The trip began with us getting up at 5am to drive to Hamburg. I had a really restless night and so had only slept 2hrs. Therefore I slept the first half of the drive & then we swapped & Tom slept the second half.
After arriving in Paris we had to line up for 1.5hrs to buy our train ticket, as our credit cards didn't work in the machines & they only had 2 "tellers" open. But finally we got our tickets & found our train, & after a 30min train ride were at our hotel, where we simply crashed on the bed & slept for an hour.
Refreshed a little we decided to go see the La Defense & Arc de Triomphe. What I thought was just a quiet short sight seeing trip turned into quite an exhausting expedition. Our Lonely Planet guide said that there was a Garden of Contemperary Art that sounded interesting extending 1km. Well there was maybe a couple of rather unusual sculptures, but nothing of great interest & we could have save our energy for the next stop, Arc de Triomphe. Here we discovered that the only way to the top was 284 steps!!! I was a bit reluctant to do it at first, but Tom insisted it was well worth it & that if I took it slowly & rested lots it should be ok. So up I went. In hindsight I think it was a big mistake, but the view was definately something to see.
By the time I made it back down & had recovered it was time for dinner. I really wanted to have traditional french food, so we headed for a bistro recommended by the Lonely Planet. Well I certainly got my french restaurant experience. The menu was only in french & the waiter only spoke french. So we did our best to guess what we were ordering, though it didn't exactly go to plan. The entree ended up being just half an avacardo with seafood sauce in the middle. I ended up with a huge bowl of stewed beef instead of chicken & Tom ended up with a piece of steak that was almost still running around the room. Despite not being what we expected though the food was really nice. The other interesting experience we had at this restaurant was that you don't get your own table. You are sat wherever you fit. So we ended up sitting with 2 lovely Scottish ladies.
After dinner we decided to take a relaxing, romantic boat ride on the Seine. Well it wasn't quite so romantic as we'd imagined as to hear the commentary in english you had to use these huge like telephone handsets. We had also decided to sit outside where it was quite chilly. But we did still get to see Paris at night.
The day ended with us falling into bed at just after midnight.
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