Paris

I quickly drew the long straw and opted to drive the Cambridge to Dover part of the journey on our first day as the driving on the right hand side of the road in France seemed like a daunting task. We arrived in France (Calais) at 15:15 and thought we would make the best of the lovely sunshine and head straight for Paris. So with Jonny driving and Terri navigating we hit the road for what we thought would be a 3 hour drive.

It all seemed to be going very well until I realised I had got the navigating part all a little bit wrong (to be fair a Europe road atlas does not give small detail and SAT navs are evil) and it soon became clear that we were heading straight for the centre of Paris (Poor Jonny). On reading a book I had bought about driving abroad it recommends not driving to far on your first day when you are tired and here we were hitting Paris after a 2 and half hour drive in the UK , a 2 hour ferry trip and then a 3 hour drive in France and to make matters worse we hit Paris at 6pm just in time for rush hour traffic.

The next 1.5 hours we were convinced we were going to die and we learnt several things:

1. No drivers stop at Zebra crossing and if you stop the drivers behind you get very angry and hoot lots

2. 2. Round about are a free for all and have no lanes its just a case of go and go quickly and get out alive

3. Two lanes means squeeze down the middle and make a third lane

4. No body gives way and no body is polite and no body likes you

Well we eventually made it out the otherside of Paris after nearly driving past the Eifel Tower (who does that) and found our campsite at about 8pm that evening.

What was weird was we woke up that morning on Matts floor in Cambridge and that evening we were sleeping in Paris and even though at the time we were not impressed we were glad we had just experienced Paris by road at rush hour and glad we had.

We camped in a camp site called Huttopia Versailles near the castle of Versailles and about 15 mins by train to the Eiffel Tower.

The next day Tuesday 15th May

We decided to leave the car and take the train into Paris which was entertainment in itself. Our train system is amazing in comparison, the French rail system does not have any announcements on the platforms or on the trains so it was just down to our map readying skills but we got there and next we were stood underneath the Eiffel Tour.

From the Eiffel Tower we headed towards the Arc De Treamf (excuse the spelling) but on route the heavens opened and we got very wet. However we were privileged to arrive just in time to see the new president of France on a parade through the Arc De Treamf and down the Chans a lese (apparentle a very big deal to the French).

After 6 hours of walking we had seem

The Eiffel Tower

The Luvre

The Arc De Treamf

Notre Dame

Chans e lese

And lots more and so we got the train back to camp just in time for a torrential rain storm so this gave us time to plan the next day which turns out we are

BACK ON THE ROAD AGAIN

And heading for Dijon the wine making region of France about 3 hours south of Paris.

MORE SOON……