13/7/2010 - Le Harve/Paris, France (Best of Paris with Cathedral of Notre Dame)
It took around 2 hours to drive from the dock in Le Harve to Paris - we got to see a lot of the Normandy countryside - it was very green and pretty, the infamous (in WW2) Normandy hedgerows have regrown and looked quite healthy. It was a fine day, temperature in the high 20s most of the day!
First stop in Paris was the Eiffel Tower for some photos, lots of people selling little Eiffel towers, etc. We then took a drive under the tower and looked at the thousands of tourists lining up to go up the tower - thankfully we weren't going up. The observation deck on Burj Kalife in Dubai is something like twice the height of the Eiffel Tower, so I don't think we missed much.
We then started our drive around the city, driving by the Military Headquarters of the French Army, followed by the National Assembly building and then the Louvre.
We had lunch in a French restaurant - to be honest it wasn't exactly a spectacular lunch, very average.
Next was Notre Dame - quite a nice Gothic style cathedral, lots of people here too - the line up to get inside was about 500m long, so we didn't bother going in.
After a break for some shopping/etc it was time to get back on the bus and we took a drive down the Champs-Elysees - the 14th of July is Bastille day, so people were setting up seating/etc for the parade - we circled the Arc De Triomphe a few times, saw yet another Obelisk stolen from Egypt! (Poor Egypt, everyone seems to have stolen things from them). The drive back to the ship was uneventful, traffic was light.
Paris was a very nice city, the buildings/etc were beautiful and the city is laid out nicely. It's easy to tell that WW2 barely touched this place, unlike most European cities everythings intact. You could probably take a month and not really see everything here!
First stop in Paris was the Eiffel Tower for some photos, lots of people selling little Eiffel towers, etc. We then took a drive under the tower and looked at the thousands of tourists lining up to go up the tower - thankfully we weren't going up. The observation deck on Burj Kalife in Dubai is something like twice the height of the Eiffel Tower, so I don't think we missed much.We then started our drive around the city, driving by the Military Headquarters of the French Army, followed by the National Assembly building and then the Louvre.We had lunch in a French restaurant - to be honest it wasn't exactly a spectacular lunch, very average.
Next was Notre Dame - quite a nice Gothic style cathedral, lots of people here too - the line up to get inside was about 500m long, so we didn't bother going in.After a break for some shopping/etc it was time to get back on the bus and we took a drive down the Champs-Elysees - the 14th of July is Bastille day, so people were setting up seating/etc for the parade - we circled the Arc De Triomphe a few times, saw yet another Obelisk stolen from Egypt! (Poor Egypt, everyone seems to have stolen things from them). The drive back to the ship was uneventful, traffic was light.Paris was a very nice city, the buildings/etc were beautiful and the city is laid out nicely. It's easy to tell that WW2 barely touched this place, unlike most European cities everythings intact. You could probably take a month and not really see everything here!
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