After yesterdays epic adventures we decided not to set an alarm for today, but to get up when we felt we'd rested enough. I got up, had a stretch and a scratch, and wandered at my morning pace to the camp's grocery store to get some croissants for breakfast. Horror! They were all gone! Thankfully there were still baguettes and other pastries to give us fuel for the day ahead. A quick check of the time revealed the cause of the famine - it was 10am - so I made a mental note to get there a bit earlier tomorrow.

We navigated the Parisian public transport a bit more successfully than yesterday and found ourselves at our first stop of the day: the Eiffel tower. We joined the short queue along with other crazy people who wanted to climb the steps of the tower and chortled at the slobs in the (much) longer queue who were waiting for an elevator. About 350 steps later we were at the first level where we read lots about the history of tower and how little Eiffel himself had to do with its engineering and architecture. Another 350-ish steps and we were at the second level where we enjoyed the Parisian vistas, more so because we knew lots of buildings to pick out from our bus tour the day before. What was surprising to see from up high was that all the buildings in a decent sized radius around old Paris were at most 5 stories high, with the exception being the Montparnasse Tower (which features appropriately in the Wikipedia article on "eyesore").

Craving exercise, we next walked to Paris' statue of liberty, given to France by America at one fifth the size of the original. It was clearly off the tourist route and was quite a shoddy looking monument. I think the Americans lacked originality in their gift and perhaps another entry is needed in that Wikipedia article.

Bored of the flat, and instead of a jog, we climbed the relentless spiral staircase inside the Arc de Triomphe. There's a shop inside it and a "museum" which consisted of a statue and two broken interactive exhibits and very little information about the different scenes and inscriptions on the tower itself. The view from the top was nice though and we laughed at the traffic chaos below on the "roundabout". At the bottom of the arc is a grave of an unknown soldier, set up to honour those who died for France, and every evening they have a ceremony to relight the flame that sits on it. By the time we got down from the top, the ceremony had started so we hung around to see it through. It was quite a sombre event and the people involved were very smartly dressed in their army or other uniforms.

Finally, we'd had enough exercise (1000+ steps up and then down and several kilometres horizontally) and headed back to the campsite.

I didn't mention this earlier, but after our late start in the morning, we purposefully arranged matters so that we would have another long day in Paris and make the most of our sight-seeing opportunities. You see, before we left, we did something to the car so that by the time we got back at the end of the day, the battery was flat. I opened the bonnet to have a look inside and saw that I was way out of my depth already. I couldn't even tell which plastic-covered compartment of the engine was the battery! A quick call to my German friends at Hertz revealed that I needed to contact the French branch. I battled with the stupid pay phone, gave up, then battled some more with the camp's stupid public computer with its stupid keyboard trying to decipher the stupid French stupid Hertz's stupid website. An hour later I was hungry and maybe a little bit grumpy.

Eventually we sorted things out after a dinner break at the camping ground's restaurant. The advice from the mechanic was to take the car for a 45 minute drive. So, at 11.15pm we set out on a road trip back to the insane roundabout that circles the Arc de Triomphe to earn my Parisian driving license in quieter traffic. Even at night it's totally crazy driving around a roundabout with 12 exits, no lane markings, cars everywhere and the peculiar rule that you give way to cars entering the roundabout. It felt a lot like driving bumper cars at a fair but with the obvious difference that it's best not to hit others. We headed down the Champs Elysees and made our way to the Eiffel tower to gaze upon its beauty once more. It was 12:30am when we finally got back to our campsite and we fell into bed a minute later, setting the alarm this time because ... (excited voice please) tomorrow we go to Disneyland!

- Brett