26th-29th July - Paris for Le Tour

26th Headed off to the airport on the 295 bus to Hammersmith, then the train to Heathrow. We ended up going to the wrong terminal but eventually made our way to the right one and worked out which terminal we would need when we left for home. We checked in for the flight and only taking a pannier each didn’t need to check them through. Smooth flight to Charles de Gaulle airport and then RER and Metro to our hotel in Epinay-sur-Seine, arriving at around 5pm. We ended up having dinner at the Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai downstairs and heading to bed for an early night.

27th Woke around 7.30 had breakfast and headed into Paris on the RER. We went under the Eiffel tower and got off the train at Invalides. We walked up the Champs Elysees at around 10am. There were people starting to claim their spots to see the race. We walked all the way up to the Arc de Triompe
then down a little to view the race.
We stayed there with not much going on until around 2pm when all the sponsors vehicles drove down the Champs Elysees zig-zaging their way along blowing their horns and making a lot of noise.
It was a great spectacle, which lasted about an hour. The cyclists came through at around 4.30pm, everyone was clapping and cheering them along and taking pictures.

After about 6 passes we decided to leave our spot and head down to the finish line. When the race ended there were people everywhere.We stopped to watch the awards ceremony which we could also see on the big screen.


We watched the teams doing their lap of honour and Cadel rode with an Aussie flag, that is Robbie McEwan you can see behind Cadel. One thing we found very odd about the organization was that there were no toilets provided for the crowds, we had been holding on for 7 hours! We ended up heading to a restaurant for dinner and using the toilets there. After dinner we headed back to the hotel on the Metro and RER
feeling utterly exhausted after standing for so long.

28th Full day to explore Paris. Sunny morning when we boarded our train at Epinay-sur Siene. We had to change lines a couple of times to get to our destination of Anvers. This was the stop for the Scare Coeur. We walked up to the Basilica and had a look inside. Catriona was surprised to see that they were letting tourists wander around while Mass was being conducted as in Spain and in South America there were signs that visitors were not admitted during a service. We walked back down to Anvers and caught the metro to Alexandre Dumas so we could visit the Cimetiere Du Pere-Lachaise. We stopped off at a park just outside the cemetery and had a picnic lunch. In the cemetery we visited the graves of Jim Morrison (which was fenced off and had a police guard near by),
Chopin (which was surrounded in flowers) and Oscar Wilde (covered in lipstick kisses) and monuments to the resistance of the WWII and also those who perished in concentration camps. We caught the metro to get to St Sulpice which was made famous by the DaVinci code. There was an obelisk in the church used to measure time.
We then went for a walk into the Latin Quarter past the Pantheon and down to Notre-Dame.
We sat on the river bank watching some cruise boats go by as we ate some nuts and water. We then caught the metro from Hotel de Ville all the way out to La Defense - the new part of town with its Graande Arche made from marble and lit up at night.
We took some photos and went into the shopping centre looking for some food. We found and Auchan supermarket and picked up some fruit fro breakfast. We then caught the Metro and RER back to Epinay and ate at the Asian restaurant downstairs and shared a ½ bottle of Merlot.

29th Had our breakfast before setting of on the RER and metro to the airport at 7.30am for our 10.50am flight. When we arrived at the airport we self checked in and received our boarding passes. There was a huge crowd waiting to get through the passport check with all their luggage. We eventually made it through and bought a pastry and a coffee to use up our remaining Euro. We managed to bypass the huge luggage check in line and go straight through security. People were already boarding when we got through, this was a huge change from all our previous flights where we have had plenty of time to wait around. It took around ½ an hour to taxi and wait our turn to take off. We had a smooth flight back to Heathrow, a very quick exit through customs and on to the train to Hammersmith where we caught a bus back to Wandsworth arriving at Robert and Elisabeths at around 1pm. We took it easy for the rest of the afternoon and had a lovely dinner of Mango chicken stirfry that Elisabeth made. Marcus dropped by with Jo to pick up our backpack/suitcase to look after it for us while we cycle our Britain.