Monday 8th August - Paris

---

Today we had a free day to look around Paris. It has been another day of experiencing 4 seasons in 1 day which was not great because we were walking around... but who can complain... WE ARE IN PARIS!!!! The bus drove us in and we had 2 different places to be dropped off, at the Notre Dame or the Tour Effiel (Effiel Tower's real name). All except 4 people jumped off at Notre Dame as it bucketed with rain. We all ran for cover under a tree then headed in. Notre Dame is another amazingly stunning churches. After Steve and I looked around we went to find the queue to go up to the bell tower part – consideringit was cold and wet we thought the line would be small... apparently not! After this we wandered towards Arc de Triomphe via Petit Parlius (because they were meant to have a free toilet to use) but they ended up being shut and I was busting. We had read that cafes on busy, main streets of Paris can be quite expensive so Steve and I looked on the map to find what we thought was a quiet, small street – Well it was a quiet, small street but that would be because it was the street that sold the most expensive clothing and accessories, brands such as Dior, Armani, Gucchi, Louis Vittoun etc etc. Out of curiosity I looked at the price of a top in the window of Dior... 15,000 Euros (which is the equivalent of $30,000 NZD)!!! We managed to find our way to the main street of Paris and found a mall type thingy which had McDonalds in it so I went to find the toilet there... no where to be seen. Thus I had to use my brilliant French and ask a shop assisstant 'Bon jour. Parliz Voux anglais?' but what came out was 'Bon jour. Parliz Voux ENGLISH?' Haha I'm a winner! Anyway turns out there was a toilet in McDonalds so back we trekked. Stupid thing is that the toilets were all one big room but what I didn't realise was that one side was male and the other females – I'm sure you can all work out where this story is heading... Yes I ended up going to the toilet on the boys side! Oh well, it's not as if I am ever going to see these people again. We found a yummy patisserre (I have no idea how to spell that and I am not using normal Microsoft Office so it doesn't do so well on the spell checking part). Eventually we made it to Arc de Triomphe which is massive and again another amazing monument! Apparently the not so round 'round-about' around the Arc de Triomphe is the most dangerous round-about in the world... I can totally understand that now... approximately 6-4-8-how ever many they feel like it lanes of traffic, at least they are all travelling the same way though!
After this we headed to the Tour Effiel for a 'Fat Tyre' bike tour around Paris that most of our group were doing as well. It was quite funny doing this tour because there was 29 of us on bikes ruling the streets. We were meant to use a wolf pack mentality and stay huddled together but that didn't work so well (some of the guys got honked at and had rude gestures done towards them... by an old lady!). We stopped about 10 minutes into the tour to buy some alcohol because at the end we sat in a park close to the Tour Effiel to have a beer picnic.
We posed for some photos in front of the Tour Effiel (we loaded our tour guide up with about 20 cameras) and at the end he said 'If your photo doesn't work see the people woth the fancy rich camera... that was ours!!!!!!
After returning our bikes we headed for a picnic by the Tour Effiel. We had an amazing assortment of foo (we have a really good camp cook) and we couldn't possibly have a picnic in France without having... ESCARGOT!!!! Both Steve and I tried the snails and we even had 2 each! Our picnic was ruely interrupted by rain that started as light rain then within seconds it pelted down... again! Evenryone grabbed their plates and ran onto the bus. I gave Steve all of our stuff and went and helped pack up (He wanted to but was carrying all our stuff) and we just piled stuff up and ran!!!! That was a bit of a downer on our picnic but the sun came out about 10 minutes later so we got off the bus and stood around outside (we couldn't sit down because our chairs got wet!)
Tonight we had 2 options – go to a caberet or a boat cruise (most people went on the boat cruise because it was by far the cheapest!). That was nice and while on the boat cruise we got to see the Tour Effiel turn on the sparkley lights that went for about 5 minutes, that was very cool. I took about 40 photos of the Tour Effiel just to try and get a good one!
We were picked up and went and picked up the people at the Caberet! While waiting for them to finish lotss of us bought a Nutella Crepe... it was SOOOO good!
Tonight some people headed to bed when they got back and others stayed up (we were woken at 4.30am by a few of the last people going to bed... they really weren't quiet! Then one of them turned Bob Marley on... at 4.30am... I was not impressed and that was when the ear plugs came out!
After that it was a peaceful sleep!
Over and out
xx
P.S. Steve says if anyone (Eric?) is putting a team in for the 12hr please count him in..think he's a tad bikesick (you should have seen the drool when 2 down hillers came racing through Lauterbrunnen!)

---

Photos

Photo 2
Arc de Triomphe... amazingly huge!

Photo 3
Stunning details in all the windows of the Notre Dame

Photo 4
Steve and the glass pyramid at Louve Museum

Photo 5
Most of the TopDeck crew on our bike tour

Photo 6
Pretty Tour Effiel!