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Published: October 9th 2007
Monday morning, and we were back on the bus for our final, and longest, leg of the Busabout tour, from Munich to Paris. We arrived in Paris after dark, at around 9:30pm, in the not-so-classy area of Montmartre - fortunately our hotel was only a couple of minutes walk from the bus stop, with a grocery store also nearby to pick up some supplies for dinner.
On our first morning in Paris we spent some time looking around Montmartre, in particular its best known attraction, the Sacré Coeur Basilica. Located at the summit of the
butte Montmartre, the highest point in the city, climbing up here was a lively start to our day. After looking inside the church, we wandered over to the nearby Place du Tertre, a square full of artists hoping to make a few bucks from tourists who would like a portrait of themselves. Once we were done fighting off people wishing to relieve us of our euros, we walked back down to the base of the hill to check in at our nearest tourist information office. (there are stalls with tourist information set up all around the city of Paris - possibly one of the best
The Moulin Rouge
In Montmartre, just down the road from where we were staying.features of the city for visitors!) Here we bought a couple of 2-day passes for
L'OpenTour bus, which gave us a means of transport around the city for the next couple of days, as well as providing us with a guided tour of all the main attractions of Paris.
For the remainder of the day we used our bus tickets to take us around the eastern half of the city, giving us a chance to view the Notre Dame, the Place de la Bastille, and the impressive new buildings of France's National Library. We stopped off in the Tuileries gardens on the way home, walking through the carnival that was set up there.
On Wednesday we hopped on
L'OpenTour bus again, this time heading straight to the Louvre, where we looked around for a couple of hours at the many artworks on offer. Once we'd had our fill here, we walked across to the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris's museum of modern art, to see the slightly more bizarre displays there. We then made our way back to the closest bus stop to continue on the tour, passing through the Montparnasse area south of the Seine, then back on
the north side to go down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées towards the Arc de Triomphe. Here we got off the bus again to climb to the top of the Arc and see the amazing views across Paris. (Once we discovered there was an underground pedestrian walkway across to the tower. Prior to spotting this, the prospect of crossing to the middle of the twelve-way intersection surrounding the Arc, "L'Étoile Charles de Gaulle", which is legendary for its traffic accidents, was frankly terrifying.) The next leg of the bus tour took us past the impressive palace in the Trocadéro area, then over to the Eiffel Tower. We finished the day with dinner at one of the many restaurants in the Latin Quarter (where we sampled frogs' legs
and snails!), then, being too late for the last tour bus, caught the Métro back to our hotel.
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