Welcome to Paris

We left London on Friday and travelled on the Euro Star train to Paris. Arrived to a beautiful warm sunny day.  As we were exiting the station we were approached by a nice Frenchman who offered us a ride to our hotel in his luxury van, the cost 85€. We were unsure about this, I had read in the guidebook that taxis don't like taking more than 3 passengers plus the queue for taxis was a mile long, it was hot and we had large luggage, so to be sure we approached another man and asked how much his van was, he quoted the same, so we sucked it up and took the van. It was a very nice black luxury van and we were given free water!!  We arrived at our hotel and checked in, I asked the lovely lady how much it should cost for a van from the station to our hotel she said €18, WTF!!! We've been ripped, and after looking on the map, the station was just near our hotel, sigh.

We headed out for a nearby cafe and a celebratory drink to toast our arrival in Paris. Found one on the corner with a lovely Frenchman waiter, he was funny and very helpful.  We ordered champers and cheese, yum. 

Just a wee aside, when we got to Singapore, we headed for a bar in the airport, playing an all blacks game, ordered drinks and Trev went to pay, he was promptly handed the card back ........ It was his NZ eftpos card not his visa, sigh! Anyway we have those cash passport cards but only with Euro on them, so at this Paris cafe it was his first opportunity to use it.  He heads up to the bar to pay, a few minutes later, he calls out to us asking where the # button is on the eftpos terminal ???? The guy calls out for the wife to come help, Jenny goes in lol, he asks if she's the wife, Jenny says she's the second wife.  (Trev had stored the pin for this card in his phone) Anyway I head in and remind him that he had put random numbers in his phone with the pin to foil anyone who might take his phone and try to use the card, the guy was hilarious, Trev completes the transaction and we head off to have a look around. We are near the Scare Coeur.

We climb the 300 steps to the top, awesome views.

There are guys hanging around here with boxes of Heineken selling individual bottles, one guy must have got tired of selling and drunk his box, he was surrounded by security trying to make him sit up etc but he was very floppy, lolling on the ground and couldn't sit up, so funny.

We had a light dinner and then had the best nights sleep, so much better having air conditioning and quiet room, yay.