It was a dark and stormy night ... but our wee tent kept us dry and warm. The heavens opened last night just after we'd finished dinner and didn't stop all night. Thankfully by the time the sun came up / we got up (which may or may not be the same time) the rain was down to a light drizzle so we hopped onto the camping shuttle and made our way into the Charles de Gaulle metro station. Unfortunately the gates were down on both the metro entrances and we were a few too many km's from where we wanted to be. Some chef told us in French that the metro was closed and with Brett's school French skills and some wild gesturing we figured out what he was telling us. As we tried to remember which side of the road buses drive on and so which direction we wanted to travel we came across a helpful English lady who explained that the metro line we wanted was closed until 10am every Sunday for repairs. Stink!

To cut a long story short, we found some other lost tourists who had found a nice French guy to tell them which trains to catch ... so we tagged along with them. Two trains later and a long walk to the end of The Louvre queue we made it to our destination (just 30 minutes later than planned). Our new friends turned out to be a really nice older couple from Tasmania. While waiting in the queue they gave us their tickets to a hop on hop off bus (as it was valid for 2 days and they didn't need it that day) which was very kind.

So back to the Louvre - we basically did everything our Paris expert Kate told us not to ... oops! Today was the first Sunday of the month, so entry to most museums was free. Unfortunately that means every other tourist and Parisian is also keen to visit these places. We were told the queue would be 2 hours but we were through the security checks in an hour which we really can't complain about.

The Louvre itself is HUGE - far bigger than I was expecting. Once inside we joined the Mona Lisa highway ... until we realised we were here to see more than just one artwork, so made sure that we stopped to take our time and look at the other paintings. Once we made it into the room where the Mona Lisa is fiercely guarded by 4 security guards and layers of protective glass, it only took a couple of minutes to get to the front of the arm waving with camera's held high crowd to get a look at the famous painting.

The Lonely Planet reckons you can't do The Louvre in a day ... they were right, you can do it in 4 hours ;) Being the uncultured people that we are, we were painting and museumed out by 2pm ... not helped by the fact that we'd only had an apple for breakfast and we were getting rather peckish.

After a yummy lunch in some French restaurant we went on the hunt for this bus that we had tickets for. We figured it would stop near The Louvre so we wandered around the outside, used some excellent photo stalking techniques (take a photo and zoom in so you can see further than with your eyes) and eventually found the right bus. Given the manky raining/not raining/raining/not raining... weather we decided to first take the entire loop and then hope off at some of the more interesting spots for photos. The loop itself was just over 2 hours and it was really good to get some commentary around what buildings were important and why and other interesting titbits (and in English!).

We saw the Eiffel Tower, Champ de Mars, Hotel d'Invalides, Pont Alexandre, French National Assembly, Notre-Dame, the outside of the Orsay Museum, opera house, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Petit and Grand Palais, Trocadéro and many others.

First stop off the bus was Notre Dame. While we were looking inside we got to hear part of an organ recital (we weren't too sad to leave and not hear it all ;) ). The church was very ornate though ... as most Catholic churches seem to be over here.

We continued on our culinary tour, stopping to try some French crepes. Brett tried the lemon sugar and I had chocolate topping ... mmmmm! They were sooooo good.

We hopped back onto the bus and headed into Alexander's bridge to get a few pictures and have a better look. About that point it was getting late so we decided to head to the Eiffel Tower and wait for the lights to turn on. I was pleasantly surprised at how pretty it the tower was at night. Despite having no tripod, we did our best with an umbrella and poncho to take a few snaps.

Eventually we found the metro station and caught a couple of trains and then the shuttle back to camp. By that time it was around 10pm, so after a nutritious dinner of an apple and a cup of soup we called it a day after a very successful day of sightseeing in the beautiful city of Paris.

- Rebecca