It already seems such a long time ago but the memory of that long plane ride lingers.  At the airport before 8am an hour flight to Auckland at 9:10, A 10 hour flight to Singapore with a 5 hour stopover before the 13 hours to Paris arriving in the dark at 7am Tuesday Morning, raining and coolish.  I probably got about 6 hour of interrupted sleep, watched 5 junk movies but read a whole Baldacci book on the kindle.

We caught up with our friends David & Jan Althorp (from Melbourne) in Singapore and shared an hour with them in the Krisis lounge before they took off to their Business Class suite on the plane.

We dropped our bags at the Hotel Passy Eiffel and went looking for and found a decent coffee.  The rain had stopped so we headed out walking to the Eiffel Tower which we could see not far away.  The name of our hotel may have been a give away that it was close.  We had a whole day to fill before we could have a sleep.

Our first full view of the Eiffel was as you would expect majestic. Crowds were starting to form and the levels were already crawling with what looked like ants.  Although we had been on the tower before we decided to head for the top.  Amazing to think that the tower was only going to be a temporary structure over 120 years ago built in a marsh area.  Saved by the need for good communications it has become the icon of France.  A glass of champagne at the top and a fantastic view made it all worth it.  We were also able to spot the stop for the Green open top bus which was going to be our transport for the next two days.

Paris must certainly rate as one of the great cities of the world, so steep in history and fantastic architecture. Everywhere you looked were great buildings and according to our commentary so many stories to tell. I have to say that I also just love the French woman, they all looked so chic. I could have spent many hours sitting in the many outside seating of the restaurants’ and cafes watching the world pass by.

For tea on Tuesday night we went to a supermarket and picked up wine , olives, bread meat, tomato and cheese and had a party in our room.   Yummy, what a way to end a fantastic day and get an early night.  I think I was asleep within minutes of David & Jan’s departure, a very deep sleep for 5 hours before nature called.

Wednesday we met at 8.30 and headed off to find some breakfast.  For 11E we had coffee, toast, bread and a Ham & Bacon omelet.  Very tasty and filled us nicely as we headed out for our Green Bus stop.  Today we headed out towards Sacre Cour and started walking.  So many interesting things to see.  At about 3pm it started to rain so we found some interesting arcades to explore before hopping on our bus and continuing the tour.  Back to our hotel before heading out to a restaurant that David & Jan remembered from a previous trip.  Unable to locate that we ended up at a little Italian place.  It was still raining when we came out so we puddle hopped back to our hotel.  It rained all night an into Thursday morning.

We went out for breakfast before heading back to the hotel to settle up and catch the Metro to Montparnasse Station where we were catching the Fast train through to Mountauban.  It took about 5 hours with the train traveling at speeds up to 320km per hour.  It was a very comfortable ride and the country side passed by at quite a rate.  We had picked up some beautiful bread rolls in Paris which we had for lunch.  The bread here is just fantastic.  We passed some of the canal which we would soon be traveling on so the excitement level was rising.  The weather had changed and by the time we got off in Mountauban we were in the high 20’s.  We waited half an hour at the station for a cab.  An earlier pickup had promised to send one but we are not sure what happened to it and we were getting ready to walk when as you would expect one turned up.

The Abbaye des Capucins hotel and Spa Resort was to be our resting place for the next two nights.  A really lovely hotel with huge rooms, it started off as a monastery back in 1629 for the Capucin monks and appears to have had a very checkered history. It was very peasant sitting in the gardens supping back on a 1664.  1664 was starting to become our favorite beer. Dinner at the hotel and an earlish into bed.  It was hard to imagine that at this point we had only had two (real) sleeps since we left home.