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Euro Adventure Pt 4 - And Then, There Was Paris

When an alarm goes off at 3am a few things go through your head... What the bloody hell! Is this a joke? Did I put in the wrong time? AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH! The 3am wake up call was definitely not fun. But we were determined to make it to Paris - which we did. 

After putting on our faces and our best we are not zombies from the walking dead impressions - we headed down to our buses and piled on for our drive to Portsmouth (2 hours outside of London) one of the few ports that ferries were crossing from. We were there by about 615am and found out we couldn't catch a ferry until 9am... OH NO NOT MORE WAITING AROUND!!! At least we weren't waiting around for nothing. Today I woke up feeling a little unwell - a sniffly nose and a tickle in my throat - that cannot be a good sign... 

So we waited. And waited. And waited a little more. We waited in the line of a coffee shop and we waited in line to get through security. We even waited at the entrance of the ferry for the rest of our tour to finally show up. But alas. We were on and then we were off. Now I have never been on a ferry like this before but I never excepted to feel sooooo nauseous and unwell. Alysha very smartly took some kwells and felt mostly fine - she even tried to sneak in a little nap. We ended up sitting in some reclining chairs watching Geordie Shore.

Finally we had made it to France!!! Bonjour France! VIVA LA FRANCE!!! Had to go through customs and got my first chance to dust of my very rusty high school French. Bonjour Monsieur - I said! Bonjour, ca va? - he asked. Bien - I replied with a smile. Then i didn't quite catch what he said (which was in English so I got confused and just waved au revoir with a pathetic wave. Darn. Oh well - better luck next time Tegan. 

We took our suitcases out to where the Topdeck bus was meeting us - YES! It was finally all starting! 



We met out driver Greg who is from Krakow in Poland and has a thick Polish accent - he seems like a lot of fun though. We began our long drive to Paris - about 4 hours with a toilet stop at a service station in the middle. We started to get to know our fellow travellers with introductions and a little game of two truths, one lie. 

Mine were:
- I studied at uni for 5 years and never got my degree
- I have a three year old son called James
- I have been kicked out of a music festival after 15 minutes

Alysha's were:
- I'm dating a surgeon
- I've seen 6 child births
- I've done a volunteer trip to Vanuatu

It was a lot of fun - some people have done some amazing things in their lives. Just wow.

Ah Paris - where have you been all my life. My absolute favourite place in the whole world. It was just as I remember it 7 years ago (wow has it been 7 years already?), so beautiful, so French. The breathtaking architecture, the River Seine, the shops, the cafe's that face out onto the road (for people watching of course), oh and that tower. That glorious iron tower that makes Paris what it is. Amazing.



We began our driving tour of Paris with Noddie pointing out all of the sites and giving us a brief history lesson of Paris and France. Just to name a few, we saw; the Champ de Mars, Napolean's Tomb, Museé Rodin, Place de la Concord, Arc D'Triomphe, Musee Du Louvre, Musee D'Orsay, Notre Dame, the Champs-Élysée and finally returned back to the Eiffel Tower where we had an amazing Parisian picnic dinner. It was very delish, antipasto platters, Camembert, macaroons, eclairs, fresh fruit, salad, frogs legs - no I wasn't game enough to try one. 

We had some free to explore or climb the Eiffel Tower - Alysha, Taylor and Sam were brave enough to climb all 700 stairs of the Eiffel Tower and enjoyed the sweat and magnificent views from high above Paris.



I was still feeling pretty crook from my imminent cold and my cough was slowly getting worse so I took a pass on the climb and walked around on my own, enjoying the delightful view of the Eiffel Tower - even had a lovely chat with a Frenchman who tried to sell me champagne - I may have convinced him to visit Australia haha. We all met back up for the prime time viewing of the Sparkle. 



I have no words. What a great way to end the day! 

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