only day in Paris

It's ten years since last we were in Paris and a big difference is the number of bicycles and motorbikes. Bicycles are everywhere, chained up - you insert your credit card, pay a nominal amount and ride off without a helmet. Then you put it back in another rack, do your business and take another bicycle. Motorbikes have become taxis: passenger clings on for dear life and they roar off weaving through the traffic very fast. Sometimes they have a trailer for luggage. However, we came from the airport in a car, quietly and quickly. Now the odd departure time pays off as we arrive at 10pm, just time for a stroll around the neighbourhood and bed. We're on the Left Bank near the Sorbonne and I've never seen so many bookshops. We went into one this morning that had 5 floors of books; I bought a children's book in French and will try to read it (chosen because it has pictures.) School goes back on Monday so the many bookshops are full of people buying notebooks, paper and pens.


Next stop was Notre Dame, the grand cathedral on the Seine, compulsory for every tourist, even if you just sit in the middle and look at all the stained glass windows.

We had a typical Parisian lunch of ham and cheese sandwich and salad while sitting outside a boulangerie under the plane trees watching the world walk by, then as it came on to spot with rain, wandered up the hill to the Luxembourg Gardens - formal in blue and yellow.

We met the group in the lobby for a bus tour at 3pm. Most of them know each other from previous trips - one lady is on her 14th trip with Merryle: we are the only ones who are not return customers. "You'll get hooked, just like the rest of us," she said.

Merryle of Country Farm Perennials is the tour leader with Lucy from Bristol UK as historical consultant and Fabrice from Italy as bus driver (Lucy and Fab are alleged to be an item) and our fellow-travellers all seem to be nice garden-loving Australians, some with garden-tolerating husbands attached, others like David know resignedly that they will get to do the hard work.

The bus takes us around the main sites of Paris with a short camera-stop at each. (No, Denise, I did not get to climb the Eiffel Tower, so no photo.) In fact I left my camera's card on the bed at the hotel so no photos of Paris till I can download David's photos. Lucy turns out to be a tireless and interesting raconteur and 2 hours fly by as we drive around a Saturday-afternoon quiet Paris - though the traffic belted around the Arc de Triomphe like bats out of hell and we were glad to use the underpass to get there and back.