Day 7 - Paris Continued...

Tuesday, May 18th - After a quick breakfast at the hotel which again was slightly disappointing (this becomes a recurring theme for the tour) we were off to explore Paris. We had the option of taking a cruise down the Seine River or doing our own thing, Sandra, Sukhey, Jas, Sarah and I decided to do our own thing to maximize our time in Paris. First stop was the Eiffel Tower - it was fairly early so the queue was quite short to go up, we only had to wait about 20 minutes. Any later in the day and you will be waiting over an hour. We decided to take the lift up to the top, although we made a brief stop at the first level. The view from the tower is simply amazing, you can see all of Paris in all directions. We spent some time up there and then decided to head back down. I convinced our group to take the stairs all the way down which took about 20 minutes on a circular stair case. By the time we got to the bottom we were all pretty disoriented as we had been running around in circles for 20 minutes! I definitely think it was worth it though. We decided to head to the Arc de Triomphe next, to get there we took a really nice walk along the Seine which took about 45 minutes. Before arriving at the Arc de Triomphe we decided to grab some lunch and ended up at an Italian bistro - yes the irony is not lost on me. We had a great meal of Caprese salad, real pizza and red wine, after Europe I can never enjoy Canadian pizza the same way again - it's so much better overseas!

After lunch we continued on to the Arc de Triomphe and I again convinced everyone that we needed to see the view from the top. There were no lifts, only stairs and our legs were already feeling like jelly from the Eiffle Tower and the walk by the Seine but I didn't want to miss out. The view was spectacular, again definitely worth it! By now it was getting late in the afternoon and we need to catch the coach by 4 so we had to make our way back. I was disappointed that we didn't have enough time to see Notre Dame, but there just wasn't time to make our way over. On our way we did a bit of shopping, most of the shops are the same that we have in back home - H&M, United Colours of Benton, FCUK. We did stumble upon a store called Promode, the shopping was great here! We all ended up buying heaps of stuff here - I found a great dress to wear out that night.

That evening we were off to Moulin Rouge so we all got dressed up and a bunch of us met up in the hotel bar for a drink. We were then off to Moulin Rouge which consisted of dinner and the show. Dinner was more than disappointing - I had steak which was horribly over-done. The show itself was alright - the story was hard to follow but the dancing was great and if you're into it there were heaps of nipples to be seen. Afterward the show wrapped up and about 20 of us headed to the O'Sullivans - the pub beside Moulin Rouge. This was the first night we hung out as a group and it was heaps of fun! We stayed until closing and then it was time to head home. In the end we had one odd man out for all the cabs so Matty R and I ended up sharing a cab. Our cab driver picked up on the fact that we were tourists and took us on a joyride of the city. We ended up paying 45 Euros (about 20 more than most groups paid) and still got dropped off 10 minutes away from our hotel because our driver couldn't find it. I ended up running barefoot through the streets of Paris trying to find out hotel - in the end it was quite the adventure!

Eiffel Tower by day

Arc de Triomphe

Moulin Rouge

Ivan, Sarah and I after Moulin Rouge