Thanks to the kindness of Mark Ranby (ex-All Black and general Good Guy) I have a laptop and internet to use along with an English keyboard which means you can enjoy the full range of punctuation from me today! So what have we been up to since the last post?
That last post was in an internet cafe in Roeun where we were in a hurry as usual, hence its brevity. So I didn’t get to tell you how cool Rouen was. If it hadn’t been raining then it would have been a perfect day. A lot of guys went shopping for clothes and shoes since just about everywhere was having a sale. In fact, so many guys bought shirts that we had a sort of ‘Shirt Dinner’ tonight with everyone showing off their new fashions.
I had a more domestic morning in Rouen, doing some washing in a launderette which nearly confounded us but we persevered and did our mothers proud. Lunch out was a popular option and then it was free time again before getting back on the buses to head for Paris.
Our coach drivers, Fred and Terry, manoeuvred us around the Arc de Triomphe roundabout and got us to the hotel safely (no mean feat when you realise that the Arc de Triomphe is basically a five lane roundabout with no lanes and over 10 roads leading off it) before we went out on a night tour of Paris. Sure, it was great and I got some good photos, but that left everyone pretty tired for today’s marathon effort.
This morning (Thursday) was our tour around Paris. French speakers were assigned 7 guys and then sent on the Métro to the Eiffel Tower were we met up for the first visit of the day. The queues for the lifts being so long, we opted to take stairs up to the second level which was not appreciated by some. Great views and good times though. We followed up with a trip on the bateaux-mouches on the Seine seeing all the sights along the river.
The rest of the day was essentially free time along the Champs-Elysees, Notre-Dame and around the Pompidou Centre, being periodically shepherded from place to place by the staff.
It’s been a long and tiring day but definitely enjoyable. It’s hard not to have fun in Paris!
