Day 16 and Day 17

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On Friday it rained again! Good thing we didn't come here for the weather. We drove out to Haulerwijk in Friesland to visit the cemetary where my maternal grandparents and favourite Aunt were buried.

The next day, May 18, we drove our awesome Peugeot back to Zwolle and said goodbye to Eunice, our trusty British GPS guide. We re-filled the tank and to our great amusement we found gloves hanging beside the pumps, Holland is without a doubt the cleanest country in the entire world (photo). On the theme of keeping things clean, once we got into the Thalys train we got out the hand sanitizer gift from Bella and "bitch-slapped" some germs (photo).

The Thalys train was fast - as in 300 km/hr and a smooth ride. Coming out of the train in Paris was fine until we got into the station and it was full of police and soldiers telling everyone to get out, well we didn't stop to ask any questions and found the exit pretty fast, outside we approached some people who told us that the bomb squad had arrived so we dissappeared down the stairs into the Metro.....and...we got told to get off the metro tram before we got to our stop! We didn't find out why ... Then we caught a bus, and ended up in the wrong arrondissement (district) (we needed Eunice) and managed to catch a bus back, hahaha, and those busses were packed!!!! Then came the rain when we were walking to our Hotel, and more gendarmes (police) by the side of the treet, about 6 minivans full of gendarmes, so we kept our head down and kept walking, well Steve did sneak in a photo....

We finally found our Hotel, yay! The concierge said "we have good news and we have bad news".... we had been the go all day, now what?

Our room was not empty yet, the guests in "our" room had a child that had fallen and ended up in the Hospital that day so they let them stay an extra day and they sent us to another Hotel a street further, and we could return early the next day to drop off our suitcases while going on our tour that started at 9:00 am, so away we went. We were so tired. We did manage to squeeze in a dinner with champagne and walked the streets of Paris (photos). Beautiful! The people in Paris have been very friendly and helpful whipping out their Iphones and explaining street maps to help us get oriented. Stay tuned for tomorrow's bus tour fiasco...

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