We've been spoilt flying Business and 1st Class and returning to Livestock was a shock to the system. Mum and teenage son reclined their seats into our faces immediately after take-off and only returned to an upright position to eat briefly.

OK, be grateful, I deleted a paragraph of self indulgent moaning about the rest of the trip. All I'll day is that it is going to take all 5 weeks of this trip to forget the experience in order to repeat it on the way home.

Arrival into Paris was effortless; no paper work and just a glance and a stamp in our passports and through to collect luggage and meet our limo driver for the transfer to our hotel. We were at the hotel by 9.30 am and the rooms weren't to be ready till 3.00 pm, so we headed off to walk down to the Arc de Triomphe, then down the Champs Elese to L'Orangerie. About a 1 hour walk to iron out the kinks. More importantly, it was to finally get to see the Monet exhibition.

On three previous trips to Paris, L'Orangerie has been closed. That's over a 13 year period. Initially it was closed for restoration. Then the restoration exposed unknown Roman archaeology that had then to be incorporated into the museum. Finally it reopened a year or so ago. This was our first trip to Paris since it was reopened and it was going to be the first thing we saw.

WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Have a look at the photograph. An unknown cause of the loss of electricity to the building that morning and they had to close it down. May reopen by Saturday but with a Galic shrug "maybe not".

We therefore headed across the river to the Musee d'Orsay where we spent a couple of hours in the Impressionists galleries and had our fill of probably the most wonderful collection you could ever hope to see.

We had to be back for access to our room at 3.00 and a cruise briefing at 6.00, so we caught the Metro as our feet were worn down to stubs.

There is only going to be 111 people on our cruise and around 80 are Australians, 1 NZ couple, a S.African couple a couple of Canadians and the rest Americans.

By 8.00 I was too tired to eat and despite Cheryl planning on a light baguette dinner, we were in bed by 9.00. Ches slept though, I woke to read at midnight, 2.00 am and 5.00 am and finally hit the Gym at 6.00 for a half hour workout.