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So we didn’t get to do a night tour as we left the booking a bit late. What we did instead is go and see the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triumph all lit up.

Both of these monuments are very easy to see from our hotel. The best view in Paris of the Eiffel tower is a 10min walk from our hotel at a place called Palias De Chaillit.

When we got there at 8:30pm it wasn’t dark yet so we went and had dinner at an English pub called FROG XIV. Then at 9:45pm when it was finally getting dark we walked back to view the tower.

To see the Arch De Triumph we caught a train for a couple of stops and got a great view. Around the Arc everything was being prepared for today which is a national holiday in France with a big parade that goes past the Arc.

As for today we left our hotel at 9:00am to catch a train to the airport. We immediately ran into the problem of the ticket machines not accepting our credit cards (I have had this problem before in Australia but didn’t think of it at the time). To solve the problem I left Pen with the bags and ran to the bank to withdraw some money.

After changing ticket machines to one that accepted bills we were off and running again.

After catching the train all week, getting to the airport on the metro was pretty easy. All we had to do was change lines twice and as a bonus we got an express train for the final part of the journey to Charles de Gaul airport.  The total train trip took abour 1hr 10min.

One thing to know about CDG is that it takes a long time to get your tickets, get through immigration and then through security. All in all it took about 1.5hrs to do that.

Another thing about CDG is that it is really nice to look at as it has a somed roof. The downside of that is that tha acoustics are terrible. It is really hard to work out what they are saying on the announcements. This didn’t help when they were trying to tell us the new departure time for our flight.

The flight was delayed two hours and as a bonus Pen got the honor of having further inspection done on her bags and a pat down to ensure she wasn’t a terrorist. You never know about these Australians traveling to the US.

Btw the weather was terrible today in France so we are not really missing anything, although it was mainly the weather that caused our two hor flight delay.

Still we managed to get to Atlanta only an hour late. It was interesting as it was the first time we had gone through customs and immegration in Atlanta. You would think that after 9 years in the city we would have flown an international flight out of Atlanta before now.

We had a great holiday and would love to visit France again one day.

We completed day 3 with a trip to the Louve. That place is huge!  The art work on display there is amazing. We randomly chose a wing to view and founf that it was the one holding the Mona Lisa. So yes Penni and I have now seen the Mona Lisa.

Pen has decided that it’s been great to see everything, but her favorite thing has been the food over here. She loves being able to walk up to a cafe, sit outside and order quality food. We have seen very few chain restuarants in our travels.

Today we planed on making further use of our train pass and travel as far as we can on the train line to see something. Our detination was Vincennes Castle. The castle is the highest keep in Europe and was used over the years by the Kings of France as afortified residence and a holding place for political prisoners.

In addition to the castle there was a chapel based on La Chappelle that we saw yesterday. When we went in I took a picture of the stained glass windows and was propmptly told in french that I can’t take photos. Both Pen and I missed the sign as we came in. I still have the picture though.

It was amazing that something so beautiful had so few tourists. It was very easy to miander around at your own pace without the press of crowds.

We then headed off to Basilica of the Sacred-Heart.  This was another amazing feat of architecture and the view from the church steps was amazing. One of the signs out of the front of the church stated that for 125 years day and night someone has been praying. That’s pretty impressive!

It is now 4pm on our second day in Paris. It has been a great vacation so far even with the flight problems we had.

We left on Thursday night after turning the house and kids over to the wonderful Annie Spell.  Made it to the airport wioth plenty of time to spare.  After a quick bite to eat we boarded our plane. The plane backed away from the gate relatively on time but then sat there. In fact we sat there for an hour and a half, where upon we learnt that there was problems with one of the engines. So back into the gate we went and waited another hour while we got a new plane.

This time we got underway. We landed in Paris 4 hours late which started our next adventure. We needed to collect the 5 day train passes we had ordered, so we jumped into a taxi and showed the driver the address we wanted to go to.

It turns out our really nice taxi driver didn’t speak any english (not so good), but Penni managed to dredge up enough of her year 7 french class to explain we needed to be at the address by 6pm (time was 5pm).

The taxi driver got us there with 5min to spare and even got out of the car to help us find the travel agent.

After collecting our train passes we then successfully navigated the metro system to our hotel.

We followed that up with wine, cheese and dinner at a little cafe areound the corner from our hotel.

End of Day 1

Today we have seen two of the major sites of Paris, the Eiffle Tower and the Arc de Triumph.

It is worth the 1 hour wait to get ticket and get up to the first level of The Eiffle Tower. It is even more woth the half hour wait to get the lift to the top of the tower.

The Arc de Triumph is just as spectacular. We climbed to the top and loved the view from there.

Currently we are sitting in McDonalds using their free wifi to bring this post to you.

More later.