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Paris, France

20th September 2008

Paris and Versailles on a Summer's Weekend


Having found some cheaper Eurostar tickets online, we decided to visit Paris once more. This would be out forth time in the city of love, so we though about visiting he palace town of Versailles as part of this trip.

A bit of background before we begin. A week earlier, there was a fire in one of the two Eurostar tunnels below the English Channel. What this meant was that there were reduced services on the Eurostar with passengers being offered full refunds. As we could refund our hotel we'd already booked, we decided to soldier on. Catching the rain on the morning of the Saturday from Kings Cross St Pancras was not too bad. We got there early (6am) and got on a train at 7.10am. The return journey on the Monday morning was horrendous. While initially orderly, the French decided that queuing was no longer an option with a dash for all once the ticket barriers were opened at 6am (we'd been there since 5am). Nevertheless, we arrived in London around 8.30, quickly having a shower and getting to work by 10am. Other than these dramas, it was a nice trip with the weather being beautiful over the whole continent that weekend. Read more below.

Saturday 20th

Saturday started with a very early train trip from London to Gare du Nord in Paris. Once there, we checked into our hotel (Novotel Vaugirard) and set out to see some of the sights. Basically we spent most of the day walking around, one of the highlights being climbing to the top of the Arc de Triomphe for the view. Having had a long week I actually went back to the hotel while Ashika wanted to visit the Lovre where she saw Mona again (Mona Lisa). Evening was spend having a quiet meal and a relatively early night preparing for the bike tour of Versailles tomorrow.

Sunday 21st

Meeting at 9am at the Fat Tire Bike Tour (www.fattirebiketour.com) office near Dupliex metro station we picked up the bikes in out group and  rode to an overground train station to catch the train to Versailles. Our tour guide, Adam, a loud and chatty guy from Wisconsin helped direct us onto the train and explain the events of the day. 40 mins later we arrived at the end of the overland line in Versailles. Getting off the train we rode straight to the Versailles  farmers market (much bigger on the weekends) to pick up food for a picnic lunch. Ashika and I explored and ended up with a whole roast chicken, some baguettes, brie cheese, red while and chocolate eclairs for dessert.  After all in the group got their food, we rode through Versailles town to the Palace. We rode around the palace grounds for some time before stopping in the fields infront of the palace lake for lunch. Though we didnt get to open our wine (other's had no such restraint) we did thoroughly enjoy our lunch. Riding more though the palace grounds brought us to the entrance of the actual palace. We explored inside and outside the actual palace and then caught the train back to Paris city,

Now, we'd actually made quite special dinner plans for that evening. We had dinner in the Eiffel Tower (restaurant called Altitude 95). While a set meal, entree was a soup followed by mains of chicken and dessert of tirmisiu. Also included was a bottle of wine. Dinner started at 7pm, so we got to see the sunset and we finished up around 9pm. We then caught a Seine River cruise from the Eiffel Tower pier which took us up and down the Seine with commentary.

While quite a long day in the end, it was very enjoyable and memorable - not many people can claim to have had dinner in the Eiffel tower let alone going up the Eiffel tower. For the return trip drama on Monday morning, read above.