Friday 29 April

12-23C

Cloudy with showers

Well it's confirmed….this is my second visit to Paris and l still have the same opinion…..l don't particularly enjoy it that much. It's a beautiful city with lots of great monuments etc but l just don't enjoy the city. Too busy and very hard to get around….we ended up taking taxi's most of the time. We started e day by catching the tour bus to the Eiffel Tower where we got off and caught the underground train to the Catacombes De Paris. So far so good with the transport. The catacombs were very interesting, we had to descend down 130 steps to underground tunnels where they buried the dead because all the cemeteries were full. It was pretty spooky when we saw the skulls and bones of dead people lining the walls. Once we finished in there we only had 30 minutes to meet up with the tour bus to take us to Versailles so we caught a taxi as it was quicker than taking the underground. We told the driver to go to the Opera house and when we got there we couldn't find the tour director. I had written some instructions on the map so l had a look at them and found we had gone to the wrong meeting point! We were supposed to go to the Louvre and it was too late to get another taxi to take us there so we took a taxi to Sacre-Coeur Church instead. The church is in Montmartre which is the bohemian part of Paris and a lot of artist set up their art to sell. Sacre-Coueur is wonderful although we didn't go inside. The location is great as you have a fantastic view of the city. I bought a couple of sketches from an artist called Michele….Mum took a photo of us together. We had crepes for lunch at one of the cafes right across the street from where the artists are painting. It was lovely just sitting watching the artists at work and the people passing by. From there we wanted to go to Chateau De Versailles so we caught a train which wasn't very successful and in desperation we caught a taxi. We got to the palace and it was soooo busy! It was very crowded so it was hard to really appreciate the beauty of the rooms which were very ornate. I hightailed it out of there while Mum looked around for a bit longer. We spent about an hour there because an evacuation alarm went off and we had to get out. Suited me! By this time it was after 5 so l was getting pretty tired (l was up at 6) so we caught a taxi back to the hotel. Now l'm filling in time because the cafes don't open for tea until 7. This is our last night in Paris with the tour ending tomorrow with a ferry from Calaise back to Dover. The time on the tour has gone quickly, l think it's because we went to so many different countries. Overall l enjoyed it much more than the Spain tour.