Day 7 – Taking Paris by Storm, with no rain for a change

No more rain for today as far as we know…..our say started with losing our bus driver Freck.  The kids all say their goodbyes and they are sad.  I can attest that Freck is one of the nicest people I have ever met and he truly cares for the kids he has been driving through Europe for the past 5 days.  Freck waits for us to grab our new bus that we will be using for our tour of Paris today.  We meet Francisco our new driver and he greets us with a bit of harsh commentary as to what we are to make sure we do not do over the next couple of hours!!!  We want Freck back and so does Tom!!!  Regardless we are stuck with a cranky driver as we head to city center for our tour of the wonderful city of Paris.

Tower looking East

I will let you know in advance that this may be a short one because of our day, and the only memorial of the war that we will visit today is at the Arc de Triomphe, Napoloeon’s Triumphant Arch, which houses the tomb of the unknown soldier of the French and also is home to probably the worst traffic in the world. In fact, any accident that takes place in the round about surrounding the Arc, which is where twelve lanes of traffic converge, is not covered by insurance…..you get hit by another car and you are on your own, real life bumper cars, just like the ones at Sandpsit just more expensive.

It takes about 50 minutes to get downtown and it looks like a really bad traffic day for sure….we are now almost an hour late for our guide, but when she picks us up she is still in a great mood.  In fact, she tunes the bus driver in a little and he seems to relax somewhat as well.  

We have a great tour of the city by bus we a number of stops that you will see along the way.  Unfortunately the tour is being held up by crazy busy traffic.  The guide explains as we try to pass by the National Assembly, that the French are the kings and queens of protesting, and today is one of those days.  That means that there are a full contingent of Gens D'Arme out in partial riot gear and they are holding up plenty of traffic in our general direction.  I guess they had a little thing called the French Revolution, so maybe they are justified to be prepared for these things.

TOSH on the West side of tower

Napoleonic Military Church

After about 30 minutes of not moving in traffic we forgo they drive up to Notre Dame, so Victor Hugo and his hunchback will not be getting a visit from islanders on this trip.  We continue passed the Assembly and head up to the famous Champs D'Elysees where we are going to be dropped off for a little window shopping.  Actually, we head first to the Arc and the tomb of the unknown soldier and then the kids are allowed to walk along the Champs on this beautiful fall day.  THere are actually a number of places that the kids are able to shop and bring back gifts for all of you, not sure if that happened,  just kidding most of what was purchased was not for them.....another tribute to the type of kids we have.  The trek up and down the 2 KM Champs brings us back to the Arc and now we are off to the Louvre for the afternoon before heading to supper and then a memorable finish to our day and tour in France.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

We have our first hiccup in lateness of the trip here, none of ours, won't go into detail but a couple of boys from Kinkora should have purchased a watch because they are a "little" late as we wait by the Arc.  No worries cause all are safe and the weather is beautiful, and we will laugh about it later!!
Finally off the see the Mona Lisa....

 I won’t be going into anymore expressive details of the day right now, instead I will probably just post some pictures because I am fading fast......footnote to that, I faded fast and fell asleep....it's not 5:45 and we are up to get ready for London and the Eurostar.   If you give me a few more hours sleep I will try to recount much more about what went on today while I am speeding along in the Eurostar in the morning.  

I will end by saying that we had a great ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Every single kid went to the top and we had a great view on a very clear evening.

I feel like I am doing a disservice to our day, but with a few hours to go before we have to get up and catch the train, I’ll leave you with some photos…besides a picture says a thousand words…so be prepared to read a 30,000 word essay on our day in Paris!!!

Au Revoir et a demain! (I promise I will finish)

Dc

Post Script Note After falling asleep...I forgot I need to give the Steele family an update into Charlie's journey to "Italian Stallion" status...tonight atop the Eiffel Tower Charlie had his pic taken with a number of girls on tour from Yorkshire county in England, we do have picture evidence just not in my possession as of yet!  I have told him he has moved up a status level from Acadian miniature pony, to simply Acadian pony!!!  I also told him they were probably light headed because of the atmospheric pressure of being up so high and weren't thinking straight....just kidding, he is working hard at making "friends" globally on this tour!  Off to the train!!!