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Published: October 12th 2008
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Paris - October 9
(Geoff) Hi everyone, this is our final blog entry for the adventure that we have just experienced. I am writing this on the laptop whilst sitting at the kitchen bench at home (Oh its so nice to be home!). But now I need to update you on our last day in Paris and the trip home.
We had to check out of our hotel so organised ourselves (packed the bags yet again, moving stuff around till it all fitted and hopefully the bags came in under our weight allowance on the planes). Then, after leaving the bags at the hotel for the day (our flight from Paris to London was at 7:15 p.m. and then we had to transfer to a Qantas flight to bring us home via Bangkok) we went for leisurely stroll into and around the Pere Lachaise cemetery that was next door to our hotel. It was beautifully peaceful here (as you would expect) and we wandered aimlessly seeing headstones and mausoleums, even coming across the graves of some of the Baron Rothschild's children. We didn't see either Jim Morrison or Edith Piaf's graves but they were listed on the information boards
as were those of many famous people buried here throughout the last 200 years. As it got closer to lunchtime, we headed back to the metro and into the centre of Paris for the last time.
We wandered through the Place de la Concorde and between the Grand Palace and the Petit Palace, now both museums I think. Then we decided to revisit the Arc de Triumph. This time we went through the underground tunnel and came up next to the Arch. We viewed the French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier here and sat and watched the antics of the car drivers and motor bike/scooter riders as they negotiated what must be the craziest roundabout on earth. This is where 12 roads converge into one big circle that has no lane or road markings and motorists then try to negotiate the traffic to exit on the road they want without having an accident and causing major gridlock - made worse by the motorcyclists weaving in and out of the traffic working their way around the roundabout! No wonder insurance companies won't cover this roundabout! It is apparent chaos but while we were there there were no accidents, just lots
of horn tooting and gesticulating!
After watching the show here for a little while, we headed back to our hotel to collect our bags and get our taxi to the airport. We arrived with plenty of time to spare, checked our bags (all the way to Sydney - will they get there??), went through security and finally boarded our plane. At Heathrow, we once again had to go through security and then went to confirm our seating. We had booked premium economy class and were very pleased to be informed that we had been upgraded to Business class on the first leg to Bangkok This part of the flight home was great.
After spending and hour or so in the airport we boarded and headed to our previously booked seats. When we got there, we were surprised to see we were in a window row of 3, not 2 as we expected. When we queried this, we were told that this plane didn't have premium economy and as there were no business class seats available for this leg, we had been put into economy instead (even though we had paid for premium economy). We were not very happy about not being told this at Heathrow and maybe being able to do something a bit earlier and we will be taking this up with Qantas in the next week! Thankfully this leg was only 8 hours but it was not a very comfortable 8 hours and we got little sleep.
On our arrival in Sydney, we had nothing to declare so after a quick stop in the duty free shop we headed to the Qantas lounge to wait for our plane. It was also an opportunity to freshen up and grab a bite to eat and a cuppa. Then onto our Dash-8 for an uneventful trip to Canberra. Our good mates John and Paula were there to pick us up and we were really happy to finally get home (our cat Merlin was pretty pleased we were home as well and wouldn't leave us alone for the rest of the day).
So ends our big European holiday. Thanks to all of you for following our adventure and we hope you have enjoyed our tales and pictures as much as we have enjoyed recording them for you.
I thought it might be nice to leave you with a couple of reflections about our trip:
If you travel with an open mind, a positive attitude and a willingness to accept the differences between cultures then you will have a great time and a memorable experience,as we did;
I found that by trying to converse in the language of the country we were in, it was usually met with a willingness to help me out and work out between us what we needed - everyone in our travels was very helpful;
Once again, an invite to our next picture show - the collection has now grown to about 1400 photos and of course, there are many that we couldn't publish on the blog (tongue in cheek, of course!).
So until the next adventure, Sue and I would like to say, from home in Australia - See ya later!
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