I had written such a long entry for yesterday, but our hotel has no free wifi so by the time I tried to publish it, it was gone!! Bob had told us so much interesting information as we came from Switzerland into France. I shall do the best I can to recall it.

We departed Lucerne really early (I think it was 8am) and arrived at our hotel in Paris (just up the street from the Arche di Triumphe) at 3.30pm. We drove up to Basel and into the French countryside, passing through Burgundy. Over here the wine growers are told by the state whatever grapes they can grow an what timber the casks must be made from. There is no choice. They have been producing their wines the same way for so long, but now they are losing their market. They don't like to give the consumer any information about the wine and now more Australian wine is sold in England than French. So one area in the south has been allowed to experiment, and mix their grapes to produce blended wine, and they hired an Australian company to market the wines for them. They labelled it "Arrogant Frog" and it has become very popular in England.

The border area near Basel has many German names, as it used to belong to Germany. There are also fortifications built to try to defend against the Germans but they ended up invading through Belgium.

The motorway tolls have increased hugely lately and they blame the Australians because they are administered by Macquarie Bank! When they won the contract part of the conditions were that they resurface all of the motorways, which they did.

We had lunch at a French service centre on the motorway. Gerry and Betty chose a small bottle of wine to share with their salads, but the people wouldn't let them buy alcohol with a salad, it had to be a hot meal. Our coach driver was next in line, so he bought it with his hot lunch and gave it to them. Our tour group are just lovely, including our guide and driver. Our driver, Didier, leaves us when we arrive in Paris, to have a few days break before his next tour.

After freshening up in our rooms we were taken to a lovely restaurant for dinner - Le Procope. http://uk.procope.com/
It was established in 1686 and previous diners have included Napoleon Bonaparte, Chopin, and Franklin d. Roosevelt. We had authentic French Onion Soup to begin, followed by a beautiful lamb dish (reminiscent of my legless lamb), and ending with an incredibly rich chocolate dessert. We were greeted with a special welcome drink, 2 glasses of wine with dinner, and a glass of champagne to finish.

After dinner we were taken on an extensive river cruise down the Seine. As we were approaching the Eiffel Tower all of its lights came on, including 22,000 lights dancing all over it. At the end of the cruise we were taken on a tour of the city by night. It was beautiful!