Day 3

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We woke up at 1am last night and had a wee chat but fortunately we were able to go back to sleep and didn't wake until 7.30am. We both feel surprisingly refreshed and ready to go. I had bought some homeopathic NO JET LAG pills before we left and we took them all during the flights as per the instructions. We think that they have worked well.

Breakfast was supplied by the hotel and consisted of croissants (of course!), a baguette, cereal, orange juice and a cup of tea. It was lovely. The baguettes are delicious. I'm not normally a fan of crunchy bread roll type things but they are a perfect consistency, specially with jam or marmalade.

We decided to go out for the day and explore Paris by Metro. We think the man at the reception desk said something about having to move rooms when we checked in. This would be a shame because we quite like the room we're in - shabby and all that it is! We're in a 3 bed room which seems a bit of a waste for 2 people so a move might be on the cards. The room is not big though. When our bags arrive it will become quite small indeed. We've decided to learn some lessons from the missing bags:
* you can get by with surprisingly little
* you can cope with dignity and adapatability when things don't go as planned
* you should pack your cabin bag as though you might have to live out of it (because you might!)

We spent the day exploring Paris. We worked out the metro fairly easily. I had read somewhere that a Paris Visite was a good ticket to have. It allows free access on any metro, RER (train) or bus for 3 days for 20 Euro. We walked to Gare du Nord metro station from our hotel and wandered round for a while trying to figure out where to buy the Paris Visite. Finally we decided to give up on that and just bought single tickets from an automatic ticket machine (after furtively watching other people in order to figure out how to do it!) You then push your ticket in the front of a type of gate thing, it pops back out the top, you retreive it and the gate opens to allow you through. Sounds simple but we were pretty chuffed to work all this out.

The metro is great. It's so easy to use. The metro and RER lines are all coloured and numbered. The trick is to find your station on the metro map, find the station that you want to go to and figure out which coloured line(s) you need to get to your desired destination. You then figure out which station is at the ends of your coloured lines - this tells you which direction metro to get on. It's such an amazing way to get round the city.

Unfortunately we didn't work out the last bit until we were already on a train heading in the wrong direction! Fortunately a nice young man saw our confusion and showed us on his map where we were. We hastily jumped off that train at Gare d'Austerlitz and, after seeking help from an information office, we found the platform with the train heading in the opposite direction. This took us to the Eiffel Tower which is where we wanted to go. We were quite proud of our first efforts at traversing a strange city where we did not speak the language.

The Eiffel Tower is huge. Much bigger than I though. It is also incredibly busy. There must have been 10,000 people under it - most of them in a queue waiting to go up. We decided to give that a miss. Just seeing it was enough. There were security guards wandering around with machine guns which we found very disconcerting. There were also hordes of people selling cheap trinkets. Every few feet there was a small square of cloth laden with small Eiffel Towers in various colours. Some sellers wandered round carrying souvenirs threaded onto large rings carried on their arms. They were quite pushy. At first we tried to be polite "Non merci" but as time went on we got less polite and just a firm "non" seemed to deter them better. There were also beggars who came up asking if you spoke english and claiming to be Bosnian refugees. I guess it was not how I imagined the Eiffel Tower. Not really so magic.

We wandered across the road to the Seine. There was a small riverside stall so I bought 2 chocolate crepes, a banana and a bottle of water. We sat and enjoyed these under a tree before walking down to the water front. We spotted a man seeling paintings. He assured us that he painted them himself. We were equally sure that he did not! We liked the paintings though and bought one for ourselves and a couple as gifts.

We found a ferry called a Batobus. After buying a ticket you can get on and off as much as you like all day. We did this and the ferry cruised up and down the Seine stopping at various locations including the Louvre, Notre Dame, Musee d'Orsay, Jardin de Plantes, Champs Elysees and the Eiffel Tower which is where we got on. We got off at the Notre Dame. What a truly amazing building. "Building" seems an inadequate description. It's huge and ornate. The stained glass windows are increible. It's 1000 years old and has a sense of age and reverence. This is the Paris we came to see.

After leaving the Notre Dame we walked a way along the road beside the Seine. There are little sourvenir stands every few metres along the road. We bought a few little gifts from them also. We were amazed at the shops. They all seemed to be grouped together. eg menswear, shoes, souvenir shops etc. There will be five or more all on the same street. Even more odd, they all seemed to sell identical items. We aren't sure how the ones in the middle make a living. We're also surprised by the number of black people. Especially around our hotel, it seems that every second person is black. We had no idea of the ethnic composition before we came.

At 3ish it really starts to heat up. We returned to the Batobus but it was so hot on board that we hopped off at the Eiffel Tower and walked back to the metro. It was so hot on the metro. Sweat was pouring off by the time we got back to Gare du Nord station. We were also really tired and footsore (specially as we did not have proper footware which was in the missing luggage) We tried to find a Post Office to buy postage stamps but without sucess. Apparently there is one in Gare du Nord but the place is huge. We wanted to post postcards but we'll try again tomorrow. There are heaps of small caravan type cafes at Gare du Nord so we stopped at one and I went up and managed to convey that we wanted a bread roll with no meat. I was pretty pleased with myself when I arrived back at the table with bread rolls filled with cheese and a yummy tomato paste and some orange juices for us. We sat and enjoyed those before wandering back to our hotel for the night.

To our dismay, our bags had not arrived which was quite disheartening. Hot, very tired and still no bags. I phoned the airport and after a frustrating 10 minutes confirming every single detail of our names, addresses, phone numbers and luggage description she said that the bags had been located in Beijing and were in Paris. Well I think that's waht she said. Heavily accented English is not easy to understand. We hope they arrive tomorrow. All the charging cords for the laptop, phones and cameras are in the bags not to mention all our clothes and walking shoes. Our previous philosophical frame of mind is starting to develop cracks.

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Photos

Baguette
very yummy!

The Eiffel Tower
The metal framework is amazing. Hard to believe it was originally only intended to be a temporary construction!

The Eiffel Tower
It's very tall!

Lunch beside Eiffel Tower
between the Seine and the Eiffel Tower

Beautiful Seine
Very pretty

Notre Dame
has to be seen to be believed

Notre Dame
beautiful stained glass windows

Model of the Notre Dame
in the Notre Dame