Paris Part 3 by Dave

That night, we went on a cruise for dinner. It was the final part of my birthday present to Alice, Capitaine Fracasse was the name of the company. We started just near the Eiffel Tower, although our plan of getting there nice and early to get a good seat kind of back-fired. We were standing there for an hour or so before the boat actually got to the dock, and even though we got there first, a couple of women pushed in front of us (blatant push-in might I add) and got the best table. We weren’t happy, but they were French I guess!! We were told to get there at 7:45 to leave at 8:30, but people obviously took that to mean they could rock up at 8:30, or after and still get on, bit annoying for the rest of us, but not a lot we could do about it.

After leaving the dock, we were asked what we wanted to eat, for mains, there wasn’t a choice of entrée or dessert, so we only had to choose once which was good, and ordered some drinks. We then headed up the river, past the Eiffel Tower, all lit up, and a heap of the other sights along the river such as the Louvre, you could just see the tip of the Notre Dame over other buildings in the way, but the views were great. The food was also fantastic, although we had to wait a while. We tried taking photos, but it was pretty hard at night through windows. We eventually got down to the end of the trip, then turned around and headed back down the other side of the river. Good to get a different view, in between eating of course.

We finished up the cruise, then headed to the Eiffel Tower, the aim was to climb it, nice and romantic at night, although it was about 10:30 by this time, so we could only get up to the 2nd level, we wandered around, then headed across the road to the “View of the Centuries”, or something like that, just across the road and river from the tower to have a look and get some photos. Al was getting good with her camera by now, so took some really good shots of various statues and stuff like that, with the tower in the background of course.That pretty much finished the night for us, so we headed back to the hotel.

The next day we got up early (well for a holiday) and went to the tower, Al was feeling a bit crook, so the 30 minute wait in the line was a bit of a pain, then the 45 minute wait for the lift from the second level to the top level was also a pain. This was after trying to find out the correct line to get into to get up to the top level, not very well marked!! When we got up the top, we headed outside, massively windy, and Al still wasn’t too good. She wasn’t really a fan when I leant out as far as I could to get a photo looking down, from 276m up you get a good view, the weather wasn’t the best, so we didn’t have a great view, not very considerate of the Frenchies!! We walked around the top, then went back into the covered section, they’ve got the distances and directions to heaps of different cities of the world, so we were on a mission to find Adelaide, alas, little old Adelaide wasn’t there!! We did find Sydney, so thought that would have to do, so we had to have a happy snap in front of that. We also found Canberra, and I think I kind of insulted another Aussie who was there, by pointing them towards Sydney, and saying no-one cares about Canberra, oops, maybe they were from Canberra!! Oh well, what can you do, it kind of is true!!

Eventually we headed back down, and really only had enough time to do the bolt back to the hotel, collect our bags and get to the train station to catch the Eurostar back to London. This was a welcome change to flying, it was good to be able to get there a bit later, and not have all the waiting of planes. Pretty uneventful trip back to London, nothing really to say about that, but worth it, at least you get dropped right in the middle of London.