prepare for photos of La Vasch (I think that is how you spell it - it sounds that way in any event, so try to guess what they are between now and the next post).



Our room in the Hotel Garden in Paris. Our host was Betty, an elderly french lady who tottered around on high healed sandals and took good car of us, including serving a lovely french breakfast every morning.










Here are just a few photos of Paris from the top of the bus, it was a lovely day after a day of rain and the audio was actually working on the bus, so we had a pretty good tour.










The Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Ok, so you are really just getting the tour of the TOP three attractions in Paris, and those that the children can most redilly identify with and hopefully remember for at least a little while. Here is the Catherdral made famous by Disney and 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (well the story is much older than Disney of course, but not for the children). It is beautiful, marks the site of the first inhabitants of Paris, is really old and very impressive. Of course so thought hundreds of others, we chose not to wait for the tour of the towers and the gargoyles which would have been fabulous and great fun for the children but the thought of making them stand for an hour (or more) in the sun was enough to counter the thrill of the experience - we just talked about the gargoyles in stead and looked through the inside of the Catherdral. The Children could recognise the statue of Joan de Arc and the representations of Jesus. We lit candles and tried to be solumn, though it was difficult with thousands sharing it with us.







Here we are lighting candles at Notre Dame for people we remember, the children Chose their Grammy, Uncle Pete and Grandpa Bob. I did too.








The Jardine des Plantes.

One of many gardens in paris, this one is the garden of plants, has attached a botanial garden, a Museum and a Zoo - we only saw the animals we could see from the outside and these included the Ostrich, Red Panda, Huge Owls and incredibly Wallaby's. The last photo is of a sculpture at the entrance to the garden's made from crushed drink cans and other recycled material, it was pretty cool.











The Arch de Triomphe, built by Napolean - although he did not live to see it completed. I wonder if he imagined people from all over the world daily climbing the couple of hundred stairs in his monument to his Army. It is lucky that the German Officers in charge of the occupation of Paris ignored Hitler's orders to destroy the city. They saved Paris, thank goodness.


There are more ET shots to come, but this one is from the the Arch de Triomphe, so it is pretty cool.




The Tomb of the Unkonwn Soldier.







The Eifel Tower.

I have to say, this is as impressive as you imagine it to be. It is huge, HUGE. It was raining when we went for a climb (well an elevator ride actually) which meant that we only waited for an hour, instead of two in nice weather. It was worth the wait, the children loved the elevator ride and the experience of being so high. I seem to have inherited my fathers worry about heights, although I at least made it to the top - I think dad would have bailed out at ground level. It was much higher than the London Eye. This was D and I's second trip to Paris, second assent of the ET, still as impressive as the first time and a joy to share with the children. They were so good waiting in line with their umbrella's and rain coats. We lost M for a short while at the top of hte tower, panic had started to set in when I finally spotted him down the stairs on a level just below me, he is such a monkey.