Aah...the Eiffel Tower

Laurie and the new leaning tower of Paris?

It's huge.

The queues were massive, even for the night entry tickets. So we did the thing and were very well behaved sheep. Security was reasonably tight with everything being scanned including us so that was good. It's always on your mind at these iconic venues.

There were two stages to the trip. Whilst it was a clear night it was really windy and when we finally arrived at the top the tower was swaying quite noticeably!. Even if I'd taken a tripod it wouldn't have helped as the whole structure was moving.

Anyway the photos are far from perfect but you get the idea of the height of this thing. Everything else looks like one of those little villages in miniature that you can visit.

Travelling through one of the legs of the tower makes you wonder how many bolts there must be holding it all together. The estimate is 2.5 million!

Thomas Edison and Gustav Eiffel depicted in Eiffel's office at the top of the tower.

The Trocadero and at right the Hotel de Invalides

The Seine - we are so high you can detect the curve of the earth

One really funny thing that happened each time we visited the tower was what happened when the cycle police cruised by. They come every hour or so or when they felt like it. There would be half a dozen of so and they'd just cycle through the crowds.

Now the crowds were made of visitors like us, security staff, food vendors and tower ticket staff etc, Then there are the itinerant souvenir sellers. These guys, (we never saw any girls), set up their 'positions' wherever they felt like it selling generally tacky multi coloured miniature eiffel towers', spongy toys that flatten when they're thrown against the ground then ooze back to their original shape, etc. These items are neatly displayed on a sheet or matting on the ground. At the corners of these mats are looped tapes - the purpose of which was to achieve a hasty getaway from the cycle police

without

loosing any items. This all sounds fine but to see it is hysterical.

The first thing you aware of is a single yell or some sort of signal then a mass of people running like hell for the road.

All of these guys without exception are Sudanese or Nigerian and they run like the wind with the sacks of goods flying out behind them. It was amazing because there are so many vendors and when they all run together everyone just stops in awe at the exodus. Someone will get run over one day as they leap across the road through the traffic. They do not want to get caught. They race down the 30 or 40 steps to the river and wait there until a spotter at the top tells them that the coast is clear - that is the police have gone!

Some must not have permits to live in France as many stayed away for a lot longer than others. We tried to get a video of this but couldn't as it happens just so fast it wasn't possible.

More to come soon....

Aah...Paris

As we've been travelling we've come across some really funny people. The funniest were probably the two ladies in their seventies who were sitting opposite us in the Eurostar fast train to Paris - for two hours and 20 minutes!

As usual we were way ahead of time arriving at the station, St Pancras, which is attached to Kings Cross Station - Monopoly Board again! It's a huge complex. More about that later.

Anyway back to the two ladies. They bustled in and sat down, parcels and bags scrunched up trying to fit in behind the dividing table. The table is actually quite cleverly done, the outer edges, a quarter of the width along the seat edge, fold up and into the centre so there is room for you to stand up and move away from your seat. However the ladies were still scrunched up for a while until they got themselves organised. One lady was particularly stressed, blustering, panting and worrying. The calm lady gave me a bit of a wink so I knew something was up. They finally settled down with their bags in place but hells bells could they talk. Yack, yack, yack...one re-assuring the other that everything was OK. Then out came the little bottle of wine, the glass, the bag of nibblies and a bottle of water (for Mrs Calm). Things went along that line for an hour or so, with a new bottle of wine mixed with some orange juice at one stage, 'shouldn't drink too much' said Mrs Bustle. Then they started talking about mountain bikes and how Mrs Calm owned a 'Giant' and on her last ride things went really well. Mrs Bustle owned one too but hadn't had much of a chance to ride it lately!

Well at hearing this Laurie and I nearly exploded with hilarity. The thought of these two ladies battling with a Giant brand mountain bike on English roads was almost too much to contemplate. It was a hoot to listen to. We are not in the habit of eavesdropping but there wasn't a lot of choice - they were a metre away, on the seats opposite our table and they were quite well lubricated by this time. Then Mrs Calm was talking about their impending fortnight in Italy after leaving Paris. Yikes, I can't imagine spending anytime with Mrs Bustle let alone two weeks. You'd be a stress head by the end of your 'holiday.'!

Now St Pancras International:

One of the many Eurostar trains at St Pancras International Railway Station. At one end of the station is the most amazing bronze statue of an English man and his French girl friend re-united at the station.

It is 10 metres high and weighs 20 tonnes.

Around the circumference of the statue are numerous scenes, also in bronze. This a truly a work of art for everyone to see.

Many of the scenes depict workers on the construction of the underground rail system.

Now for Paris....

After that entertaining trip on the Eurostar once we arrived at Paris Nord, we jumped on the Metro heading for our hotel. Once there we had the quickest check in of all time. Bonjour, third floor, room 24.

The lift was interesting:

Seriously cute lift. Glad we only had small wheelie bags with us.

As you can see from our feet, there was not a lot of room! The staircase was charming.

The hotel, Montpensier on Rue du Richelieu, is in the most fantastic location in Paris, two minutes walk from Le Louvre and also the Seine where there are river cruises. Our room wasn't quite like the ones depicted on their website. In fact there was such a slope on the floor that we had to re-arrange the furniture ie rotate the bed 90 degrees so that one of us wouldn't spend the night rolling on top of the other or worse still out the other side!!!! The other disappointment was the bathroom - it was like stepping into a cupboard - up and over a step, no soap only hand wash liquid. In the room there was no tea and coffee making facility (or downstairs), no tissues, no hair drier hmmm BUT it had free wifi in the dining room/lobby downstairs and the breakfasts were excellent - continental of course but plenty to eat. The whole place was very clean. It showed us never to believe everything on an operator's website which in this case said it was a three and a half star property. On arrival the sign at the front over the entry door was two star which is about what I would judge it to be.

Those whinges aside the location was awesome so the inadequacies faded into the background when we realised how good the spot was. On our first morning, not realising the hotel served breakfast, we headed for the Eiffel Tower hopefully locating a cafe on the way. We didn't but must admit to purchasing the longest hot dogs we've ever seen from the kiosk at the tower. We were starving but after eating them didn't even look like needing lunch, in fact skipped lunch and had dinner about 8 pm!

Laurie and super hot dog at the Eiffel tower!

After checking out the queue for tickets to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower we had some advise that a night visit ticket has a shorter queue so, as we'd been to the middle level during the day with the boys in 1996, we thought a night visit might be good.

With our plans changed we decided on a river cruise and as you can buy a two day ticket for only a little more than a one day ticket we thought it might come in handy as a river taxi. It works like the open top tours at Oxford, hop on - hop off. We had a great day on the river.

We stopped off at Notre Dame and were very privileged to be allowed to walk around during a service. There were hundreds of people there. The cathedral is magnificent.

From the river and from the square

Photos were allowed but we chose not to use a flash

Some of the amazing detail outside the cathedral

After a stroll around the streets near Notre Dame we hopped back on the boat for Jardin des Plantes, a huge complex which includes a small zoo and natural history museum etc. With aching feet a stroll through the gardens was all we could manage for the visit so it was back on the boat heading for home.

Jardin des Plantes

During our cruising on the Seine we travelled several times under a beautiful bridge called the Alexandre 111. The paint work and gold leaf sculptures on the bridge were magnificent.

The beauty of the bridge is obvious. There are four pillars each with beautiful gilt bronze statutes of Fames looking out of the city. The detail above the centre arch is The Nyphmes of the Seine

This stunning night shot of the Pont du Alexandre111 was taken by Dimitri Destugues

It was interesting to see just how busy the river is and not just with tour boats taking visitors like ourselves from one place to the next. There was a constant procession of working boats and barges transporting goods along the river. With so much traffic on the river there was a lot of care taken by the boat captains.

Two barges pictured ploughing through the water totally weighed down with their cargo of sand and gravel

Next day we jumped on the Open Top Bus for an historic tour of the city. The company we chose offers four tours in their price of 24 euros over two days. We thought this would be good to plan as we wanted to back in time for queueing for tickets to the Eiffel Tower and could continue with the other tours next day. Ah the stress of holidaying!

We 'did' the Grand City Tour first to get a feeling for the city and where things are located which was great really. This tour took in the Church La Madeleine with 52 columns around it, which was started in 1764 but for various reasons was not completed until 1842. For more on this interesting church go to: http://www.aviewoncities.com/paris/madeleine It is near the Place de la Concorde which is an amazing space.

Musee D'orsay

Other places included Opera Garnier, Musee du Louvre, Notre Dame, Musee D'orsay, l'Arc de Triomphe, the Trocadero, the Eiffel Tower and the Hotel des Invalides, like our repatriation hospital for war veterans.

The Hotel des Invalides has a beautiful gold gilt dome

Our next hop off was near the Arc de Triomphe which looked fantastic as it has recently been completely restored at great expense of course. We braved the 283 steps - very steep - for a chance to see the magnificence of Paris and were not disappointed.

You've seen it before but perhaps not from the inside!

12 roads radiate from the Arc du Triomphe so you can imagine how busy the 'roundabout' gets

The Arc de Triomphe was started in 1808 and honours those who fought and died for France in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, with the names of all French victories and generals inscribed on its inner and outer surfaces.

Beneath its vault lies the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I with its eternal flame.

One of the funny things that happened was when on the river, Laurie helped a guy who was taking a photo of his mate, by untangling the French flag which hung from the rear of the boat. The guy in his best French said "Merci" and Laurie in his best Australian English said "No worries mate". The guy broke up and said "Oh geez where are you from?" Laurie told him. Of course Laurie knew he was Australian because we had heard them talking earlier. The guy was from Ballarat! It was a hoot.

One of things not seen in Australia any more except in travelling shows is Carousels. They are quite the thing in Paris with many of them, even in small towns. These were in the square in front of the Hotel de Ville near Notre Dame. They are just beautiful and the kids love them.

To come shortly - Mont Matre plus dining out in Paris without having to ring home for an overdraft

Back in England at the Wheatsheaf, Stonehenge and the Cornish coast

As you can see by our Munich posting that we had a great time and kept very busy by the remarkable Renate.

Our next adventure was to hire a car in London- gulp! We decided we would collect it from Heathrow Airport so we wouldn't need to drive in London traffic. We were traveling down to Andover in Hampshire to stay with friends we had met in the pub we worked at in 1975. We've kept in touch over all those years and every time we travel we make sure to visit and stay with them. I can hear Ken now "look out the Orstralians are coming".

Wendy, Louise, Ken and Laurie enjoying dinner at the Wheatsheaf Hotel at North Waltham in Hampshire

They had organised for us to have dinner at the old pub where we had first met, the Wheatsheaf Hotel at North Waltham, just off the A303 from London. We had got the job in 1975 by going to Australia House in The Strand in London and looking through the 'jobs book'. Then you could read the Australian newspapers, buy a combi camper in the little lane at the back of the building and sell it there when you get back. Things are different now, you can't even get into Australia House.

Anyway the pub has the same atmosphere - typical English country pub, but is much larger and

more organised. The food was great. It was just fantastic to see Ken and Wendy again and to made feel so welcome.

Ken and Wendy at their house in Andover in front of the lilac tree we gave them in 2007 - It is sooo big now!

One of our 'must dos' when we are in Hampshire is to travel to nearby Wiltshire to visit the amazing Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain.

When we arrived the weather was very gloomy. It got gloomier.

Then the heavens opened and we got very wet.

But it didn't matter. We grabbed the little electronic audio tour guide which you hold to your ear as you walk around. The guide is fantastic and gives you a great pocket history. They still can't be sure how they built this structure or totally sure about what it was for.

Our next day was to visit a family friend in New Milton, Margot Frost. Margot and Mark Frost were great friends of my Mum and Dad. Dad and Mark were in a prisoner of war camp during the second world war and have kept in touch. Sadly Mark passed away in February of last year.

It was fantastic to see Margot again and to catch up with her daughter Trish and husband, David.

David and Trish Green and Margot at their home in New Milton. Plus Margot totally engaged in Laurie's explanation of his iPad.

After a good chat, afternoon tea and swap of email addresses we were then off to Cornwall. Seemed like a good idea at the time but it was a fair drive to get to Port Isaac in the one afternoon! Arriving in the dark it was difficult to locate the Port William Inn as it was described as being located at Tintagel but was actually at Trebarwith Strand a mile and a half away. Now that doesn't sound far but driving in the dark on roads that are badly signed and like a rabbit warren it was tricky. We'd headed for Tintagel and had to back track to access theTrebarwith Strand road.

Anyway we checked in, had a really lovely meal at about 10 pm and wondered what the morning would reveal. We weren't disappointed as the hotel is on the edge of a little cove.

The view from next to the hotel and the hotel on the edge.

We set off for Port Isaac and again weren't disappointed although they really haven't capitalised much on the Doc Martin thing. Maybe we were there in the off season but there is only one little shop that has any connection with the series. Port Isaac is a working fishing village and it is great that so far it is not commercialised to the brink of extinction.

Everything is up at Port Isaac!

The little bay at Port Isaac and on the hill overlooking the village the Doc's house!

The beautiful little village of Port Isaac climbs its way out of the sea along the cliffs.

An interesting roof line on this house in Port Isaac. Rolling hills next to car park just outside the village

After leaving Port Isaac for Bath we stopped off at Launceston on the Cornwall border to enjoy a real

Cornish Pasty just near this very quaint street

The weir in the middle of Bath and the magnificent Bath Abbey which must have had bell ringing practice the night we were there as they rang for ages which was beautiful.

We stayed at a nicely appointed B&B called Breconridge B&B at Camerton about 20 minutes out of Bath. Julie and Jake run a very nice place which was beautifully clean, which is not always the case from our recent experience. Breakfast was served in the conservatory at the rear of the house where we could watch the birds at the bird feeder and the sun flowing through the newly shooting trees.

We swapped B&B operator type stories which was fun! Their friendliness and openness was lovely.