Paris continued............

Well I just had a shower & feel much better. We don't get a lot of sleep as the sun doesn't set until well after 9pm & even now at 10.20 pm it is still quite daylight outside.
After yesterdays stressful day, today was quite the opposite, With our new found knowledge of the Metro we quickly made our way to 'Notre Dame de Paris'. I believe this building to be more spectacular than the Eifel Tower but pics can not do it justice, so I may or may not put them in.
From here we wandered along the Seine to the Louvre & its distinctive glass pyramid. The complex is vast with much of it underground. Again this was far better than we expected & we both enjoyed it very much.
We wandered through Napoleans' chambers which were unbelievably ornate, looked at 600 year old paintings that looked like they were painted last week & sculptures up to 1000 years old.

But Yvonne was keen to see some small painting of a round faced girl & we had to fight the crowd to get there as apparently she is very popular.
We considered doing an open topped bus tour but instead chose a sidewalk lunch & getting pissed on really good wine & I am glad we took the cultural option as it topped off a great day.
Tomorrow we point the C4 Southwest toward Switzerland & see how far we get.

Rungis... LL

Last day in Paris... Just arrived home in Rungis. Really big & enjoyable day out.
What a hectic 2 days it has been, I was too tired last night to add anything but a couple of pictures to the blog.
For those of you who don't have a life & are willing to read any crap I will briefly recap.

Picked up our brand new leased Citroen c4,a far fancier & roomier car than we expected.
Because I normally drive & enjoy a manual, this induced a brain fart, which led me to order a manual.
I will not detail any of the stressful horrors we experienced driving on the wrong side of the road in a diesel car with stick
 shift on the wrong side, in indescribably horrendous Paris traffic.We survived, just, & Yvonne will no doubt tell you that I
was calm & collected through whole ordeal. I can say that as she never seems to post anything on here anyway.

As our luck would have it, Paris is having some type of aviation spectacular & every hotel room in the city was booked.
Lucky for us we met a young hotel employee who could almost speak English & he decided to see if he could help us.
And help us he did. We were fortunate enough to be allocated the broom cupboard, which had a blocked drain overflowing the
entire floor & floating Yvonnes pyjamas out of the shower room.
 But we did have internet, which is very fortunate as the French would never lower themselves to have any English language
programes like every other country in Europe.

As for going into Paris city it was an order of magnitude more difficult than organising an intersteller colonisation program.
We had to catch a bus (but which bus?)from Le Delta to the Metro underground at Denfert Rocherau.That particular Metro Hub
has at least 4
levels of underground stations, with multiferous platforms & at least 2 different types of trains.All ticket selling booths
are purposely  closed & locked & prior to any tourists arriving in the morning. This leaves only self serve machines for
ticketing. All self serve machines except 1 are French only. The one that is multi language is exactly the same with some
language program added to the touch screen.(heaven forbid they should add that program to more machines)
The line of tourists with luggage in tow buying tickets to the airport stretched all the way outside the station.
This was the line we had to join.There were further difficulties in deciding which (unmarked) zone we were travelling to.
I will go no further into detail as I am sure you have better things to do with the rest of your life.

We eventual arrived at Duplex Metro station, not far from the Eifel Tower & found the 'sortie'.
The entire drama taking several hours.

By contrast today we have accumulated several very handy things.
.1.A detailed map of colour coded underground Metro lines.
.2. Knowledge of where & when the correct bus runs
.3. A few more key French words. The French are very good at forcing you to learn their language.
.4. site map of the city.

Today we breezed into the city in 45 minutes & I even helped a Spanish speaking girl who was in the same position as we were
yesterday. Not bad considering I don't speak any Spanish (yet).

We were suitably impressed by the Eifel Tower, much more spectacular than any photos can convey, in fact breath taking.
As it was quite a stressful day yesterday the Eifel Tower was of course closed due to industrial action, so we walked across
the Seine to the arc de triumph & watched the insane vehicular battle taking place around it.
I have made a short video of this & will try to put it on the blog. Not sure if I can.

Handsome dude in front of the 'Louvre" entrance

A few small wines & lunch on the sidewalk

Me preparing this blog post today, in front of the French air conditioner