Arrive en Paris

(As promised....some photos from outside St Pauls Cathedral)

Just a short update as we have only just arrived in Paris and its quite late. We had a wet second day in London so used the hop-on hop-off bus and saw quite a few of the sights (albeit briefly!). We did a full look through St Pauls Cathedral which was just lovely (nicer, although different, than Westminster in our opinion). I climbed the stairs up to the Whispering Gallery level (about 273 steps) and David climbed the stairs right to the top of the Cathedral - he could take photos outside the cathedral from there so will post some of them tomorrow. Again, lots of famous people buried there (Christopher Wren, Florence Nightingale, Horatio Nelson, etc) and Princess Di and Charles were married there. After that we went to the Royal Mews but most of the horses were on summer holidays - thats true, they go to Hampstead Heath (I think) for the summer break and come back next week when their royal duties start again. We saw the royal carriages and the two remaining horses though. We also went round the Queen's Gallery where there was an exhibition of paintings and valuables related to Victoria and Albert which was actually quite interesting.

We got a traditional black London taxi cab to St Pancras and caught the Eurostar to Paris Gare du Nord. Felt a bit anxious about travelling in a tunnel under the sea but that part only took about 20 minutes. It was actually a relatively smooth and quiet train trip. We got our first experience of being ripped off in Paris when a "friendly older gentleman" helped us purchase tickets at Gare du Nord (which should have cost about 3.5 euros) and he accepted the 10 euro note we gave him in return without giving us any change. I also got a bit stuck in the metro station as my luggage did not go through the turnstile but David and his did - so David was on one side with the luggage and I was on the other and my ticket wouldn't allow me to get through. I went back down into the station to look for assistance (but it appeared to be an unmanned station). However, I managed to eventually find my way out of the station through an alternative exit (which luckily had a broken turnstile) and found my way back to where David was via the street system above (and that was guesswork). With my extensive knowledge of French I wasn't really sure how I was going to get out without assistance. However, in the meantime David met a very nice French family who were doing their best to help and had evidently learned their English from a kiwi when they were working in Switzerland. Their genuine kind help balanced our earlier experience.

So, tomorrow is exploring Paris and doing our best to avoid any further rip offs!