European Wonder - Part 2

Day 3 - Parisian Adventures

Today we experience our first trip breakfast, which will come to be fairly representative of the entire trip. Croissants, bread, and ham and cheese....a little strange, and monotonous by the end of the trip, but not overly bad. All of us are wishing for smoothies or egg sandwiches or sugared cereal by the end of the adventure. After breakfast, we all pile onto the bus to be dropped off either in the Place de la Concorde or by the Eiffel Tower. We choose the latter because we are taking a bike tour that begins from the tower. Our first task upon arriving is to supplement breakfast with crepes. The man makes them fresh right in front of us, absolutely delicious!

The bike tour turns out to be led by a young guy from Texas and partway in Steph points out that all of the bikes has little name tags. Turns out I'd picked the Guinness bike :-) We see everything from the Eiffel Tower to les Invalides, to a thrilling ride in front of traffic at the Place de la Concorde, to the Tuileries and the Louvre. We stop for lunch in the Tuileries gardens at a garden cafe. Expensive, but lovely. Biking is actually a really nice way to see the sights in Paris, I'd recommend it to anyone going there.

After the bike tour, we decide upon a trip out to Notre Dame Cathedral which seemed easy enough. Unfortunately the line was partially closed and we had to try for a bus and some walking. We make it eventually and spend some time wandering around the cathedral. My favorite thing about cathedrals is usually the ceilings. I love to look at the arches and how they constructed the huge vaults. The buildings are so impressive, especially because they were constructed so long ago.

Once finished with Notre Dame, we decide to head on over to the Rhodin Museum. It doesn't look all that far on the map and the metro we'd need is the closed one, so we decide to walk. An hour and a half later we arrive. Ooops! At least I navigated successfully and we didn't get lost once...it just took longer than expected. The ladies I'm with take a wander around the gardens and then sit down while I continue to explore and take pics. We think with the Thinker too. The hands on many of the statues are so real. The Gates of Hell was another impressive piece. They were just writhing with images.

Then we were off to the Champs de Mars to meet up with our tour group for a picnic by the Eiffel Tower followed up by a Cabaret performance at the Paradis Latin. This was seriously amusing, especially after the half bottle of red wine I consumed. Topless ladies prancing around the stage singing, a trapeze artist hanging over the heads of the audience, buff guys in ridiculous costumes, and a ton of random settings and props. The most memorable is a future number where an alien comes down from the ceiling in a full on space ship. Magnificently Crazy.

Day 4 - The Road to Switzerland...is confusing

We rise early to hop on the bus for the rather long trip through France to Switzerland. Actually there will be a number of days devoted almost entierly to the bus, a fact that none of us really thought about when we booked the tour. Of course, a number of the trips end up being longer than expected because we have been given a green driver with a propensity for getting lost. We end up having to backtrack in Switzerland and arrive at the campground at least an hour overdue.

When we do arrive, we discover that we are staying in some lovely cabins in a breathtaking Alpine Valley. Dinner is amazing, some Swiss dish I've forgotten the name of. Its also Swiss National Day so there are fireworks which boom off the surrounding mountains. The group retires to the campground bar after dinner to celebrate and a good number procees to get completely trashed. Apparently in Europe, music is a good 10-20 years behind what we tend to listen to over here. All they had in the juke box was 90s techno, which although amusing quickly got old and I soon escaped to sleep. That is until the arrival of our more lively roommate who stumbled in sometime in the wee hours of the morn.

For more photos, visit my flikr site here http://www.flickr.com/photos/atreides22/sets/