Our path was a flight from Geraldton to Perth, Perth to Singapore, Singapore to Paris and here we are in sweet Paris. We are locked into a work conference for several days then its off to explore Europe on Busabout.

Our accommodation here is the fantastic Hotel Inter-Continental, 3 rue de Castiglione, a 355 room, 90 suites hotel just around the corner from the Ritz and pretty much walking distance to everything. Awesome. The first day however we contented ourselves with a walk to a near by fun fare and bought some lunch, then to have a look at the Ritz. Following this we took a double decker bus tour of the city to help orientate ourselves.

The next day (Friday 13th) the conference started and while we won't bore you too much with conference details, there were some very exciting moments that we will briefly touch on.
 
The conference opened at 'le Cirque d'Hiver de Paris' an amazing venue which is an indoor circus and the worlds oldest permanent circus and we were treated to some acts as a curtain raiser. Then we were introduced to our MC for the entire conference, Ian Leslie of Australia's 60 minutes fame.

Included in the business sessions were presentations from two authors. The first Joe Simpson "Touching the Void" told the amazing story of survival after falling into a crevasse and being cut loose by his partner, then assumed to have died, was left. Joe somehow managed to escape from his icy tomb and crawl agonizing hours to reach base camp, just as the party was leaving. Inspirational stuff.

 The second was Michael Gerber "The E-Myth Way" and while not able to tell as an exciting story as Joe, Michael's book is considered a bible to any one in business.

After the sessions finished we put on our walking shoes and walk we did, from the Place de la Concorde up the Avenue Des Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, ran across the circle then down Avenue D'Iena to the Eiffel Tower. We decided the queue was too long to climb the tower so took a river cruise on the Seine instead, then walked on, over the underpass of Diana's last moments (a makeshift shrine has developed with flowers, cards etc dedicated to her memory) and back to the hotel.

Guest speaker for day two of the conference was Collette Dinnigan international fashion designer of world note. Collette graduated from Wellington Polytech, then moved to Australia to take up a position in the costume department with the ABC in Sydney. In 1990 she launched her own label and in 1995 decided to expand onto the world market. She chose Paris and in 1997 won the "Louis Vuitton Business Award" and the rest as they say is history. We were lucky enough to also have some one on one conversation with Collette and found her to be both very charming and totally switched on.

That night we were bused out of Paris for a Saturday night gala dinner. The venue was the fabulous Palace of Versailles, formally the palace of King Louis the 15th. Cocktails were held in the court yard overlooking the famous gardens and dinner was served in a large side building. The building apparently was used so that the kings orange trees, which were grown in tubs, could be bought inside to enable them to survive the winter months.

Sunday was a free day which we again spent walking Paris, first to the Louvre to see among other exciting things the Mona Lisa and Napoleons apartments. The best was that it was the once a month half price Sunday. Then it was off to Il de Cite and the Notre Dame Cathedral. (It has always been something that Avan has wanted to see, but a huge disappointment to learn the hunchback was only a promotional gimmick to raise funds to restore the Cathedral) We then visited the Museum of the Conciergerie which was a palace in the 1300's but gained fame as the prison where Marie Antoinette was incarcerated before being taken to the Concorde to be beheaded.

Monday was back to business sessions, with the only one of interest, a presentation by David Gower. David was England's cricket captain for 32 tests and in his career made 18 test centuries. His talk was well presented with plenty of humor.

After the sessions completed, Heather decided she wanted to see the Madelene Church, so off we set and managed to get ourselves completely and utterly lost. At times like this it is a total problem not speaking the language. After many approaches we tried some tourist looking girls who turned out to be Dutch, and yes spoke lovely English and were able to point us in the right direction. The church was interesting with a choir in full voice as we looked around. The church took 80 years to build, but mostly because political strife caused an on/off building regime.

Tuesday we again went walking, this time back to the Eiffel Tower. We braved the queue, 3 hours, 60 French Francs each (9.15 Eur) and made the trip to the top, the view over Paris is stunning. We then walked back to the hotel and rested up for the final function of the conference. The bus collected us and took us to Espace Favand or the museum of entertainment. Here in the museum were fully functional Carousels, and other antique amusement items. There were clowns on stilts and we ate toffee apples.

Tomorrow we are off on an adventure of an entirely different nature, a bus tour of Europe with hop on hop off bus tour Busabout.

Footnote: Eiffel Tower, Paris, France was an official Finalist in the New Seven Wonders Of The World Listing.