30th September

We had a bit of a lazy start today.  I think we needed it but will need to be up earlier to do all the things we want to in a day from now on.

Today we decided to go out to Palace Versailles, the Sun Kings residence.  This involved a short walk to the metro station and about 3 train changes to get out there.  This in itself was an adventure, taking about an hour to get there and I am thankful for the practice we had in London on the underground.  

On arriving at the gates we were once again struck with the opulence we are seeing on all these historic buildings.  Absolutely incredible.  In its original state it used to sit on 7,500 hectares; equivalent to the size of the whole of Paris.  Today it is only 800 hectares, but is still massive.

The palace itself is huge and we probably spent about 3 hours in there before heading out to the garden. (these few photo's just won't do it justice unfortunately). By this time we had limited time so paid to go on a little tractor train that drove you around the main areas.  It was such a beautiful day and being a Sunday there were lots of people picnicking and enjoying the sun.  There are lots of little gardens, fountains and a huge T shaped Grand Canal where people were rowing boats and enjoying some sunbathing. 

This scale model gives some idea of just how grand this place is.

We left Versailles and made our way back to Paris to the River Seine for a one hour boat cruise.  This included a commentary about all the various historic buildings and landmarks.  A nice relaxing way to spend some time, especially for my poor feet!

Trying to make the most of our day we then went up Montparnasse Tower for the best view of Paris.  The lift goes very fast - 56 floors in 38 seconds!  Once up there you get a panoramic view of the whole city.  Paris by night really is something to behold.

So a long day day, but one that was well worth it.

Paris 29th September

Today we say goodbye to the rest of the tour folk.  They left at 8 am and there were hugs and kisses all round.  Even got a kiss on each cheek from Peter the Tour Director.  We have made promises to keep in touch with some of the other passengers, particularly Beth and David.  I hope so.  

For us it has been all about packing our suitcases and heading off to our apartment for the next 6 nights.  We met Armindo the property manager and he has shown us the apartment and given us some tips and hints on the local shops etc.  

We have a washing machine so while we orientate ourselves to the area and try to plan our activities , our clothes will get some much needed attention!

There is a local market just round the corner where we had a late lunch and picked up a few essential supplies.  There are bakeries, cheese shops, chocolate shops, which of course we won't go into (yeah right), a supermarket, fish shop and cheese shop.  Not to mention a few clothes and shoe shops as well.  So pretty much every thing we will need on our doorstep.

The main door to the courtyard of our appartment

 

Colin's sniffle has developed into a cold so lets hope it isn't too bad as we have some very busy days ahead.

Paris 28th September

I'd be telling a fib if I said we weren't feeling a little worse for the wear after last night's wine etc :-)

 Today is the last day of our tour and quite a few people are getting off here in Paris or returning home.  It will be sad to see the group disperse, we will miss David and Beth and also Pepe's driving and Peter's guiding hand. Someone got a cold on the bus trip and it seems to have spread itself around.  Poor Colin has woken with a sore throat and has sniffles too!  Hope it doesn't progress any further.

 We started today with a bus tour around some of the main sites - a photo opportunity at Eiffel Tower, a guided tour through the Notre Dame and other main areas like the art museums and a trip down the Champs Élysées.

We had some free time following this so we joined up with David and Beth for a spot of lunch and sightseeing.   We are going to have to be very careful choosing places to eat as lunch once again proved to be an expensive mistake. Thinking we were just getting a takeaway sandwich, we were ushered to a table and were plied with all sorts of extras like bottled water and fries.  The language barrier is pretty confusing, not helped by the serving staff being rude!

 From there we took a long walk up to the Sacre Coeur Church.  A pity again as no photography allowed but once again we were amazed at the art work adorning the walls.  Mosaics again, so you can only be blown away by the beauty of this and admire the man hours that have gone into creating these art works.

 We were picked up from town at 3.30 pm to head back to the hotel for a quick change of clothing if you wished as we are off out to our farewell dinner. The restaurant was called Scaramouche.  It had all these different levels that were like little grotto's but the highlight was the menu.  This included the mandatory frog's legs or snails.  There were other choices as well, but I was talked into having Snails in Garlic butter, whilst Colin chose the Frog's legs. It was certainly a mind over matter thing for me as my stomach baulked at the thought but once the snail was in my mouth I could only taste garlic, but I swallowed it pretty quickly too with not much chewing.  I managed to have another couple and gave one each to Colin, David and Beth.  Colin chewed his somewhat more than me and said it was quite yummy.  Colin's Frog legs were like chicken.  Except they definitely looked like frogs legs! Main course was Prawns for me and Beef Burgundy for Colin, both of which were very nice.  Chocolate mousse for me and Colin had Creme Caramel for dessert.   We had some entertainment which involved us all in some singing so all in all a good night.

More photo's added

Have just added pics to the Birthday Dinner blog and also to the Pompeii Blog which we somehow missed.

Enjoy

Birthday Dinner

I reckon this deserves it's own post all to itself.

After many months in the planning, finally the big moment arrived. We got all dressed up in our glad rags and called a taxi. This journey was only meant to take 20 minutes or so but unfortunately, Paris rush hour traffic had other ideas.

 
We took an hour to get to the Eiffel Tower, but once we got there, we went straight up to the booth to get our ticket for the lift and headed up to the tower. It was lit up with lights and looked quite golden. As we stood underneath and looked up it really is massive. Another gasp moment. It didn't take long for the lift to arrive and soon we were making our way up the Tower. We were a little early for our sitting so we took some time to take in the view. You can see for miles and it looks so pretty with all the night time lights. So at 9 pm we went into the restaurant, 58 Tour Eiffel, and were seated in our window table with a perfect view out to the Trocadero. Simply beautiful.

 

 

 

Our menu was on our table ready for us to see what delights we were about to have and the moment we sat down our glass of champagne arrived and we had a toast for my birthday.

 At this point, I would have to say, I was so thrilled and happy I could have cried. Everything was just superb. We had a wee taste of something that wasn't on the menu, but seemed to be some sort of white dressing, tomato and avocado.

Following this we had a prawn dish.......



.......and then a scallop dish.

Main course was roast duck.



All the while this was being served we had the glass of champagne, some white wine and some red wine. So it was no surprise that by this time we were both beginning to feel the influence of the alcohol. But who is worrying about that. Every dish was beautifully presented, a delight to the eyes and also of course to taste as well.
 

Dessert was a taste sensation. Yummy chocolate slabs, with raspberries and cream in between. Yum!.....

......and topped with real gold leaf......which is edible!

The waiters were so nice and the service very slick, but having said that this whole dinner took about 2 1/2 hours to complete. The Tower closes at 11.45pm so we made our way down in the lift and got a taxi back to the hotel; this time only taking 20 minutes or so. This has been the most incredible time of my life and I am truly grateful for this trip and Colin who has helped to make this whole holiday a reality. I will never forget turning 50 that's for sure.

Lake Lucerne Area - Paris, France

Thursday 27th September

The big 50 today - happy birthday to me.  Can't get much better that waking up in Switzerland to find it had snowed overnight and there was a spectacular view up to the snow covered mountains, then finishing the day with dinner and going to sleep in Paris.  Well at least we will be after about 9 1/2 hours driving!

Our new found friends, Beth and David gave me birthday card in German which they hoped said Happy Birthday, (Lucerne is German speaking Switzerland), and the most beautiful earrings and a Murano Glass bead for my bracelet.  Nicky from Australia gave me some Swiss chocolate and the Canadians, all the Australians and the other New Zealanders gave me a signed birthday card.

The "piece de resistance" was having the whole tour bus sing happy birthday to me as we were leaving Switzerland.  Pretty good start to the day so far.

We will spend the whole day on the bus in an effort to get into Paris before rush hour traffic, with various stops for toilet and food etc. 

We had only been on the road for half an hour and someone let go the most god awful smell.  A few minutes later we were having to pull into a truck stop to let someone off to go to the toilet.  Our guess is it was the same person who practically cleared the bus.  Well given the chance we would have all piled off for some fresh air.  Not a well stomach at all.  

The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful and we arrived in Paris about 5.30 pm.  We caught a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower as we were driving in so getting pretty exciting now.  

We have a couple of hours to relax before heading off for the big night out.  It had been raining but reasonably clear skies now so hopefully it will last for our dinner.

Lugano-Lake Lucerne Area

Wednesday 26th September

Well the Funicular last night in Lugano wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be so all in all we had a reasonable nights sleep.

We were away early this morning heading through the Swiss Alps.  This is very similar to Milford Sound. Indeed it was very picturesque with plenty of waterfalls to try to photograph.  Not easy in a moving bus.  One can only imagine what this must look like in the heart of winter and perhaps these waterfalls freeze. 

During the course of our journey we have travelled through quite a few tunnels, but none can compete with the St Gotthard Tunnel.  This is 16km's long and took us 14 minutes to get through this.  This is the second longest road tunnel in the world.  I specify road tunnel as some train tunnels are longer.  Not only is this tunnel long, as you get to the end of it, it even diverges off into several ways out, just like an open air motorway.  Pretty amazing.

It was raining on the Lugano side of the tunnel, but when we came out the other end, the weather was a bit better as we were on the other side of the Alps heading into Lucerne.

Lucerne is considered the most Swiss looking city and seeing all the chalet homes, brightly painted shutters around the windows with flower boxes and the cows with their cow bells, it truly looked just how you imagine Swiss villages to look.

As we drove into the city, we passed by the ornate houses, a covered bridge which I later walked across and the Lion Monument, (a massive stone sculpture of a lion in commemoration of the heroic Swiss Guard of Louis XVI).

We decided to take advantage of both the optional tours today.  The first was a scenic lake cruise on the most beautiful lake in Switzerland according to our tour guide and certainly it gave us a lovely panoramic view of the city and the surrounding areas.  Our boat captain was an English speaking German and he had a very sing song voice which made his commentary all the more interesting. 

Following this we went on the second excursion, the one we had both been looking forward to here in Switzerland.  This was going up Mount Stanserhorn for breathtaking views.  This sits at a mighty 6,300 feet and is reached by two modes of transport.  Well three if you count the coach ride to the bottom of the mountain.

The first part of the climb up the mountain was an old time funicular with 100 year old carriages with fringed curtains.  These were quite beautiful - all wood inside.  This took us up through farmland and how lovely it was to hear the cow bells ringing.  Some of the bells were massive so gave off quite a loud ring. 

The second part was via an aerial cable car.  These were huge, having two levels from which to view your journey.  We went up onto the top level which was an open air deck with sides. Certainly gave you a spectacular view but not for the faint hearted. 

There was one thing that happened on this cable car ride which reminded me of something I forgot to mention in a previous blog.  It was something Colin said which has become the "quote of the trip" according to the other passengers who were with us when it happened.  Stay with me a moment and I will explain.

I will have to take you back to the Capri day.  Do you remember that horrific trip we did up "Mamma Mia Drive" in the bus being hurled around corners, swaying it seemed over the edge? Still a vivid memory!  Well when we got up to the top, there was a moment of silence as we all tried to regain our composure, and Colin pipes up in a quiet voice saying "I think a bit wee just came out".  The whole bus roared with laughter and I think if there was any dry underwear following the drive, there certainly wasn't following all the laughter.

So I think you can guess what happened in the cable car today?  One of the girls, not so fond of heights, got a bit of a fright as the cable car lurched over one of the joins on the cable and let out a squeal and said, "I think a bit of wee just came out" much to the delight of us all.

Now as you know, I was going to raise a glass on my Kiwi birthday and as it happens, as we were having lunch, time ticked over to the 27th in NZ, so we said a cheers with our wine and beer and I got wished a happy birthday by Colin.

The alcohol was later to turn into a mistake as we took on the 30 minute walk up to the very top of the summit.  We puffed and we huffed all the way up there and on reaching the lookout I collapsed on a rock to rest.  I blame the wine and altitude?!

Once recovered, we both enjoyed the view and took a minute or ten just to take in what we were seeing.  The air force has a strip you can see from up there, but as they are very conscious of attacks/acts of terrorism, there were no hangars visible as all the planes are housed under the ground!  There were many mountains around us to look at and an almost aerial view of the lakes down below and the little villages.  We were both very glad of our jackets as it was pretty darn cold considering we have come from temperatures in the high 20's.

We finished the trip up the mountain at around 3 pm and made our way back down again via cable car and funicular.  We then checked into our hotel and had some free time to go exploring/shopping.

I mentioned that this town was meant to be more geared for the tourist.  Not sure I would really say that as we didn't think the prices were much different from Lugano and following our dinner at the hotel, some of us thought we would go back into the township but all was closed.  Well just as well really, it gave me time to get this written.

Big, big day tomorrow.  Of course the 50th and dinner at the Eiffel Tower will be the main focus, however we have to get there first which means a 680 km bus ride first!