Waking up in Paris is a special feeling. It gets even better when you are woken by the smell of oven baked croissants and freshly brewed coffee. Accommodation Gray style.

After a laid back brekky featuring a selection of weatbix, toast, croissants, yoghurt, fresh berries, tea and coffee, the Grays minus Geof who was working in Singapore, and the Snowballs headed in to central Paris to see the Eiffel Tower.

Our stroll through their small town of Maisons Lafitte was an experience in itself, its closest comparison to a Melbourne suburb likely to be Canterbury or Toorak. It was flash. Many of the houses had grand driveways, manicured gardens and ornate facades.

The trip in to central Paris from Maisons Lafitte took around 30 minutes by train. Nothing can prepare a visitor to Paris for the awe inspiring first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, the wrought iron structure designed and built by Gustave Eiffell during the period 1887 - 1889.

We spent the next couple of hours taking photos of the tower from every conceivable angle and devouring French crepes in the grounds of the tower followed by lunch at a French equivalent of a Lygon Street restaurant, resplendent with a beaming maître de who insisted on kissing both Wendy and Marilyn after which time we were caught hook, line and sinker. In all fairness, the lunch wasn't that bad and there seemed to be a fair share of locals soaking up the atmosphere with us.

Timing wise, we couldn't have picked a better time to eat, as rain began teaming down shortly after we sat down and subsided about the time we left the restaurant to head home.

Having satisfied our stomachs and had our fill of the Eiffel Tower, we headed back to Maisons Lafitte where funnily enough food was on the agenda again. This time we found ourselves in an authentic boutique French deli called 'Eipicerie de Longuiel'. Within its dim and musty walls was the most exotic and colourful selection of every conceivable deli product, and a wine cellar to die for. There were rows and rows and tins and jars of preserved and pickled fruits and vegetables, nuts, olives, fish, beans, homemade pasta sauces, an extensive cheese selection, salamis and other cold cuts. The list goes on and on.

Towards the back of the store and down a dark and narrow staircase was the cellar, a subterranean room, cool in temperature but warm in ambience containing thousands of bottles carefully laid out for purchase. If one happened to take your fancy, you would see the man with the notepad and pen and he would write the price of the bottle on the piece of paper. You would then take the piece of paper back up the stairs with your bottle to the lady at the front counter and pay the bill. It occurs to me now that it was a bit of an honesty system, as there was probably nothing stopping me swapping my cheaper bottle (say 10 Euro), for something a bit more expensive and passing it off as my original selection.

In one corner of the cellar was a collection of rare and aged red wines, covered in a healthy layer of dust, many in the mid to high 100 Euro range. While my just conceived little ruse may have been successful for a semi-equivalent bottle of wine, I doubt very much if the same scheme would have worked on the higher value bottles, as they were fairly carefully guarded and a missing bottle would be very quickly conspicuous.

Almost as soon as we headed out of the store, laden with enough beer, wine, cheese, berries and peaches, sliced meat, bread and biscuits to sustain the night ahead, we were inundated by the most incredible storm that saturated each of us including our packs and all of their contents. It was a storm that seemed to come from nowhere, but fairly soon sent sheets of water over the roads and caused numerous leaks in the Gray's house.

After eventually drying off, we settled in to an evening on the couch, sipping Bollinger and snacking on our purchases. Thanks to the Grays for their amazing hospitality.