Paris Day 3

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This blog is being written under some duress!! We are exhausted!! But what a great day.

At 10.00am this morning we met with two other tourists and two AirBnB guides for a bike tour of the Marais and canal area. This lasted about 4 hours and was an absolute treat. The French (actually Venezuelan, but who cares) guides showed us some special places around the Marais district that most people would not normally find and we then headed up the St Martin's canal (built at the time of Napoleon) to the Bassin de la Vilette, which just happens to be where we will board the Elodie on Sunday.

The tour was great in that it introduced us to the Paris share-bike system, which is really easy to use. For a very small fee you can access the system and, if you keep any particular bike usage to less than 30 mins, it is free!! If you go over 30 mins, you start paying and the fee scale is exponential, so it is far better to keep returning your bike to one of the 2200 bike stands around the city and grabbing another one when you need to take off again. There are 20,000 bikes in circulation, so there is always a bike stand and a bike nearby. (and there is an App which tells you where the stands are and how many bikes are there in real time).

Later in the day we made our way to the Eiffel Tower and met up with another Elodie guest, Vicki. Whilst some members of our group lounged around on the grass in the warm afternoon sun, other more intrepid members bought tickets to climb the stairs of the Eiffel Tower (I still reckon theTower operators should pay us to use the stairs because it reduces the queues waiting for the Elevator). Jenny (God bless her) and I climbed the 668 steps to the second level. Worth every agonizing step!! We then caught the elevator back down to the ground.

We then headed off for a 'must do' in Paris - have a drink in the bar at the very top of the Hyatt Regency hotel where you get a breathtaking view of the whole of Paris - a perfect place to catch up with friends and enjoy the spectacular view of the Eiffel Tower after dark................... trouble is, it was closed for renovation!! We had joined up with Jonathan and Maureen by this stage so we had 7 very disappointed fellow travelers, very thirsty and with a growing hunger. We found a nice restaurant where we enjoyed a pleasant dinner albeit sans view.

My highlight was snails for entrée and frogs legs for main course, followed by prunes in Armagnac. Apologies in advance to my fellow flat mates!!

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Photos

Vicki, Kerrie, Jenny, Mike & Mike
Beneath the Eiffel Tower

The boulangerie next door to our Apartment
Great white chocolate and Raspberry buns

The Pompidou Museum
All the building systems are on the outside of the building to free up the inside for art. Nice try, doesn't work. Ugliest building I've ever seen!!

The Harbour Master's cottage, now a cafe
On Bassin de la Vilette - Boarding place for Elodie

Frogs legs
Pure joy

A decadent bu delightful desert
It was just a bowl of ice cream